swing versus sport

my favourite sports teams

I am a passionate sports fan. I have been throughout my life and I support teams in a variety of sports with the badges for the most prominent of those featuring above. I have also played a load of different sports for just as long, competitively and just for fun, although if you ask some of the ones I played pick-up basketball with at university they may argue that my competitive switch was never really off - which maybe why they nicknamed me 'Violent Boy.'*

However, despite my incredible love for sport, it is slowly being superseded by my love for swing dancing for several reasons.

Some of the more astute amongst you may be able to recognise every single badge up there (if so, I'm hugely impressed) and consequently may now also be questioning my judgement when it comes to choosing teams, but this may also reveal where I got the inspiration for this post.

Last week I watched my beloved Liverpool exit the Champion's League and then lose to some herd of glipes from Manchester. In fact, of the eight teams that feature above, only two of them (the Irish rugby team and my local football club, Ards) won their last matches with the other six losing. Liverpool, like most of the rest, have provided me with some serious highs over the years and as have some of the teams I have played for, but now that I am regularly going to swing dance events I am finding an alternative source for my kicks.

In fact, not only is swing dancing a guaranteed high but it also pretty much guarantees no lows - physical or pride injuries aside.

When I watch my teams play in big events the nerves I get are something awful, and unless my team are steamrolling the opposition I can rarely relax until the final whistle. On top of that, I really resent the antipathy that is often shown by players and/or fans (and occasionally by me) towards players and/or fans of the other team.

Swing dancing events, however, are like a slightly paradoxical hippie utopia but without the bits that might be described as 'night-time telly' - everything is legal and everyone is full of love for their fellow man, happy, atypically dressed, sweating with strangers and a diminished concern for personal hygiene, and high on music and dancing.

Seriously, what is not to love about that?!

The buzz I get from swing dancing weekenders sometimes stays with me for a good few days after but I have yet to get that from a sporting victory and that's also because it is also much better fun being the one doing something than watching someone you don't know doing the same thing (because that's what spectator sports effectively are about).

And if you are thinking "well, you just need to play more sports rather than watch them!" then you've missed another of the advantages of dancing: you can't lose!

I've been fortunate enough to have played for a few amazing teams and some of them were even cup-winning sides. The elation I experienced from that was incredible but it is also rare, maybe happens once a season at best, and those seasons are hard to come by. The rest of the time you inevitably have to deal with defeat in one guise or other but with dancing you just cannot lose. Sure, some dances you have are better than others but even if you mess up, no one cares! And if something really bugs you then you can get that same person up again for a do-over and laugh about it or forget the whole thing without having to worry about how you let your team down and having 10 or more team-mates scowl at you.

I understand that one of the great features of sport is that the pay-offs come after a whole season or more of working towards a title and so the reward is hard-earned and all the more satisfying; but the same can be said of swing dancing.

Whether or not I choose to compete is another matter, but every time I step onto the dancefloor I hope to improve on the last time - maybe with a new move or refined technique - and that is because I have been working on those aspects of my dancing. So when I nail something that I've never nailed before it makes me rather happy, and I imagine everyone else is the same.

Furthermore, aside from solo blues, jazz or others, dancing is a team enterprise! Whether you are performing a routine, dancing with a regular partner or even dancing with a complete stranger - you are working together towards the common goal of being awesome. I know I've finished dances and practically strutted off the dancefloor with my partner sharing a euphoria with her that equals how I have felt after scoring the winner in an important match.

I love sport, I still do and I'm pretty sure I always will (although Sepp Blatter and his crooked FIFA cronies continue to test my love of football) but in contrast with sport, swing dancing is all wheat and no chaff, is exercise without thinking about it, and, like local lad Rory McIlroy at a golfing Major - for me, a swing weekender is a four day procession to ecstasy.

[*Based on the 'Violent Boy' moniker it may be fair to suppose that I didn't do enough to adapt my basketball playing style as, although the folk I learnt to play the game with were all really decent guys, it's safe to say that the physicality I developed when playing with them on street courts in Berkeley and Oakland, California did not translate well when I went back to Scotland to play with with university professors]