School sport is now poetry in slow motion
With GRAHAM SPENCE's London Letter taking a short absence of leave - and contrary to rumour it is not because the author is investigating the finest brewskis on offer or casting flies to unwilling fish in the English countryside - CARL DE VILLIERS' Zululand Letter ponders the phenomenon of fat children on the home front.
Paging through last Monday’s Zululand Observer sport pages, brimming with photos of Zululand schoolchildren busy doing sport in various events in the region, the first reaction was one of warm approval.
A fine catalogue it was of our primary school cutie pies running, jumping, kicking or passing balls, creating a blissful perception of our young cubs following a healthy lifestyle.
But something in the picture was off beam, the revelation only coming on closer inspection.
The line between being cutie pies as opposed to simply eating pies – and too many of them – has become blurred.
Calling them little dumplings are more accurate, since a large percentage of the pupils caught on camera are clearly not just a little overweight, they are full-blown Beast Mtawarira clones – plus heap fulls of extra body fat.
In fact, even some of the little girls show encouraging signs of attracting the attention of the Sharks front row rugby scouts. There are, as far as I know, no rules forbidding girl wrecking balls from being usurped in male Super Rugby or Springbok teams.
Humpty Dumpty on steroids
My one fear is that this rise of the little Hulks is going to change the face of school sport.
The first signs are already visible at primary school level, where rugby coaches hell-bent on victory pack their teams with Humpty Dumpties on steroids. The ball is passed to these blubbering Goliaths at every opportunity, who then simply truck through to the try line in tank-like fashion against opposition whose firepower is limited to pellet guns.
This will gradually erode the true art of the game, where brute strength and size will eventually become the be all and end all at the cost of athletic prowess – poetry in slow motion. Soon the time will come when, to ensure equal opportunity and fairness on the sport courts and fields, teams will have to picked on size and weight, rather like boxing where the heavyweights and flyweights are grouped into divisions.
On a more serious note though, what is abundantly clear is that by far too many of our pre-teen children are being fed to an early death by their parents – and something must be done about it.
I found the article in today’s Observer absolutely disturbing and heartfelt.
As a mother of a teenager who in your view is “simply eating pies” or your favourite ”little dumplings” I must say I am more than disgusted that the Zululand Observer would place an add like this. Perhaps you should as any other journalist would get your facts straight before you just make statements like this.
My son was a healthy young cub and since grade 1 he has grew tremendously and since then been seeing a dietician and this all happened through health reasons. He has been mocked at school and it is heart breaking to motivate my child every day and tell him he is not useless like all the other kids tell him because he is bigger than them.
He has recently been given an opportunity to take part in a sport which is rugby where he feels he belongs and boy should you see the excitement on his face if there is rugby practise or a game.
Perhaps these young healthy cubs should choose a sport for their own size or if they cannot take the punch of rugby then perhaps they need to be better sportsman and choose sports like chess, hockey, etc.
What’s more disturbing is that articles will lead teenagers becoming more depressed and some of them even taking their own lives.
If you are concerned about steroids then you most certainly would know that the men in general use it to look bigger however they are very lean and there is absolutely no fat involved. This is for pure muscle or to cut themselves. Maybe you should direct this to high school healthy cubs who does use steroids to look bigger and leaner as in gym these thin small boys popped into massive shoulders overnight because they want to look bigger??? Now is that a healthy way??? NO they would die even at a younger age!!!
I would appreciate if you could refrain from these type of articles as I would certainly encourage people not to support your media as this is discouraging and humiliating to poor children.
I am standing up for them as they cannot do it for themselves.