Sports Teach Lessons On And Off Field

Across the land baseball pennant races are heating up and football teams are taking to the gridiron for the start of a new season that will end with two teams competing in the Super Bowl early next year. High school and college competition is gaining momentum as well. Across the land, sports of every variety are making their presence felt.

In some cases and for some reasons, sports have gotten a bad reputation. Competition at the professional level is tainted by claims of performance-enhancing substances, illegally obtained signals and unsportsmanlike conduct. In too many school districts, tight budgets mean sports programs are among the first ostensible "frills" to be cut. This is regrettable for a number of reasons.

From pre-kindergarten on, sports teach lessons that have nothing to do with physical prowess. Kindergarten children playing "tag" are learning to take turns and solve problems. Starting in the primary grades and going on through college, team sports teach loyalty and the value of working together to achieve a common goal. Even losing can have its benefits: the satisfaction of having done one's best and the determination to practice and train to do better next time are two that come to mind. While it seems unlikely that it was British admiral, Lord Horatio Nelson, who actually said that the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton, the point of the aphorism is a valid one: the lessons learned in schoolyard sports hold true for an entire lifetime.

The ancient Romans coined the saying "mens sano in corpore sano", translated as "a sound mind in a sound body", because they knew it was true. A person need not be a world-class athlete to benefit from even moderate exercise. We can think of no one in the vast army of self-improvement advocates regularly making their presence felt in the mass media who does not advocate at least some sort of physical activity. People who have suffered some form of physical disability undergo rehabilitation exercises that keep their bodies active and find that their minds and general outlook benefit as well.

As with just about everything we know of, sports can have drawbacks as well as advantages. Stories abound of birth certificates altered to gain an unfair advantage in Little League baseball competition and parents who come to blows after hockey matches because a call did not go their (or their child's) way. News reports of boorish fans sometimes incited to murderous rage during, after or because of a game bring headlines. These instances, however, are the exception, rather than the rule.

It is, we feel, unfair and unreasonable to blame sports as a whole for parents who for whatever reason feel they must live their ambitions through their children or for fans who forget that the word "fan" itself is a truncated form of "fanaticism" (which consists of redoubling one's efforts after having forgotten one's aims) and get so carried away that they do harm to others or thoroughly embarrass themselves. The good that comes from engaging in a sport- any sport- far outweighs any disadvantages. We hope that sports will continue to be a valued part of all elements of our lives for a very long time to come.