Where Sport Matters Most

“My team is on, Papa!”

“That’s not our team, buddy. Our team is called the Rockies.”

“Nuh uh. I like the Red Sox.”

My heart sank. My four-year old grandson was showing out to be a fan of another insufferable New England area team, just like his mother, the Patriots diehard. I struggled to grasp how I’d failed him so quickly, and then remembered the Tee-ball picture I’d gotten of him the summer prior. It was his very first organized sport. His team? The Red Sox, of course. Suddenly, I was a bit of a Red Sox fan as well.

He was admittedly always a pretty gregarious kid, but playing Tee-ball still really changed him a ton, right at a moment it was hugely important in his development. After playing a sport, he had a vastly improved attitude towards sharing. He was more cooperative. More collaborative. He better understood he was just a part of something, and was a lot more kind and thoughtful of others. While I had always been proud of him, it was an amazing shift to see.

The world of sports we follow every day as fans is filled with millionaires and billionaires at the very apex of their craft. The Michaelangelos of their sports meeting and competing in front of millions or billions of fans are a heady brand of entertainment for us all, seeing what is possible when you push the body, heart, and mind to their limit. How big an enterprise is that? It’s massive. To understand a single drop in that ocean, conservative estimates put the annual legal betting on NFL games at sportsbooks at 100 billion. Dollars. Gulp. The implications of that sort of money over all sports and legal vs not is staggering. Just in that scope, sports are truly one of the most influential subjects of our time.

And yet that’s nothing compared to what sport actually means to us as humans. As friends and family. As a community.

Take the impacts my kids and eventually grandkids have felt from their participation in sports. Dozens of studies on children over the years have show the same thing. Participating in sports develops physical skills and coordination. It helps kids learn to socialize, make friends, work through problems, and towards a common goal. It shows them the joys and pain of competition. That winning feels incredible. That losing is not actually the end of the world, and maybe even an opportunity to learn and grow.

Sports helps children grasp the importance of embracing a role on a team. It improves self-esteem. It shows kids the implications of fair play, and of cheating. Most of all, it gives them and opportunity to just have fun. That there are still ways and games and places and things in this world that are simply fun.

Adults actually benefit from many of the same items on that list, and add the benefits of keeping minds strategic, bodies active, hearts and lungs healthy, and skeletal systems stronger. It gives an opportunity to bond, learn, grow, and just get the hell outside. It also sets a pretty fine example for the kids who are watching closely, the ones about to go to their first Tee-ball game or soccer practice.

It’s a magical thing, this world of professional sport we spout on about every day. But there’s just as much magic in getting you and yours out from behind the watching and making sure you find some joy in the doing. Colorado has some of the greatest professional sports and athletes on the planet. It also has some of the greatest opportunities to get out and sample some for yourself. The benefits will remind you how much fun this stuff actually is, and how hard what those pros do can actually be.