I love sports. I love my favorite teams. I’m not a good athlete, but I am very competitive. Take that! In yo face!! I can’t help it—I want to win, win, win! But, I balance the desire to win with reasonable thoughts. I DO know that winning isn’t everything. There are a lot of reasons I love sports, especially for kids. I'll share my list of 8 reasons with you.
1. SPORTS ARE GOOD FOR EXERCISE. There is a lot of time and energy spent to help kids learn academic skills, which are certainly important. Sometimes, less attention is given to developing their gross motor skills. Do you know any little kids who don’t enjoy running around? Unfortunately, I do. Some kids don’t know what to do with their bodies, because large muscle movements don’t feel natural to them. In my opinion, kids need to learn to use their bodies by exercising. They need to feel the stretch, the muscle movement, and learn how to push themselves. Don’t forget to hydrate, kids! It is also important for them to learn at an early age that exercise makes them feel good and gets the blood flowing.
2. SPORTS HELP YOU LEARN A SKILL. Kicking the ball into the goal; throwing overhanded; rolling the ball down the lane; jumping to catch the ball; mastering the swimming stroke. Every sport requires particular skills. You understand how your body has to move to make it happen: your arm has to twist this way, your foot has to be in this position, you have to swing with force, your head has to move like this. Here's a picture of me on my 7th grade Jr High School basketball team, where I acquired many skills. When you start playing a sport, you learn skills. When you continue playing a sport, you refine the skills, because…..
3. PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT. It may never be perfect, but sports teach you how to practice. If you are like me, you might remember a time when you took on a new interest, only to find that you were really lousy at it. That’s when it’s tempting to say ‘nevermind’ and give up. Sometimes that’s the right call. But, other times, disciplined practice can help you develop the skills that you need. Again, you might not be very good, but learning how to practice gives you many life skills of patience, perseverance, delayed gratification, and self-discipline.
Michael Jordan, the greatest basketball player ever; OK, I’ll say possibly the greatest player ever, but we all know he WAS the greatest player ever; practiced all the time, more than many others in the league. Don’t believe me? Watch the excellent ESPN mini-series The Last Dance. Jordan continually worked on shooting, dribbling, footwork, anything he could to improve his game. Be like Mike! Practice.
4. SPORTS HELP WITH MATH SKILLS. Particularly when you are young, and just getting started, you learn to add numbers to count the score. But, later on, too. It requires complex thinking skills to hold two different, but changing, scores in your head. How many times have you been in a ping-pong game arguing whether the score is 5 to 7 or 6 to 8? Scores can be complicated, as well. Tennis, anyone? Or, when you realize a football team can score 3 points or 6 points or 1 point or even 2 points, it takes a minute to figure: can we come from behind? If we score 3 times we can tie! Or if you try to figure out how much time is left in an injury-riddled soccer game. Counting is key.
5. SPORTS HELP YOU SET GOALS AND MEASURE ACHIEVEMENTS. Two of our kids, Will and LeeAnn, participated in Cross County/Track. We even have a college athlete – woop woop! On the Cross County and Track teams, the whole team earns points, but each athlete also reaches for personal goals. To “PR” means you beat your own Personal Record. That’s the measure of success at running competitions—I PR’d!! In sports, you try to do better than you did before, using last week’s game as motivation to improve.
6. Let’s all say it together: THERE IS NO 'I' IN TEAM! Sports help you learn about teamwork. Even if you are working towards individual goals, you often participate as part of a team. You learn to pass the ball to someone else, to sacrifice so someone else can score, to lead the pack so someone can draft behind you, to sit on the bench when someone beats you out for a starting position, to support your teammates. The cocky kid, the pushover, the coach’s kid, the clown; everyone has to buy into the concept of team and work as a unit. That, my friends, is a life lesson that can be drawn on for family life, school life, work life, volunteer life, and citizenry; working with a diverse group of people, even if you don’t particularly like some of them, to accomplish a goal.
7. SPORTS PROVIDE OPPORTUNITIES TO FACE SCENARIOS OF SUCCESS AND FAILURE. Sports can help you work through the emotions that go along. Are you a gracious winner? Can you hold your head high if you lose? If your team is on a winning streak, how do you react? If your team is on a losing streak, how do you keep going without losing faith? How do you treat the player whose blunder cost you the game? What if your team barrrelllyyy missed making the playoffs? What if they trounced the other team? How do you learn to navigate the ups and downs, the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat? Learning to process those emotions in the sports arena carries over in other aspects of life. There’s no crying in baseball. After all, it’s only a game.
We watched the men's and women's Olympic Marathon Trials in Atlanta. 
But, alas, the teams could not compete in 2020. No Olympics.
The final benefit of sports, as I see it, is a wrap-up of all the others.
8. SPORTS MAKES YOU PART OF SOMETHING BIGGER THAN YOURSELF. I think we all yearn to belong, to see that other people acknowledge and agree with us. There are many organizations that unite us, based on our religious beliefs, political beliefs, geographic locations, occupations, and other interests. Only a few of them give us the opportunity to collectively chant and cheer for the success of our organization.
I love being part of the swell of excitement as I cheer for my team. And the recognition that other fans are there, too. For younger kid sports, the parents and friends collectively cheer Way to go! It’s both comforting and exhilarating to know that people are pulling for you to succeed. Winning is a celebration of our group success! Losing is an empathic understanding among the masses. We’re all in this together!
There are two funny stories that I should push under the rug, but instead I am going to lay them out right here for you to see in all their raw, ugly detail.
A few years ago, we were hosting a small group of friends to watch our Atlanta Falcons playing in the Super Bowl. The Falcons were having a great game, and the mood was up, backs were being patted, cups were being ‘cheered’. Then, things began to unravel. The Falcons began falling apart, and the Patriots began recovering.
As we watched the catastrophe develop before us, a few friends decided to pack it in and go home. Except, I wouldn’t let them. OH NOT YOU DON’T! We are in this together. You will sit right here and be miserable with us. NOBODY IS LEAVING!! To their credit, they said okay, and sat back down and continued to share in our misery. We all watched the Falcons lose badly. Those are really good friends.
The other story happened when our runner, LeeAnn, was in high school. She was having a particularly tough season. She seemed to be falling farther and farther behind. She had a lot going on with school and sports and other things. She told me that she was really tired. Yeah, well everybody’s tired. You should go to bed earlier! She said that she didn’t know why she couldn’t keep up with her typical running pace. Believe in yourself! Don’t get inside your own head! Don’t psych yourself out! Try to relax, you can do it! She wasn’t worried, she wasn’t alarmed, she was just perplexed about what to do to advance her running skills and how to improve her stamina. Standing on the sidelines at her Cross Country meet, yelling “Run Faster!! Ruuunnnn!!!!” was one of my finer moments. Turned out, the kid had mono and an iron deficiency. Whoops. How’d I miss that?
I do recognize the downside of sports. Parents who are too heavily invested in their child’s success. Families over-committed to organized sport activities. Trophies for all. Player burnout. Players, coaches, referees, and parents who don’t present ideal examples. Physical injuries, concussions, and the like. Money, money, money. I know it’s not all fun and games. We need to pay serious attention to the institutions that govern our sports to make sure that the beast does not overtake. Sure, there are problems, but pure sports have so many benefits, IMHO.
Now, let’s get this game started:
Two, Four, Six, Eight,
Who do we appreciate??