The news of athletics day passed through the school like an epidemic, it spread slowly until we were all infected. The victims all had a different reaction to the disease.
My reaction when the news of this event reached me were breaking out in hives and thoughts that went something along the lines of, “not this shit again”.
Athletics day bothers me more than any other scwhooling event in history, it bothers me even more than exams. Athletics day is supposed to spread school spirit and get year levels to mingle, but it does the opposite.
Ask any senior student if they’re going to athletics day and I’ll bet you the answer will be no. How are year groups supposed to mingle if half of them aren’t turning up? I know that it’s supposed to be compulsory but let’s get real, it’s not going to stop people wagging it. Speaking from experience I can honestly say I’ve been to two athletics days in my five years at Wellington High.
WHS needs athletics day like a fish needs a bicycle. Wellington High School is supposed to be a liberal and creative art school where students are free to express their interests however they want to. If this is the case then why are we pushed into some bullshit, overly masculine, jock day? All the creative kids are sent into hiding. In fact I overheard one of my teachers saying that over 100 kids called in sick to athletics day, looks like the infection is real. I can’t help but blame them, watching the “athletes” on athletics day is almost like watching a monkey trying to change a lightbulb. We stand around clueless until someone shoots a gun and then we all try our best but don’t succeed at doing some sport we don’t give a fuck about. It’s humiliating having an arena of people watching you demonstrate how uncoordinated and unfit you are.
Why is WHS associating itself with the macho, brainless and competitive nature of the sporting community? But it’s not just the students, the teachers are just as bad. They stand there egging us on and encouraging us to act like brainless jock gorillas even though they know we hate it. This just seems backwards. The staff at this school are so eager to embrace the left wing and liberal environment of the school on any other day, but as soon as we want to speak up and say we don’t want something to happen they turn into this totalitarian society and we are forced into it. I don’t understand why we have to celebrate sports but we don’t have to celebrate the arts or any else, we aren’t forced to do a drama day or a painting day which suits Wellington High School much better.
Athletics day is a demonstration of old fashioned values. Just think about the categories they put us in. Boys under 14,16 and 19 and vis versa for the girls. At WHS we like to embrace our diversity in gender identity, a student in transition would feel like a deer in headlights and wouldn’t know where to put themselves. This is backwards and totally in contradiction of everything our school stands for.
With every epidemic comes a vaccination. Instead of forcing an overly masculine, old fashioned and boring event on us, WHS could act like the lenient school that it is an offer an alternative to the lesser sporty demographic. I’m not saying cancel athletics altogether, I’m sure there is a group who enjoy it, but they could make it more enjoyable for those who don’t want to be involved. They could give opportunities to the musicians of the school to play songs and live music, have better and more creative stalls like palm reading or making jewellery or drawing caricatures. They could make the day less about forcing us into doing sports and more about having sports and creativity flow as one like they do on any other day at Wellington High School.
By Lily Shaw
Images attached to this article
