The Importance of Sport

I cannot hear the song True Colors without crying.

It wasn’t always this way. A long time ago, when I was performing for a living, the group I sang with had the good fortune to be selected to headline the closing ceremonies of the Special Olympics Winter Games in Copper Mountain. We’d had an amazing and overwhelming experience with throngs of joyful and exuberant athletes for the few days we were there.

As touching as our stay had been, I kept myself together until the beginning of the closing ceremonies. As the sun finished setting over the back of Copper Mountain and darkness fell, we started the ceremony off by singing True Colors to the collected athletes and coaches. The lighting crew had every color of the rainbow splashing across the sea of athletes who were finishing up their games. Every person in the crowd was singing along with us, so much so I could barely hear. I felt the lump start to rise in my throat just as we got to the chorus:

I see your true colors shining through…

I see your true colors, and that’s why I love you,

So don’t be afraid, to let them show

Your true colors are beautiful like a rainbow

As we’d started the chorus, lights started to flicker near the top of the mountain, as we saw them, the entire crowd turned to see dozens of Special Olympians begin skiing down the mountain holding brightly colored flares high above their heads as they slowly swept back and forth down the mountain in these gorgeous swooping S-curves. I looked down at the athletes directly in front of us, and as I sang the words “that’s why I love you” I saw an 11-year old girl staring up at us un her wheelchair with a grin splitting her face so widely it almost explained the tears streaming down her face.

I was done. I wept. I think I sang the rest of the song. I hope like crazy I sang the rest of the song. But I think most of what came out probably sounded a lot more like a bassett hound warbling at a police siren. I can only say it was one of the most beautiful things that I’ve ever had the privilege of being a small part of. But it was most inspiring because of the dozens of touching and inspiring moments of passion, joy, effort, and anguish I had witnessed in the days preceding. In these remarkable athletes joy in their individual sports.

Sports have largely dropped from the scene during the last few weeks of our lives in ways that may have never happened, or at least not happened since the inception of sport and games. The first Olympic Games in Greece happened over 1,200 years ago, and there is documentation of formalized sports dated back over 3,000 years. For nearly as long as we can record, we have had sport as a part of our lives. For nearly as long as we have been, we have recognized that we can accomplish great feats with these limited bodies and brains of ours, that we are on occasion able to work so hard as to transcend ourselves for a moment to achieve amazing things. When our neighbor discovers he can do the same, we naturally want to compete. To show each other how well we can do. To push ourselves to something even more.

For someone who isn’t a fan of sport or competition, it’s difficult to explain the chasm that is left behind both physically and emotionally by the sudden cessation of sports at every level. While the lion’s share of attention falls upon the professional leagues due to the millions of fans that impart that spotlight, there are fully millions of athletes at every level who have had to hit the pause button on one of the formative parts of their lives.

Pee-wee soccer players who haven’t learned the principles of the game enough to know to break out of that giant clump of kids. High school track stars who were trying to make a name for themselves both amongst their peers and their predecessors. Collegiate athletes using their skills to help them earn their education. Senior swimmers who seem as if they can barely shuffle to their locker, but then swim circles around most of their age group. Around most every age group. Every last dreamer in those groups and hundreds more, simply itching to get back out there and prove something, to themselves and everyone else.

Sport is important. It would be a gross understatement to impart the impact sports have had on my life, both as an athlete and fan over the years. Sports taught me discipline, patience, teamwork, creativity, resilience, self-reliance, anger management, mathematical principles, negotiation, battle tactics, friendship, and the joys of self-improvement, amongst so many other things. The friends and colleagues I speak with on the subject largely report similar impacts on their own lives, whether they were particularly talented at their sport or not. The act of joining, competing, sharing, and simply trying teaches us each so much more about being a human being.

Sport is important because it tells us so much about each other. So much about ourselves. It gives us a chances to exult and despair over matters that feel like life and death to our deeply invested souls. Without actually experiencing or worrying about life or death for our deeply invested souls. It’s the OG of reality TV, and will always bring a thrill of victory. An agony in defeat. Yes, I stole that from Wide World of Sports.

Sport is important in that it gives humanity and its different cultures a place in which we can meet, share, interact, and join together. To show each other the people we can be, and the people we still may be capable of becoming. To show each other our true colors.

Someday soon, sports will be back, and maybe, hopefully, we will always remember a moment when we had to stop it all. When there wasn’t a score to be had. We will remember so that when it’s back in full force, it will not only bring us the joy it did before, but an even fuller appreciation of how much we missed it when it was gone.