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ThatDamnedPanda -> RE: Pros and cons of participating in team sports (2/2/2009 12:13:10 PM)
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I think team sports played a huge role in my growing-up process, the "figuring out who I am and what I can do if i set my mind to it" process. It taught me the value of hard work, and the importance of sacrificing my own short-term desires for the benefit of a group effort. It also taught me how to develop my leadership potential in group settings. From that grew a sense of self-confidence that I think it would have been difficult to learn in almost any other setting. I was a pretty shy, insecure kid growing up, but as I became more involved with basketball and hockey as a young teen, I found out I was a really good athlete. It was amazing to me how quickly I went from the kid nobody wanted to talk to to the kid who everybody wanted to get the ball or the puck to when the game was on the line, and I was fortunate enough to be able to grow into that new self-awareness and tap into a potential I probably never would have realized I had if it weren't for team sports.
But the most important thing that team sports taught me when I was younger was the value of perseverance. From competeing against other kids, i learned that most times the race is not to the swiftest or to the strongest, but to the one who just refuses to give up. That was one of the most important lessons of my life, and I learned it on a hockey rink at about age 5. I was miserable, i was cold, my ankles hurt, my feet were frozen, I'd been getting knocked down all morning, and I just wanted to be home watching cartoons. Then I happened to look into the eyes of one of the bigger, better skaters, a kid who'd been making me look like an idiot all morning. And I saw, in a flash of insight, that he didn't want to be there either. I could see that he was miserable too, and that he hated being out there in the cold. I could see that he really wanted to quit. And I knew instantly that all I had to do was outlast him, and he'd give up first.
And that's exactly what happened. By the end of the day, he and most of the other kids were just quitting, just going through the motions. And I was now controlling the play. I still wasn't as good as the bigger kids, but it didn't matter. They weren't trying anymore, and because I still was, I was able to do pretty much whatever I wanted. And I never forgot that lesson. So now, that shy and insecure kid has grown into a shy and sometimes insecure man who at least knows that no matter how much he may doubt himself, he can accomplish impossible things if he just tries as hard as he can.I have team sports to thank for that, and there's not a day goes by that I'm not thankful that my parents forced me to participate in them.
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