Competing in Sports
Sports are a way to get away, to let go and to compete to the best of your ability and bring your best side forward. Sports are an American past time and a way to release yourself and let your stress and body be free. Everyone has different reasons for participating and I have always wondered why. Sports are defined as an activity involving physical exertion and skill in which an individual or team competes against another or others but who made this so competitive? Who turned physical exertion into a competition? Is it different for males than females? Is there a sport that makes individuals more competitive or is it an individual that is born competitive? These were all questions that I had been asking for years. As a sports enthusiast athletes often look to be born competitive and athletic but is there something inside of them that drives them to be more competitive than a normal person or are they just doing it as a job? These are the reasons that I choose to look deeper into the college students perspective on competitive sports and the nature of competition.
Being a lifelong athlete I have always been competitive. For me it started really young. I was only in kindergarten when I brought a flyer home to my mom and told her I wanted to wrestle. I began wrestling then and only grew more and more competitive. In third grade I got sent to the principal’s office for tackling a friend during recess football. I started learning the discipline then and realized that I needed to control my competitive side but still today it often kicks in when I should be more relaxed. I make everything I can into a competition. I often challenge myself to different time limits or projects and just that little mental competition drives me to produce a better product and often in a shorter amount of time. I began wondering if this was a similar case in those around me. I looked at different sports and realized some of the strengths and weaknesses with different sports. I did research that for the most part agreed with my theories. My goal for this project was to concur my research and theories with the students here at WSU.
To accomplish our goals we needed to figure out the project that would work for all of us. My goals were more focused on the individual’s reason for competing and their previous background. The goals in the rest of the group varied slightly but all of our goals focused on the individual and their personal goals and reasons for being active or competitive and their athletic and competitive background for their reasoning. We decided the best way to do this was to go to the place with the most focused, athletic and/or competitive people. We started at the Student Recreation Center. We first went as a group and approached individuals to ask questions and in a sense interview each person. We got some very closed and “typical” answers; People were not opening up to us. We decided to instead go up to groups of people and we started getting much better answers and they started to vary more because they were open to sharing as a group of friends but for me it still didn’t feel deep enough. We then decided to also look at intramural teams and for me that was the best answers I received. The intramural teams didn’t having a problem talking to you and I accredit this to two things; 1) To be on an intramural team you have to be open enough to ask to play; 2) Intramural teams are always competitive unlike some of the people at the gym who were just there to “get in shape”. I really enjoyed my conversations at the intramural sports sessions. I was able to talk very closely with people who I wouldn’t have and because they saw that I was athletic there seemed to immediately be a bond we shared. I wish I would have used a tape recorded for our interviews so we could have had an audio clip with the sincere responses because it wasn’t the same on print in the PowerPoint but I feel as if we would’ve tried to video record them we wouldn’t have had nearly the success rate we did.
By completing our task without a video camera or pictures we were able to get much more honest open responses. At a school the size of WSU students don’t mind having their name shown in a PowerPoint but when people are sweaty and working out it is very difficult even to ask for a picture. Audio is a tool I look back and wish we would have used more. After asking for pictures later on in the project to use off of Facebook we got some quality sports pictures and enhanced the effectiveness of our presentation but in order To really get in touch with each person I would have liked to recorded their audio and got their quotes to play with a picture of them off of Facebook. This would have been a much more effective tool than the typed quotes were. The biggest problem with that plan would have been finding an audio recorder. Although this may have been difficult it is not impossible and I think it could’ve been done but, as it was a group project, things don’t always turn out the way an individual would like them to or do it by oneself.
The biggest writing challenge in this project was the interviewing aspect. I was not used to writing as fast as people talked. It was difficult to talk and write at the same time because I am so used to looking into people’s eyes and common courtesy when they talk and I felt like they were unappreciated when I wasn’t explicitly paying attention to them. That was the hardest part for me to get over but for me I believe I got the major concepts and some good specific quotes that were needed for the final presentation. I believe I got much better at focusing my note taking which will help in my academics as well. I had to focus on the important details during the interviews and could only write down a few statements. It became easier and easier as I went on to pick up on the information that was important to them and because it was a project that was for others, that’s what I want to focus on. The information they wanted others to know.
A big challenge during the project was the weather. We started in the REC which was nice because of the available surfaces to write on and the controlled climate but when we went out to the REC soccer and football games all the changed. When we went out it was very windy. One of the days it was beautiful out but the wind was howling and it was hard to get the paper to stay in place. This made our notes a bit sloppy and so the next time we went out we brought a chip clip to hold the notebook pages down which helped a lot with the wind. However, the wind was not as bad the second day. This day we went out and at about half time it began to rain and got our paper wet. Thankfully we were using pen and were still able to read it but it was still a pain. It was much easier when we went back inside to the intramural volleyball games and back to the REC for the last time. If we did this again I wouldn’t procrastinate so much so we could be pickier with our days and choose when we want to go out instead of relying on that night for five or ten of our samples.
Overall this was a very interesting and enjoyable project for me. As an individual we are all different and for me wrestling exemplifies this in a way that, to me, no other sport ever has. As an individual in wrestling you are alone. It is only you out on the mat going against this other guy who has the same goal in mind, to win. To accomplish this it takes training and determination and accountability. You must believe in yourself and be confident in the moves you preform and the only way to have this confidence is to practice. It has been said that wrestling is anywhere from 75-90% mental which I would definitely agree with. Just like you hear in the movie Act of Valor “If your mind aint right, you can’t accomplish the mission.” In wrestling this is more than true. You need to be focused and you must possess what are called the three D’s, Discipline, Dedication, and Determination. Those are the keys to wrestling and I believe could be called the three D’s to all competitive sports. This project proved this to be true for me. It showed me how much it has helped me in my life to be competitive and learn from my experiences. Sports has taught me focus and drive like nothing else in life can and this project showed the similarities with other sports as well. The conclusion was conclusive, the college students in which I surveyed all were out there for the same reason; we all have the drive to better ourselves. Whether it’s to relieve stress or to be confident in yourself by winning, it is always to better ourselves.
