I learned a lot, as a youngster!

Growing up in a small rural town brought many challenges. Now I know that doesn't sound right because it wasn't the big city, but hear me out.

We had different sports, that we all played growing up. Football, Baseball, Basketball, to name a few. We weren't totally out of the loop. But being from a "boring rural" town, we found ourselves creating things to do, to pass the time if nothing else. Such as, "Dodge the bottle rocket", "How far can you carry that massive tree trunk?", and "Hit the moving vehicle with a tomato". Are these considered sports? Technically, no, but we looked at it differently. One required GREAT reflexes, another required GREAT strength, and the last required,...well, GREAT precision timing.

And although these weren't actual sporting events, they did require some of the athletic abilities of today's athletes: Reflexes, strength, and perfect timing.

With that in place, I always thought that sports should have different classifications. Not to determine what kind of sport, but to determine what category that particular sport should fall into. Example: Pool, I love pool, and was pretty good at it, I never really considered it a sport though, at least not in the same category as football, hockey or basketball. It's just not as strenuous as those sports, but it is still competitive though. But, so were all the idiot things we did as kids growing up.

So I've come to the conclusion, that sports should be categorized as to the amount of physical exertion that is required to play it, not the competitive level of the sport (they're all competitive), but the amount of energy (so to speak) that is used. For instance:

• Level A Sports (High Energy) - Football, Baseball, Hockey, Basketball, Tennis, etc.
• Level B Sports (Medium Energy) - Pool, Shuffle board, Bocce ball, etc.
• Level C Sports (Low Energy) - Poker, Chess, Checkers, or any sport that you sit on your butt to play, basically

Now this is just an example, I am by no means a sports categorizing expert,(Do they have them?), but I do think I'm at least, on the right track.

Oh, one more thing we learned growing up: endurance, from the butt whooping's we took, when we got caught throwing the tomatoes.