Living with Muscular Dystrophy and Playing Sports

Growing up like most children playing sports took up a large portion of my childhood. Living in Canada it should come as no surprise that I grew up around street hockey. I could never play though as my brother and his friends played and intense game and I would have been unable to keep up. The very first sport I was even involved in was soccer and it felt great to be part of a team. I actually played on one of the local community children’s soccer teams and still remember how much I enjoyed playing. It was at this point I noticed I was having issues keeping up with the other kids on my team. While the other children would run from one end of the field to another I was getting left behind. Eventually I came up with the idea of just hanging around the opposing team’s net waiting for the right moment when the ball might come my way. At one point this actually paid off when one of my teammate’s kicked the ball my way and I scored my one and only goal. 

Eventually though the Muscular Dystrophy did take away my ability to run completely, so my days of being involved in team sports were over. So from that point on I was always stuck sitting on the sidelines watching the other kids play. So at a very young age I was use to sitting out especially in school, but eventually I was exempted from gym class so the feelings of being left out slowly faded away.

Thankfully around this same time what helped is the fact that I found a new way to be involved in team sports without having to run or push myself physically. Eventually thanks to a little company by the name of Sega which introduce their first gaming system, I was able to get back into playing sports. You see playing video games gave me the opportunity to participate in physically demanding sports that I would never be able to in real life. See gaming systems like the XBOX and the PS3 changed everything for me. I now had the opportunity to join in with my friend by playing video games. It also gave me something to do when my friends were outside playing certain sports I couldn’t be involved in. 

Now I should let you know that I wasn’t one of those kids who stayed inside all day playing video games. But these gaming systems did give me the opportunity to play sports once again. So as you can see I was able to find ways of adapting to the changes I was facing related to not being able to play sports anymore. My only suggestion is to limit the time you spend playing video games and make sure you also focus on other things in life. Sure this is what worked for me but depending on your physical capabilities you might just be able to participate in wheelchair related sports such as Tennis, Basketball or even the Paralympic sport known as Boccia Ball. I am just glad I found a solution to living with Becker's Muscular Dystrophy and not being able to join in playing sports.