When Bouncing a Ball is Too Much Work

A few weeks ago I had a chance to catch up with Coach Math who is now teaching P.E. and coaching full time, having achieved his dream of Finally Getting Out of the Math Classroom when some of our teachers moved on up to the Local High School, creating an opening. His morning hall duty station is nearby so I strolled on over to see how the basketball season was going to shape up.

"Oh man, it's not looking good," he said. "Very few of my kids from last year had the grades to play, so I'm having to go with younger kids with no experience but with better grades."

This was a surprise. Basketball is usually a Very Big Deal around here and there's usually no shortage of kids wanting a chance to play on the team.

"It's weird," he continued. "It's like they don't want to put forth the effort to be on the team and do the work it takes to practice and learn the game."

What? Not wanting to work? Lack of effort? These are the words those of us in the academic courses, not P.E....however, it appears that the perpetual laziness that we've seen in our classrooms have now permeated sports.

Many of us have used sports as the carrot to bribe some of our low-achievers into performing so they could play. However, from what Coach said, this isn't working anymore. These kids aren't motivated enough to keep up the grades to play, and they aren't motivated to run and sweat and actually work at developing their basketball skills. Apparently the only thing they want to do is go home, play on their video games or text their friends, and do as little physical exertion and thinking as possible.

Jeez, I know it's bad when kids down and out refuse to do academic work, but what's the world coming to when they're so damn lazy they won't even bounce a ball down a basketball court?

Is this just a weird little blip on the radar or are we raising a generation of committed slugs?