Why Sports Matter

I recently read an article about a guy who wanted to be a Sports Journalist but changed his mind when he realized that sports didn’t matter in real life. 

Since then, I have been giving this a lot of thought. 

I have been an athlete all of my life so to read that left me dumbfounded. Have I based much of my life on something that does not matter? Is it true that sports have no relevance to real life? 

I don’t believe so.

The thing is, sports themselves may not be that important, but what they offer to the world IS important. In fact, I would venture to say that it is of vital importance. For starters, sports are a great place for children and even adults to learn valuable life lessons. Team USA put together a life lessons checklist that they hope young athletes will learn from their experiences in sports. This checklist has eight lessons: practice makes better, focus on what you can control, let go of mistakes, keep learning, being positive moves us further, celebrate success, become a true team player, and win and lose with dignity. In my own experience, these lessons are great fundamentals to apply to any aspect of life, including in relationships and in work. 

Though sports can create animosity between athletes or fans, for the most part, sports serve as a great way to create a sense of camaraderie amongst people and bring them together. I have seen and felt this sense of camaraderie countless times in my own experience as an athlete but as a fan as well. 

While playing for Team USA, I was a member of a team with people from all over the country, many I never would have known had it not been for this experience, and by the end of it, they all felt like my family. This is the same regardless of the level of play. That is what sports will do to you; when you put together a group of people and you give them everything you have—blood, sweat, and tears—you form a bond. Similarly, when I went to Colombia for the Inline Hockey World Championships, though I did not speak the same language or look the same as the athletes from their country, we bonded over a communal love for the game. During opening ceremonies, despite the fact that we were warned prior to going that many countries would not be fans of the United States, the arena was packed and gave us a standing ovation. It was clear that the place we were in was struggling, but getting to host that tournament gave people of Bucaramanga something to be excited about and that excitement was palpable and shared with us. It was magical and it was because sports have the ability to override cultural boundaries and preconceived discriminations and bring people together despite these things. 

As a fan of sports, I have been to sporting events that felt much greater than a simple game between two opposing teams. I was once at an Anaheim Ducks game when the microphone went out during the National Anthem. There was a short moment of pause and then everyone in crowd began to sing as a unified body. In that moment, it did not matter that some of us were fans of one team and others were fans of another team, we all had one common goal. It was one of the better moments I have had at a sports arena, where for one moment in time it did not matter that I would never meet most of the people there or that many of us came from different backgrounds, all that mattered was that we were united in a common goal. Beyond this simple moment are even greater examples of the way sports can bring us together, especially in times of tragedy when we need it most. 

Two days after the horrific bombing at the Boston Marathon, at a Boston Bruins hockey game at TD Garden, Ken Medlin reported that “the scene … was one of the most powerful we’ll ever see in sports. The Boston crowd simply took over the national anthem, delivering a thunderous rendition that would bring chills … That moment had to be cathartic for a city in pain — a chance to let raw emotion take over in a release of tensions too great for any community to bear … it was real. The crowd at the Garden — if not an entire city — needed that moment”. Though this was just a simply hockey game, it became so much more than that as a uniting force between a people in mourning. It did not matter whether or not you were a Boston fan that night, it simply mattered that you were an American mourning with other Americans in the face of a tragedy. 

This is the greatest part and the true beauty of sports, the ability to bring people together in such a miraculous and magical way. It is where we find reasons to hold on, to keep believing, to come together and rise to the top, to believe in the underdog and to simply watch excellence as it unfolds before us. 

So yes, sports matter. This is why.