Tennis- The girls sport

I teach cub scouts. I am a fairly new leader, only having commissioned into the ranks of den leader a short 4 weeks ago and am still trying desperately to learn what appeals to the imagination and hippness of a nine year old boy. Tonight it was announced that we would be learning about sports. A topic I thought would be absolutely fool proof and appeal to the aspiring sports star minds of all those young boys. "we're going to be playing a few sports tonight, but first we have to learn the rules". This was not followed by the elation that I had anticipated, as trying to cram one more nugget of information into their mind is the worst imaginable threat out there. It was a general consensus among the ranks that it would be alright if we learned about sports, so long as the sport was ONLY football and nothing else. You can imagine their disdain when I further went on to tell them that we're going to be learning about tennis. "Tennis!" They all exclaimed in horror, "tennis is a girls sport, you must think we're a bunch of sissy girls if you want us to learn about tennis." "No" I announced through gritted teeth, "tennis is not a girls sport, many very manly men play tennis and it's good to learn about all different kinds of sports, not just the ones we think are cool". My sentiments weren't readily shared, so I quickly rattled off the general rules of playing tennis. Two people stand on opposite ends of the court. Two people hit a ball back and forth with a racket. The scoring is a little obscure... As I was about to finish, one eager cub scout who hadn't yet drifted off to the land of zombies eagerly raised his hand. "yes?" I asked "do you have a question", "Yea, are we done yet?" I assured him that we were close and that after learning about tennis we would be taught about basketball and then would all go to the gym and play for the remainder of the time. This peaked their interest considerably with even a few good neighborly scouts poking their peers in the ribs telling them of the good news. Scouts ended and I promptly came home to inform my wife that tennis was indeed a girls sport and apparently had no business being taught to a 9 year basketball star. She disagreed with me, which makes sense, since she was the one that initially suggested we teach about tennis in the first place. Well perhaps one day they will enjoy this information and not mind playing tennis so much with a girl.

-Ches