I love sports, but not for the typical American reasons. I don't like to be the biggest or the nastiest, and I don't always have to win. I love that through sport I can teach people to move, and not just teach them how to run the fastest or jump the highest. It has nothing to do with skill or athleticism. Sports are about so much more than being the best. You learn so much from just moving and playing. Children at recess aren’t playing by any rules. They are simply playing: creating and then breaking their own rules, and making friends all the while. They are learning how to compromise and even how to bargain. They are learning to do things differently if something isn’t working one way. They are learning to communicate with their friends. Compromising, communication, thinking on your feet, and learning from your mistakes --these are all things that elementary school children are learning all on their own, and teachers have nothing to do with this learning. Sport and play have everything to do with it.
When teaching through sport, I can take middle school girls and teach them to think more highly of themselves. I teach them, when they make mistakes, that they need to pick up their heads and look at what they can learn from these slip ups. Mistakes are not failures, but missteps in our journey that we recover from and we learn to step avoid those pitfalls the next time around. I can also teach them how to both give and take criticism more effectively so they can better communicate with their teammates' teachers and coaches, to prepare them for interactions in college or in the workplace.
To me, sports are not about winning. They're about learning to move and to be happy with your body. I teach the girls that even when you’re "big boned," you can be very powerful and have a lot of success in sports. This helps the girls accept their bodies and appreciate all the differences there can be in their shapes and sizes. This is one of the biggest hurdles that girls this age struggle with, and keep in mind that your body is something you live with every day. For 14-year-old girls, accepting and enjoying the shape of their body means one less thing to have to worry about.
Finally, the biggest thing I can teach though sport is the importance of hard work. Just because you are naturally good at something doesn’t mean you get to slack off. Don’t get me wrong, if you have natural ability and you are working hard, having a great attitude, and showing respect, then you are top notch in my book. The case that really tugs on my heart strings is the athletes that struggle. They have a hard time both physically and mentally, and they may feel they have every reason to give up. These girls are the ones I make sure I show all the things that they themselves are capable of. With hard work, commitment, and determination, anything can happen, but remember that nothing is going to be handed to you. You may stumble upon an opportunity, but it’s the hard work that you put into that opportunity that turns it into something beautiful and magnificent. If athletes learn to love their sport and learn to love hard work, they will ultimately watch themselves succeed as a result of their hard work. Watching their confidence in their own performance grow, and watching them excel socially within a team is the most rewarding thing I can experience.
