Sport. That word might be confusing to some people, at least in that grammatical form. But to a theater student or theater connoisseur, sport basically just means anything in the realm of athletics.

It’s a stereo type that anyone who’s involved with the theater has no clue what athletics are even about. People assume that we don’t have the skills needed to dribble a basketball, or spike a volleyball.

Well, that’s where they’re wrong.

Just like everybody else, we have the skills and abilities to do anything we want to do. If we have the want and the motivation to do something and we believe that it’ll benefit us; then, just like every other human being, we’ll be more than happy to do it.

People just don’t seem to understand why the theater community can be so hurt by the athletic community.

In my experience, sports have trumped the arts. Athletes have mocked us, vandalized our sets, and told us that being in theater means we’re throwing our lives away. News flash, we have a better chance working in the theater than you do playing on any professional basketball team.

Don’t get me wrong, I love athletics, the skill it takes to play some of those games is unbelievable, but the stigma against each group is there and it’s present.

The problem is that the support that theater students give towards athletics is almost never reciprocated. Especially not in high school.

I remember in high school that the theater community would lead the student section, that we would be the loudest and most outgoing of all of the fans, and we would be the reason that our student section was so amazing. We’re not afraid to be a little crazy, that much is true, but we still love showing support for those in our school.

When the curtain goes down on a show for us, and we rush to the lobby to meet our families and friends after a show, athletes are rarely the people we see coming out of the auditorium or theater.

The time that we put into a production is substantial, no one can deny that, and the time that an athlete puts into a game is also huge. Each party devotes their time and effort into what they love to do, but why is there such a large support system for one and not for the other?

There isn’t a real answer to that, but it does leave some resting emotions.

Sport will always be a hard topic for theater kids. Some will laugh about the joke of using sport as an actual word at all, others will see it as a group of people who don’t appreciate them. There are a lot of different reactions, and they’re all different. The real problem is, why did we even let it get to this point in the first place?