Feral Truths & Tangled Threads: I Never Got Over Being Picked Last at Netball

A personal essay about physical education, quiet humiliation, and the bib I still can’t wear

Feral Truths & Tangled Threads
Raw, personal essays weaving together intimate stories and cultural reflections that uncover the complexities of identity, power, and belonging.

Netball was never just a game. It was a weekly opportunity for small, accumulating shame. And for a certain kind of girl—quiet, competent, good-enough-but-not-great—it was hell in pleated skirts.

I wasn’t sporty, exactly. But I wasn’t unco either. I played softball. I played netball. I had decent aim, I could catch, I ran when required. I was the kind of kid who gave it a real go—but rarely got noticed for it. Good enough to play. Not good enough to be anyone’s first pick. I wasn’t a disaster. I just wasn’t in demand.

From about Standard 2 or 3 until I was fourteen or fifteen, I turned up. I tried hard. I mostly ended up on the B team. The B team is where they put the girls who are fine. Not gifted. Not hopeless. Just... present. Functional. Enthusiastic in a way that made people vaguely uncomfortable.

Exhibit A: The Substitution That Never Came

One time, our coach had to play in a game scheduled at the same time as ours. So our team—being full of resourceful and socially confident Year 10 girls—decided amongst themselves who would get court time.

Spoiler: it wasn’t me.

The popular girls played the whole game, rotated each other in and out like pros. Fully uniformed. Slightly sweaty from warm-up. High ponytail. Hopeful. I never got subbed in. And here’s the stinger: my dad had come to visit from out of town. I hadn’t seen him in a while like a couple of years. But in my overly committed, deeply misguided sense of responsibility, I told him I couldn’t hang out. I had netball.

Because I thought I mattered to the team.
Because I thought showing up was noble.
Because I was a little idiot with principles.

Instead, I stood on the side lines, trying not to cry and calling out vaguely motivational soundbites next to a half-empty water bottle while my dad probably went for a walk alone or played Nintendo or something equally 90’s dad-ish. And that was the day I learned that honour means very little when you’re forgettable in Lycra.

Exhibit B: Lost and Left

This one’s got layers. It was one of those early Saturday games—8 or 8:30am. I played. I was decent. Maybe even scrappy. Afterwards, I waited for my stepdad and brothers to pick me up. They didn’t. This was the pre-cell phone era. No WhatsApp. No location-sharing. No emergency group chat titled Where Is Hayley. So when they didn’t spot me immediately, they assumed I wasn’t there. Naturally, they went to Kaikohe. To the Warehouse. To forget they had a child.

I sat there until after 4pm.

At many points I thought, “I should call someone.” But I didn’t know where a phone was, and I worried that if I left the courts, they’d show up and I’d miss them. So I stayed. Like a weird, loyal possum frozen in emotional traffic. Eventually, they got home. Mum asked where I was.

Cue panic.
Cue sudden reverse burnout through the driveway.
Cue Mum flying into town and scooping me up like an apology in a sedan.

But by then, the forgetting had already happened, and you don’t un-feel that kind of thing. You just grow around it.

Exhibit C: Pull Your Knee Brace Up

By the next season, I’d had surgery on my knee. I remember being 3 games into the season and promising I would be back soon not knowing anywhere near how long it would take me to recover. I didn’t make it back that season, but there I was the next. Because I was stubborn. Because I wanted to be good. Or at least, dependable.

I wore my knee brace like a badge of effort. But I couldn’t keep up anymore, my body just didn’t move that way. Mum came to a game. She didn’t cheer. She didn’t say I was brave or doing well or even holding my own.

She just kept yelling: “Pull your knee brace up!”
Over and over. That was the commentary.

As if the real issue was aesthetics, not the fact that I was dragging myself up and down the court like a compromised gazelle just trying to contribute. Embarassing much? But that wasn’t really what she meant, it was just the way my idiot teenage brain took my mother calling out anything.

After that season, I quietly stopped. I never played again.

I didn’t rage-quit. I didn’t throw my sneakers in a skip bin. I just... stopped showing up. Because it’s hard to keep caring when you’re only ever being reminded what you’re not quite doing right.

Final Position: WD

I mostly played WA and WD. But over time, I drifted—was nudged—solidly into Wing Defence territory. WD is the bib equivalent of being asked to “help out backstage.” It’s fine. It’s necessary. It just doesn’t come with applause. Everyone at school knew GS, GK, and Centre were the real ones. They got the ball. They made the points. They had visible roles.

WD was what you gave the quiet girls who wouldn’t complain.

Years later, one of Mum’s friends—a proper coach—told me WD is actually pivotal at higher levels. You have to be smart. Fast. Strategic. You’re the one who blocks momentum, sets up the structure, and ruins the other team’s day.

And I believe her. I do. But that’s not how it felt at age thirteen, standing on the edge of the court in a hand-me-down bib, wondering if anyone would notice if I just walked away.

I wasn’t picked last because I was bad.
I was picked last because I was forgettable.

Eventually, as I said, I stopped showing up. Not out of rebellion. Out of erosion. Because if you spend long enough in the background, you start to believe that’s all you’re for.

But here’s the thing: I didn’t stay there.

That awkwardness, that WD energy, that low-level fear of being left behind—it’s still in me. I carry it, like a folded-up registration form I never handed in.
But it doesn’t get to drive anymore.

These days, I speak up. I put my name down. I back myself.
Then I go home and watch good TV like a normal person.

I don’t need a bib to prove I belong.

About the Series:
Feral Truths & Tangled Threads invites you into a space where fiercely honest personal narratives meet layered cultural and political reflections. These essays explore how the wild edges of experience connect to broader stories of identity, history, and community.

Author Bio:
Hayley Walmsley is a conceptual artist, writer, and curator based in Ōtautahi Christchurch. Whakapapa to Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Porou, and Ngāti Pākehā, her work explores identity, memory, and decolonial narratives through layered storytelling and cultural critique. She is the founder of Provocation Station, an evolving platform for conceptual art and critical reflection. Recent projects include the exhibition Migratory Patterns, and she has essays forthcoming in SCOPE: Art & Design, SCOPE: Tirou and an article In Browntown vol. 1. Through her writing and curatorial practice, she invites audiences to engage with the complexities of place, belonging, and power.