Bad at sport and socially awkward as a child/teenager

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Bad at sport and socially awkward as a child/teenager = likely to be bullied and socially rejected. Repercussions stretching far into adulthood.

I am still socially awkward even as an adult.

Yeah. That's pretty much how it works.

As a teenager, all four of these applied to me. Today, I am making friends and I have made steady improvements in my tennis lessons. I just hope it doesn't all go away. I hope to be back on track again soon.

I guess I always must have been socially awkward though I was only teased, not badly bullied ,until I went to public school at 13. At prep school I remember some of the other boys suggesting I was the 'missing link'.
Was usually the last to be picked for a team. Had great difficulty with gymnastics.

Trying to improve socially as an adult is tricky. People can say you have very poor social skills, but without knowing what exactly makes that so, and how to change things, you are on a hiding to nothing .
They say practice makes more perfect but that's counterpointed by a reluctance to engage for fear of negative reactions on account of the current social awkwardness . It's very much a case of once bitten twice ,thrice, or more,shy.

I am not sure about social skills training with ASD but if you have a psych dx like me, then whilst there might be superficial acknowledgement of social difficulties ,there is little to no help for it. It is not something medication can make a major difference with.

I liked gym and swimming and athletics. I wasn't bad at those sports at school. But I hated netball, hockey and rounders. I never really understood the rules and I just found them confusing. Also some of the kids used to take these PE games seriously and they would yell at me if I was too slow or did something wrong in the game.

I was very stupid and strange as a teenager. I was completely driven by hormones and did really weird things that I knew better not to do as a kid! Like the time when I followed a group of girls around, wanting to befriend them. I ignored all signs of body language that was clear that I was creeping them out, but I still continued. This only lasted a few days, but I wish I had just backed off the minute I realised I was creeping them out.

All these little things that happened in high school; being rejected, being confronted, being humiliated, being criticised, being doubted - has affected me as an adult big time. I've now become afraid of rejection, confrontation, humiliation, criticism and being doubted or wronged.

Gymnastics (and swimming) I dreaded the most, I couldn't even do the absolute basics - doing a forward roll, climbing a rope. A weekly humiliation. Why did they put me through it?

Back when I was in school. Our group of friends were kids on the spectrum, had ADHD, or were considered weird. We called ourselves the weird group.

I was definitely social awkward when I was younger, and I wasn't very good at sports.

As I got older, where I am today, I'm still socially awkward and I still suck at sports.

This, in no way, should be considered as being anything other than "You're not helping, Penguin".

In Year 9 (age 14), our class was made to play volleyball. I couldn't even serve let alone play the game, so I used to just refuse to take part. The sports teacher got very angry and told me to get out of his class so I did. I went to the library and quietly read until it was time to go to the next class.

I failed the sports class.

I sucked at sports, yet I tried really hard. This led to more bullying, actually.

It doesn't mean you shouldn't try. It means you have to be more "krafty" about it.

You have to not "show" too much how hard you're trying.

I was never good at sports and I would say I was average in soccer and softball but I still loved PE when I was a kid because it was all fun and games but then when you get to junior high, it becomes all sports and that is when I started to hate it. When I was in preschool PE was like going to an indoor playground or playing with this parachute or just bouncing balls around or just running around the gym and little kids love that stuff. Then in elementary school there was more fun games to play and we still did the parachute and I remember things like traffic jam, clean out the backyard, trying to get across the gym floor without touching the floor by using scooters or mats and other things, duck duck goose and circle tag or freeze tag or stuck in the mud and I loved what time is it mister fox and red rover which my school eventually banned. They get rid of all that stuff around middle school and it becomes all sports but it happens gradually in elementary school. By Junior high, you really notice. Also PE was the worst class in high school because lot of kids didn't take it seriously so they wouldn't play any of the games right and some even chose to not participate and would get an F. I had no choice but to participate or I would get an F and have to take it again the following year. I am surprised other kids still got a good grade for participation despite playing poorly on purpose because the teachers didn't care. They only cared you participated. They didn't grade how you did in the class. And no it's not that these kids weren't good in sports, lot of them were in school sports but they just chose to not do good in PE like instead of running to their bases in kick ball or whiffle ball, one of them would run very slowly around each bass but she didn't do that in school softball. Heck I played better than all of them because I took the class seriously and they didn't but they chose to play that poorly. They used to not play that way either until my sophomore year of high school so that is how I know. But I hated that class and those kids made it worse plus the ones who wouldn't participate.
I also had to quit gymnastics when I was eight because it got too hard. That was because I got to an age where kids were starting to train to be a gymnasts than just going there for fun and doing fun activities there. I was not coordinated to do it and my mom says I just am not meant to be a gymnast because my body isn't made for it and said it was made for running. Well I was the slowest runner in track. I couldn't run fast as the other runners and I sucked in all track sports. Maybe my mom was just saying that because she is my mother.

I was also socially awkward when I was a kid. I would miss social cues and didn't get hints, I would follow kids, didn't know how to participate in a topic and I found all social chit chat boring and I had poor topic maintenance. Plus I was always rejected and known as stupid.

Sounds like you weren't good at them either.

I was pretty good at "rules," but lousy in the physical execution of these "rules."

I probably could have made a good referee

This does seem to be the case more often than not. I was never a particularly sporty dude, but that wasn't what I was bullied over to my own understanding.

I was bullied because I sucked at sports---definitely.

If you're pretty good at soccer, you're in pretty good shape.

In soccer, people just run around constantly; there aren't many "breaks in the action" like there is a in a sport like baseball/softball.