Sport is the greatest equaliser

America has sports that make sense, thank God. A session of kickball where it finally is what it says on the can opened my eyes to something, sports is the true equaliser.

I’m not a fan of the heat, the hairs on my body have acclimated to the grey dome London provides, so on hot days like Monday was, Chapel Hill was beating my ass. Forcibly, a t-shirt made an appearance, I added a chain in hopes of regaining the comfort long sleeve clothing gives me, but I can tell you it didn’t work.

I spent the walk to Hooker Field asking what the rules were, over the months I’ve been in this class I feel like I’ve grown closer to my fellow classmates and professor Tim Crothers to banter and joke during the intermissions, but I’d argue I still didn’t know what most of them were like.

Arrive the four bases, and a dodgeball ball to match (that felt awkward to type).

I had rugby practice after so I brought my boots (cleats ooh how different) with me, putting them on it was a first that I was the centre of the joke as Campbell and Emma both made quite funny comments as I slipped my feet in.

The chatter around the group was different, everyone within their groups was aware of some of each other before they entered this class – but I witnessed pairings of laughter I just hadn’t seen before.

Weirdly enough, I’d categorise myself as an extrovert, someone not afraid to make a joke or ignite a topic of conversation. In grade 10, my friend and I birthed a theory for a sociology project. It was a study that classified society into two groups, the ignitors and the continuers, the idea was that there were people within a socio-environment that started the conversation and were very versed at such, and there was another group who were very good at adding fuel to the fire.

A bit off tangent there, let’s return to the game at hand, the teams were announced as Raising Canes vs Bojangles. I was on Canes as I’m a fan of the sauce and bread and the team was stacked.

Something stood out pretty immediately being Hunter Caparelli’s enthusiasm shall we say, the amount of famous sports idioms that came from him was generational, “Offense wins games, defence wins championships” he rings off. The composer to our team he’d tell us every base we’d need to hit to get someone out immediately as if the cogs of war were ringing off in his head.

The competitive streak of Campbell Atterbury also wasn’t amiss and Brendan arguably the best ping pong player in the tri-state area had his moments, quite a witty lad he’d weave in amusing comments to his play.

Evan on the other side was comical throughout, you could tell that’s an accurate representation of the type of person he is, if someone told me it was his birthday, I probably wouldn’t have scored four touchdowns (I’m possibly inflating my numbers here).

It’s normal that within social groups you exist in you codeswitch to amplify the parts of your social identity that best correlate with that group, there aren’t many places you can be your own interrupted selves.

Yet, playing kickball or on a macro level just playing a sport reduces the red tape and sets a level playing field, where different identities can kind of mix in this concoction to create a fun atmosphere.

As I ringed off my Sketch impressions or unapologetic British accent I noticed I truly wasn’t thinking before I was speaking, there may have been a bad joke in there from all of us but who cares, at the end of the day the best line of the day unfortunately does go to me as Caparelli stood ready at 3rd base to win us a game I shouted:

“Go win us a championship,” and that’s all folks.