Season 2, Episode 17 - Relax

Original Airdate - January 26th, 2003

Liberty is trying out for the girls’ floor hockey team and she’s not great. Ms. Hatzilakos, the coach for girls sports, recognizes her passion, but knows she doesn’t have the skills. She asks Liberty to take on the role of team manager. Liberty is a little bummed to have failed at something, but embraces the new role.

She’s been studying Napoleon lately, and she is inspired by his leadership. If your friend ever says anything positive about Napoleon, urge them to seek help immediately. Emma, Manny, and Kendra, who are all on the team, try to support her instead.

Liberty quickly identifies a real problem. The girls’ sports equipment sucks. Coach Armstrong explains that most of the budget goes to boys’ sports because more students play and the teams have more a history of success. Liberty knows this is sexist and needs addressing, so she goes to the school board— wait, no. She goes looking for a sponsor.

She contacts the one character in the show with a business, Joey. He’s interested, but already committed to sponsoring the boys basketball team and can’t swing both. As the father of a daughter™, he is moved by her argument about the budget gap and promises to think about it.

Liberty is excited to share her efforts with the team, but Hatzilakos shuts her down and sends her back to the laundry room. She doesn’t want the girls to get too excited about something that may not happen and wants to focus on practice.

This leaves Liberty feeling a little down in the dumps. It’s bad timing for Spinner and Jimmy to swing by and ask why she’s trying to poach their sponsor. Liberty’s confidence gets the better of her, and she challenges the boys to a floor hockey game. Winner gets the sponsorship and the opposing team manager will do their laundry for two weeks.

Hatzilakos doesn’t think this is a good idea and does not have the time to coach the team for their real season and this extracurricular grudge match. Liberty says she will coach the team. She prepares a brick of a team manual, filled with complicated plays and intense training and nutrition guidelines.

The team is already unsure, but gets even more weirded out when Liberty shows up to practice in a Napoleon cape. The girls laugh, but Liberty seizes control. Manny asks to be excused from practice because she’s on her period and Liberty shuts that down. During practice, Liberty goes even harder on Manny. Manny calls her out on it, and Liberty says Manny is the weak link.

Kendra is pissed. This is not what this should all be about. She confronts Liberty, telling her that this crazy plan is going to fail and Liberty should back off. But the boys pin a dirty jockstrap to Liberty’s locker door. She’s not backing down.

Time for the game, and Joey has stepped up as referee and chaperone. Liberty kicks all of the spectators out of the gym, and tells mascot JT to man the scoreboard. It starts rough. The boys are up by three. Liberty yells at Manny to make a big push, Manny tries to argue back, and ends up running into Spinner and taking a nasty fall.

She’s sprained her wrist. Joey wants her to go to the nurse, but Liberty argues. She must stay and play, the team needs her. Emma tells Liberty to chill. Liberty demands the team obey her authority. They all walk out. Joey tells the boys not to celebrate. The girls haven’t officially surrendered yet.

Liberty goes to the locker room and takes the barbs from the girls. Liberty tells them that it’s okay if they quit on her, but they can’t quit on the game. They could win! The girls head out there without her. Hatzilakos finds Liberty sulking outside the gym while the game finishes. She tells her that all coaches struggle with balancing a drive to win with team morale. It’s good that Liberty cares so much, and she can do better going forward.

The boys win by one and Liberty has to do their laundry. This includes washing their jockstraps and I’m sorry but no one should have to wash a teenaged boy’s underwear. Not even their parents. They should do their own laundry at home. That’s so gross to me.

But hey, there’s good news. Joey was so impressed by the match that he decided to sponsor both teams. The girls show Liberty their new jerseys, including the jersey they had printed for her.

Over in Grade 9, Terri hasn’t learned from her previous experiences with the mystic oracle. Her new interest is palm reading. Ashley wants her to cut it off, but Paige is all in. Terri looks at Paige’s palm but is dodgy about what she sees. Suspicious.

