We don't have church basketball in my stake--and haven't had it for years--for that very reason.

Real.Men.Wear.Blue wrote:

We don't have church basketball in my stake--and haven't had it for years--for that very reason.

that's too bad. We just finished an awesome tourney.

detmer4prez wrote:

Yup. They don't make movies about our church ball for nothing. This may be a case of we can make fun of ourselves but if someone else does it we get upset.

My problem with the whole thing was that he first makes a broad and innaccurate generalization about "the mormons" and then proceeds to make a completely ignorant statment, as if it were fact, about there being nothing to do in Utah besides go to Jazz games. He has clearly never spent any substantial amount of time in Utah, unless by "nothing else to do" he means there is slightly less alchohol and not as many strip clubs as there are in other cities. But hey, why do any research when you can throw out an old stereotype. Very professional Ric

Real.Men.Wear.Blue wrote:

We don't have church basketball in my stake--and haven't had it for years--for that very reason.

We don't have it in mine either because of all the fights and some bishop decided to flagrantly foul someone resulting in a broken nose and a bloody mess.

It's funny too because I open the gym up on Thursday for ball. The only ones that show up to play aren't members of the church. I'm the only white dude. Anytime someone has a question as to why there are "suspicious" looking people in the church they seek out the only white dude and ask, "Are you the priesthood authority here?" Why can't the guy with the pony tail be the priesthood authority? Or what about the black guy with a nice clean hair cut? We're all in shorts and t-shirts.

Not only that, but no one in the ward wants to come play because all the "scary" people are there. I never had a problem with any of the "scary" people until one day a ward memeber shows up and what does he do? He starts a fight! I had to kick my own ward memeber out of the church!

I don't know what it is but too many Mormons struggle with just playing a friendly game of basketball. I'm all for competitive sport, but it's just for fun. There are no salaries, no awards, and our wives don't even show up to watch us because they get too embarrassed by our behavior.

Ward ball is not different than any other amatuer sporting event. Amatuers take more pride and give more effort than 99% of professional athletes. I played city league softball in a league with no Mormons and for some reason there was always someone getting thrown out for fighting or jawing with the umpire. I also had my life threatened for kicking the trash out of some kids at Magic Mountain in basketball.

jaga97 wrote:

Ward ball is not different than any other amatuer sporting event. Amatuers take more pride and give more effort than 99% of professional athletes. I played city league softball in a league with no Mormons and for some reason there was always someone getting thrown out for fighting or jawing with the umpire. I also had my life threatened for kicking the trash out of some kids at Magic Mountain in basketball.

I appreciate the input, its nice to know acting like a fool at an amatuer sporting event is not limited to churchball.