Bullying

I have been in sports for most of my life and for this reason I have seen bullying in multiple ways both on the field and in the locker room. It is obvious when you look at a young team of athletes that not every member is there because they are talented or because they even want to be. Many kids are urged or even forced into it by their parents to get out and be apart of something. For this reason these kids tend to not fit the mold of the atypical kid and risk being ostracized and picked on. I can remember my freshman year of high school as being the year I witnessed some of the worst of this bullying. A tradition had began that after practice everyday a wrestling tournament would take place in the open area of the locker room. Being fourteen and fifteen year old boys there was a large discrepancy in both body size and body maturity. The players that had a leg up on the others were a lot quicker to join in on the action while the smaller ones made sure to stay out of it. I was somewhere in the middle at the age because I didn't have much muscle but I was tall and sarcastic so I could talk my way out of most trouble. For one of the smallest players, though, he didn't have this  ability. The biggest on the team, a starter on the defensive line was the ring leader of the wresting matches and decided one day to get the smaller kid involved. The kid was clearly scared and not wanting to participate, but the other one didn't care and proceeded to antagonize and provoke him. I wasn't secure enough with myself at the time and didn't feel like I had the power to stop what was going on as I just wanted to fit in too. I was smaller than the antagonizer and figured I would be included in the situation if I intervened. Everyone else seemed to have thought the same as nobody else spoke up and some even joined in by provoking and shoving the kid around too. The largest kid had all the power in the room and once others joined in there wasn't anything to stop them. The shoving and verbal abuse intensified until finally the victim attempted to throw a punch at the antagonizer. This sealed his fate as the kid dodged and body slammed him to the ground. The poor kid grabbed what he could of his things and got out of the locker room as fast as he could with tears in his eyes, and quit the team the next day. I had never talked to the kid, so I didn't know if he had loved football or just did it to make friends, but either way he was robbed of both. I still feel bad about not intervening, but the power dynamic of the locker room would have made it hard for anybody to during that confusing time of adolescents.