dd wishes she was more sporty

Can she ride a bike?
Have you a cycling club locally? It may have a women's section. If not indoors, they may have velodrome sessions if you're near one.

@Sunat45degrees Dance is very inclusive. I agree. Cross country? We could have our own course at home but DDs just prefer a good walk.

School sport was never interested in me either! :)

I landed up doing cross country, with a supportive coach who encouraged us to work to perform better than we had the week before and not to worry about everyone else!

And martial arts is great for a lot of kids like this. Our dance school is also wonderfullly inclusive which I love - we have children there from really really good to others who aren't and it's all the same.

Haven't read tft but she sounds a bit like me at school. Would she like things like yoga or park run where people will be at different levels but are still in a group together, as opposed to team sports where you have to be good or you let the side down?

@Sunat45degrees
Well yes, finding something is a challenge. I'm assuming my DDs could ride a bike if they tried. As they now live in London, the bike lane racetracks are not for them!

At school they enjoyed dance and DD1 tried badminton club. Then the school organised matches and she was dropped. That's the big problem with sport. You are not wanted if you are not good enough. Similar happened to her with netball in her y6 club. Never got a place in the team - for 2 terms of diligent attendance. We were resourceful and did want swimming plus they learnt to ski. School sport was never interested in them.

Slight derail here, but I am surprised at the number of pp saying you need to be able to swim well to do rowing.
I don’t know about other countries but in the UK the advice from British Rowing is that your very last option is to try and swim for the shore if you capsize. People die doing this.
If you capsize and can’t get back in the boat straight away then you stay with the boat as it is a massive buoyancy aid. You only leave the boat if you are in immediate danger eg. from being hit by another boat.

What you need, is to be calm and be able to float if you fall into the water.
If you can’t pass the swim test then you wear a buoyancy aid.

<climbs off soap box> 😁

It sounds like you may be non-sporty, OP?

I hope there is a sport that your DD can enjoy, even though not found yet. It is painful for those who do not enjoy or are not good at the sports most schools offer.

If it was your DS, I'd be suggesting contacting a Mr Armorim as he would fit in !!

@TizerorFizz I completely agree with you in many ways - I couldn't be an Olympian if my life depended on it. Your DD's may be choosing not to ride bikes, but I assume they either can, or could learn very easily? And as for dance, I am all for dance as an alternative to sport. DD doesn't do sport - doesn't enjoy it, not great with balls etc, but she does loads of dance classes and Im' completely fine with that.

The issue I have on this particular thread is that OP's DD appears to simply be unable to do any of these things, including things like bike riding and swimming, which suggests there might also be something else going on. OP also says her DD wants to do more sport, but neither of them seem to understand that she needs to get out there and do it, and that she migh tnot be good at it (especially in the beginning) but that doesn't mean she shouldn't do it.

@Sunat45degrees During the Olympics we were told anyone could be an Olympian! It's total rubbish. My DDs didn't ride bikes as we live along unsafe narrow roads with 60mph speed limit. Has it held them back? No.

DD2 preferred dance. Fitness doesn't have to be traditional sport. My DDs can swim but we prioritised it. Others don't and schools do 10 weeks of lessons if you are lucky. Not enough for proficiency. It's also way off being good enough for any team.

Schools tend to have ball game teams and not much else. Practice, if you are inept, does not get you far. It usually makes you realise you are still useless and it's very demoralizing. It's better to swerve sport for other forms of fitness. DD1 now does spinning but never got close to being on a sports team at school. Does power walking too. Writing dc off as not practicing, not trying hard enough and blaming them is counter productive. Most of us non sporty types think fuck that! I have never done sport in my life. I have many other interests.

Is she hyper-mobile? That can account for the lack of coordination and strength. If she is she’ll need to work on strengthening her muscles before taking up sports. Weight training at the gym and then swimming will help her with this. If she gets the hang of swimming she can then move on to team sports like rowing.

I used to cox rowing teams. She won’t need perfect front crawl as long as she can doggy paddle a length she’ll be fine to cox and be able to be part of the team without being overly sporty.

