I hated field days at school. Making them voluntary could save kids like me from a lot of anxiety and trauma.

• In middle school, I hated field day and gym; I often felt humiliated or judged by my classmates.
• When discussing this in a work meeting, my colleague agreed and said it felt "anxiety-inducing."

When I was in middle school, gym class was my nightmare.

I can vividly remember playing volleyball and, the minute someone threw the ball up, cringing as I fearfully looked up to see the sphere flying through the air. I would "participate" in the mandatory game, holding my arms extended, hands in a fist, in an attempt to volley the ball — while trying to avoid it altogether. The result was me just using my arms as a wall to protect my face.

In case it's not obvious, I've never been an athletic person. And that's why one of the worst school-related activities for me was field day.

Canceling field day would save kids like me a lot of anxiety and trauma. But everyone would win if schools made it voluntary. It didn't give me any of the joy and school spirit it's meant to invoke.

For an awkward kid, field days were humiliating

If you're not familiar, field days usually involve assigning students to different color-themed teams, such as team red or team blue. They're then required to participate in a day of activities, including relay races, three-legged races, and tug-of-war.

While it's meant to be fun and encourage teamwork, for awkward kids like me, who had few friends and lacked any semblance of hand-eye coordination, it was a day of misery.

Being forced to participate in these kinds of activities made it impossible to hide my abilities, at a time when I just wanted to fade into the background. As a preteen, I always said the wrong thing and was clumsy, so having my leg tied to the popular girl's leg and being forced to run with her, then inevitably tripping and causing her to fall down, was humiliating.

On top of the embarrassment, failing meant you were letting your team down, which was a lot of pressure for me as a kid. I would avoid making eye contact with my classmates for the rest of the day, so I didn't have to see their stares and dirty looks.

The event caused anxiety and pressure to perform

When I was discussing field day during a recent team meeting at work, my colleague Frank Olito also had less-than-fond memories of that time in his life. He attended a Long Island, New York, elementary school in the early 2000s and said his field day involved activities such as running to the woods and back again.

"I was a kid who was not athletic in any way," he said. "I hated gym, so to have a full day devoted to gym activities was really awful for me."

Olito agreed with me that these days shouldn't be mandatory, saying: "We didn't have language around it when I was young, but it was definitely anxiety-inducing for someone who didn't excel in athletics."

Make field day voluntary

When I got to high school, gym class wasn't any better. During a dodgeball game, one male classmate hurled the ball so hard that it bounced off the opposite wall of the gym, which was terrifying. Another year, we had class right after lunch, which meant when we ran the annual race, some of our classmates threw up.

One class featuring sports was enough for me. Creating a whole day of activities was traumatic. Experiences such as these put kids like my younger self in the spotlight at the worst possible times, subjecting them to bullying, which I experienced plenty of.

I wish that schools would offer alternatives such as yoga classes — some other activity that just gets kids moving, rather than pitting them against each other.

Let the kids who want to play sign up for field day, and the others participate in something they would enjoy doing. It would save a lot of kids from some middle-school trauma.