Youth Soccer Club Bans Handshakes, Ruins Poor Sportsmanship

Jared Borislow12 years ago

You can take excessive celebrations, steroids, and Lance Armstrong out of sports, but when you take out the handshake, you’ve crossed the line, bub.

As reported by the New York Post and a variety of other sources, a Manhattan-based youth soccer club has acted to discourage its elementary school athletes from giving each other high fives or even walking through the traditional postgame handshake line.

Nothing is more essential during a child’s cognitive development into a poor intramural sportsman than post-game smack talk. It’s science. “Good game, good game, fuck you, good game” was the soundtrack to the IM star’s athletic youth.

Athletes these days are already becoming too tame in fear of fines for doing pretty much anything besides donating puppies to orphans. I don’t even want to think about what will happen if this ban spreads. Sports as we know it will be ruined. Will Ray Lewis not be allowed to kill people? Because that’s definitely not a world I want to be a part of.

What’s even more absurd is the reason for this ban: the flu. What is this, 1918? If we are still living in a world whose population can be thinned out by a fucking sneeze, protecting one youth soccer team in Manhattan should be the least of our worries.

But don’t worry, it’s not all bad. The soccer club has offered an alternative to handshakes: touching elbows.

I would not mind if this trend caught on, albeit in a more violent sense. I know there’s nothing Johnny Harbaugh wants more than to haze that bitch brother Jim of his after the Super Bowl with the people’s elbow and a noogie after his Ravens take down famed human-ostrich hybrid Collin Kaepernick and the rest of the 49ers.

Thankfully I’m already a terrible sport, and if I’m lucky, Ray Lewis will kill me before I live to see a world where scratchy dry elbow touches replace the good ol’ “go fuck yourself.”

[via Yahoo! Sports]

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