I assume this was to me? I am not sporty, and anything with a ball is guaranteed to have me missing everything. But there's a big difference between being "sporty" and being able to do fairly basic physical things to a decent level such as swimming and cycling and OP's DD does not seem to have these basic skills. A child who has taken swimming lessons should reach the point they can swim well enough that if they fell into a river while rowing they could manage okay. Similarly, learnign to ride a bike is a fairly basic skill most children can and should master. And if by their early teens they can't do it, I would think that a NT child could absolutely pick it up as a teenager with a bit of effort. Which again, is a bit of a skill.

My favorite (now retired) baseball player, Joey Votto, has been pretty candid about how he isn't a natural athlete and the amount of work he's done to be able to succeed, beginning in elementary school. And people who know him talk about how hard he works and his focused he is. That leads me to believe that she can probably become sportier if she wants.

You don't have to be great at a sport for it to be worthwhile doing!

I was "not sporty" but actually I had uncorrected poor vision, and lack of confidence. I went to the gym to lift weights and being able to do physical activity alone, so I didn't feel pressure from others allowed me to become more co-ordinated and confident, and I realised I'm good at other things too.

I would suggest to her -
Lifting weights
Exercise classes (separate to school friends)
Kickboxing
Yoga
Pilates
Any martial art she's interested in
Aerial hoop/silks
Climbing

She's 16 so she might lose touch with her current sporty friends soon anyway, so better she finds something she likes rather than whatever they like.

Sorry to say but you're being very negative in your replies, I feel like you're going to destroy her confidence, and you don't teach a child to swim so she can be the best at swimming. You teach them to swim so they don't drown.

You've made such broad-brush judgements of "sporty people" and "non-sporty people".

I agree she can improve her physical stamina by exerting herself and she can work on hand/eye coordination - it's good for the brain.

Both of you could be more open-minded. She can't have tried and got to know that many different sporty/non-sporty friends.

If she wants to hang out with this particular group why doesn't she do rowing?

Well, she's never going to become sporty with the defeatist attitude that you have to the many, many helpful suggestions received.

You don’t need to be good at sports to participate. Can’t she be on the “B” team? She’ll still be part of the team and see her friends at training and the social events, without the pressure to perform.

Rugby.
You don't have to be good at kicking or catching, you have to want to be there and enjoy getting muddy. That's about it.

After-game culture is everything.

Some dc just are not sporty. I'm not and DD1 wasn't either. It's not practice it's just coordination. There's nothing wrong with us! Not everyone has to have a diagnosis to explain why they are not great at catching a ball! It's just that we have different talents.

I would try helping out with the teams if possible. My DD just wasn't friendly with sporty types because she preferred music and drama. So she didn't chase friends with talents she didn't have. Mostly dc sort themselves out into friendship groups with similar interests and attributes. There's plenty of dc between very quiet and very out there. She needs to find a more suitable tribe and release the coat tails.

Why can't she ride a bike? Has she tried and can't, or you just didn't bother to teach her?

if the former, it might be thatyou should consider having her assessed for dyspraxia. It' sa processing condition that makes al ot of fine and gross motor skills difficult. People with dyspraxia often struggle with skills like bike riding, dressing themselves (laces, buttons, zips) etc.

It also sounds like she wants to play a sport butneither you nor her understand that any sport requires time and effort, whether you have natural talent or not. I'd start by working on her fitness - get her doing couch to 5k by herself to increase her overall strength and fitness. Then she can start considering options. Rowing would be good but based on her lack of swimming skills, I'm not sure that will work. I agree with martial arts but it doesn't sound like that would be interesting to her. At her age, what about classes at a local gym, ideally with her friend - she could do anything from yoga to zumba?

Sport is great. It's good to see this post.

What about joining the gym to get fitter and be sociable - that’s what a lot of teens round here do.

Has she got a bike? If not do try and get her one so she can learn to ride.

Could she get involved in sports teams by helping with admin / logistics / planning helping coach run things? They need lots of people to make things work.

Does she want to do sport for her own sake or simply to be around other sporty people.

Because if it's the latter I don't think she'll enjoy it or become very good especially if she doesn't swim well after many lessons and can't ride a bike.

It's really not a problem to be friends with sporty people without doing sport yourself. After all how would doing say running or tennis help with her friendships with the people she likes who play football and rowing?

Do adult swimmig lessons and join in rowing etc ..no one knows how to row but u get taught and i found it fun ..