Hazel corners Terri to ask what’s up and Terri says that Paige has no life line. Paige overhears and asks what that means. Terri says Paige is going to die. Paige and Hazel research and determine that Terri made some mistakes, notably reading Paige’s non-dominant hand. But when Terri brings Paige flowers, Paige thinks she should milk Terri’s sympathy for a little bit.

She really pushes, convincing Terri to do her book report for Kwan’s class. Terri acquiesces, and gets a huge pimple from poor sleep. She prioritizes her doomed friend so much, she doesn’t even do her own project. Paige and Hazel do not feel bad about this at all, but their celebrations are a little public. Ashley overhears them and tells Terri.

Terri and Ashley set up a Ouija board as an elaborate way of saying that they know Paige and Hazel lied. Such a missed opportunity. You have to make it seem like the spirits know about the deception and are going to punish Paige and Hazel in ways that only ghosts can. Amateur hour.

I simply don’t understand the role of team manager. This all seems like a way to exploit teenagers for labor. I understand that someone needs to do laundry and run the scoreboard and carry the balls. But why does that person have to be a student?

I thought this would be a great research topic for an essay, but my efforts to figure this out have been frustrating. I’ve found lots of articles about how important managers are to the function of a team and how we should all respect them more. I’m not really getting to the bottom of why this role is better served by an unpaid child than an adult.

I probably should have let it go and pivoted topics, but something about this was sticking in my head. I’m biased, clearly. We can all tell that. I’m starting from the conclusion that this looks like free labor to me. I know that high school athletics are largely underfunded. Many school sports teams can barely afford one coach, let alone someone to do all of the grunt work.

But that’s also why the articles decrying the importance and value of this role seem particularly weird. It feels like everyone is buying into this collective delusion that the best person to do this is a student. And more than that, a student who isn’t technically on the team. Someone who will be satisfied that their only reward is proximity to the sport.

Some of what I’m reading is breaking the stereotype that existed in my head and this episode of Degrassi. It seems that there are lots of paths to team manager that don’t go through a failed tryout including injured players from previous seasons, people who would join the team but don’t have enough time to fully commit, and even friends of athletes on the team.

But this does seem to be a common consolation prize for the Libertys of the world, the kids with passion but not talent. Is that as common as it seems? Is that just the view from the outside? Why is this such a hard question to answer??

Okay, you caught me. I’ll admit it. I have no fucking idea what I’m talking about. I didn’t play high school sports. I didn’t want to play high school sports. I didn’t attend high school sports games unless I was in the band, and even then, I barely paid attention to what was going on.

I’m looking at this entire topic with incredulity. I’m looking at this episode of Degrassi with incredulity. Why does Liberty want to be on a sports team? Has she ever shown any interest in sports? How could anybody who wasn’t a lifelong athlete possibly care enough about any of this to want to do laundry?

I discovered my personal enjoyment of athletics and sports as an adult. I played little league soccer, but it never really grabbed me. I didn’t feel like I got along great with the other kids, and there were other things I’d rather be doing. As I aged, that gap between my interests and the other boys’ interests became a barrier. I was too gay for sports, or I felt that way in my head.

When I went to college, this barrier came down. Folks in the college marching band were much more interested in helping me understand football and realize how much I liked it. Intramural leagues were less close minded and often co-ed, which helped with my feelings of discomfort around straight men. I was now 6’2” and that has many benefits for an athlete, even one who didn’t ever play on a real team.

I say all of that to say that I do understand why people like sports now. I understand why people who aren’t great at sports like sports.

What I don’t understand is how other kids dodged the intense feelings I got that sports weren’t for me. I didn’t realize that you could be not great at something as a teenager, and still try to participate without fear of brutal mocking. No one told me that there were other ways for a teenaged boy to engage with sport without being, or trying to be, a jock.

I think there is a baseline assumption that everyone, particularly all boys, should be interested in sports. This assumption is so intense that we convince a bunch of teens to do free labor for proximity to the team. I resent this assumption because my lack of interest existed, in part, because I didn’t feel welcome in sports. But looking at all of the team managers in the world, I may need to admit that this assumption is correct. Maybe most people do want a spot on that bench.