This thread is bringing a tear to my eye. I miss those days. Excuse my language, but hell yeah we played tackle!! Couldn't imagine it any other way. Most of the kids and teenagers I played with were worldly. If there was a enough snow in the winter, we'd play tackle in the street. The fellow JWs when we got together, we'd play tackle in any random field we could find, and there were plenty. Hated recovering that night and the next morning afterwards. Muscle pulls, bruises, cuts. Although I don't ever recall breaking anything, we had a couple fights. But we'd always makeup later. No way any elders would ever find out about that either. We kept our mouths shut. Afterward playing football we'd go to any random one of our parent's homes to eat, and all the adult would be holding their noses cuz we stunk so bad.
We played basketball too. I had a couple JW friends that had Division 1 college potential. They've relayed to me in latter years, that this JW upbringing made them bitter that they never explored those oppurtunities. When we were younger, we'd played in tournaments sponsered by various companies. We weren't AND-1 material, but we did alright. When I was younger, there were always JWs that reserved or would rent a gym for brothers from all over the city to play, even brothers from outside the city showed up. It was beautiful. We'd be trying to impress the sisters that showed up to watch. I'm out of the loop nowadays, but I believe some still rent gyms. I miss those days, life as a JW meant a little bit more to me. It was something that back then I could see doing for the rest of my life, even if the new system appeared unrealistic or on a long term hiatus. The far majority of the JW fellas that I came up with, all gone. Every one of them. Thats a testimony to the leadership in this organization. If any of you Bethel monitors are reading this, do me a favor and relay a message to your superiors, you failed, miserably.
