I was nearly 24 at the time I went to the Diocesan Seminary for Victoria and Tasmania, then located at Werribee.
The wonderful benefits sport gave me at a very formative time of life compensated for my academic incompetence in secondary school. I believe if it was not for the help of different sports to my psychological wellbeing, I would not have enjoyed so many happy relationships later in life.
Briefly, in our educationally deprived Western region of Melbourne, in the inner working class suburb of Footscray, there was a rapid increase in population through the Baby Boom in the late 1940s.
I was in a class of 101 students, taught by a crabby Josephite nun. She was so scary that most of us still remember her name with fear and trembling! Who would blame her for keeping strict control, with those numbers and three to a desk in parts of the room?
There were similar experiences for many others, as the next two years were no better. There is no recollection of even the name of that teacher as, due to the numbers, we received very little personal tuition.
Greg Trythall, middle of 2nd row, captain the the Under-14 Cricket Team, 1961
Thank God we had a wonderful nun in Grade 3: she was a light in the darkness. But by this time early learning difficulties were well entrenched. The main problem for me was an inability to write clearly or construct sentences correctly.
Time passed and my parents sent me to the first Jesuit college in Victoria, St Patrick’s College, East Melbourne. Although I had kept “passing” through the years, it came as no surprise that the Prefect of Studies, (Fr) Frank Dennett SJ, sent a particularly pertinent remark back home at the end of my second term report in 1963: “Gregory is trying hard, but his weakness in English Expression is a great handicap to him.”
It went over my head at the time, but the chickens came home to roost when one day I picked up my final external exam results for Year 10. It genuinely came as a shock that I had failed the year by missing out on both English Expression and English Literature!
Worse still, I had to repeat Year 10. Next year I passed seven subjects, but again failed both English Expression and English Literature.
Somehow, in 1965, I found myself in Year 11 and all seemed to be going fine until the exam results turned up in the same letterbox. Tears flowed profusely as I had tried my guts out to pass those Year 11 exams. I only needed one more subject, but again I had failed English. In French my mark was 99. The problem was it was marked out of 200! These were external exams remember and no mercy!
During the ensuing summer holidays my parents made me well aware I would have to beg on my knees to be allowed back to complete Year 11. I was starting to feel humiliated when the new Prefect of Studies told me I should go and find a Tech School, as if by inference, “you are dumb, son!”
It must have affected my psyche greatly as I still can easily cry when thinking of those years when I failed the trifecta: Year 10, Year 11 and even Year 12!
Only an ego formed through my love of sport made me capable of taking on the challenge of the Rector( Principal) and his Prefect of Studies in being allowed to repeat Year 11.
Despite many tears in front of them, I won the day and although I was the oldest boy in the school at 19 years of age and still in Year 11, I held sufficient belief in myself to feel quietly confident about my intended future as a member of the Taxation Department, completing studies at night school in order to obtain a Diploma in Accountancy. Little did I know that my first subject in Accountancy was to be Year 12 English!
After being called up into the Australian Army for National Service for two years as a 20 year-old not soon after, I decided at the end of my National Service engagement to go back to school. And as my parents had shifted homes I went to do Year 12 at Parkdale High School – near Mentone a suburb close to Port Phillip Bay 15 kilometres from Melbourne. I came up with the same results of failing by one subject again, even though I had put my heart and soul into trying to pass as the oldest student in short pants at Parkdale High School! They had asked me to wear the school uniform! I obliged as it didn’t particularly worry me.
You may ask how did I keep my equilibrium through these trying years of teenage life and still be at peace. Well, sport was my saviour! It gave me the chance to realise early leadership abilities as I was chosen captain of the Under 14 cricket team and felt good about myself when I also picked up the Keenest and Best award in the Under 15 Football Team at school. House comps in cricket and football did wonders for my feeling good about life.
When about to fail Year 10, I was selected in the top team of the school in Cricket and Australian Rules Football. A best and fairest in the Interstate Football Match against St Ignatius Jesuit School in Adelaide also did wonders for my self esteem, as did the equal Best and Fairest award for the First XVIII Football team in 1965.
These made me feel I was somehow worthwhile. I was not a failure. I had a gift! I was successful! I wasn’t a bad person and maybe there was more to life and school than the academic arena!
It was sport before the seminary, during the seminary and even still in priesthood that has made me feel life is worthwhile.
Sport may be just a loose word, but in reality it teaches you to set boundaries. It provides self-discipline, gives you a healthy body, and most of all it helps you to learn to relate to many other individuals. In the end it provides you with the opportunity to have many different types of friends. It also helps greatly in appreciating others who are not so easily known outside the sporting arena. It helps one to appreciate another side of their character, like their courage or their putting their trust in you and you in turn placing your trust in them.
I loved the Seminary Football Competition against outside teams in the YCW competition. I relished playing squash in the seminary squash team and being elected president of the Squash Club and organising five teams.
Being voted by my peers as president of the Sports Committee made a big difference to my self-confidence, my leadership capabilities for priesthood and to my believing in the general goodness of most human beings.
Sport forces you to relate and helps you to feel fulfilled. Thank God for sport. Even though I am no academic genius, there are other ways to feel a stroking of the ego and to feel not only that life is worthwhile, but that by being successful in sporting relationships you can be far more open to relate meaningfully to most people.
Although God does not give us gifts in every area of life, He gives us enough gifts. If we take the risk to discover and use them, life can be wonderful, even though hardships come our way.
These challenges can break us or we can end up saying with gritted teeth: “No, I am made in the Image of God and yes, life is worth living.”
Greg Trythall, Grovedale VIC
