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Today is National Girls and Women in Sports Day. It’s a time to ask why we can’t at least have women kickers in the NFL (after all, surely there are some women with sufficient leg strength to put it through the uprights from a reasonable distance), but it’s also a time to celebrate the role played by sports in the lives of women who will never be able to compete at anything resembling a high level—that is, women like me.

Starting at the age of eleven, I swam in a summer league; in high school, I was on the swim team even when it meant being in the pool at 5 AM. No matter how hard I tried, however, I could never be the best. Even as my technique became better and my arm rotation faster (both still hampered by my coordination issues), I was too small to be one of the faster swimmers. Some of the girls who rarely practiced were still faster than I was. Through this experience, I learned that it was OK to fail. I was given the coach’s award my senior year not because I won but because I consistently failed better.

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.
-Samuel Beckett

If it weren’t for swimming, I could easily have grown up without experiencing failure: academics were always easy for me. Had I never experienced being unable to succeed, I don’t think I would be able to take the risks I do now with my writing. My poems would hug the left margin, vaguely rhyme, and be thoroughly appropriate in subject matter. Maybe, too, the first time a relationship failed, it would have destroyed me because I wouldn’t have had the skills to deal with the disappointment.

How did you learn to fail better instead of running from failure? What role (if any) have sports played in your life?

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1. Are women writers now sexless?
2. Sex, Gender, and the Non-Elite Athlete

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