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An athlete has a certain way of looking at things, a way of fitting the rest of the world into his
or her game. It is an unconscious trait, part of one’s genetic makeup. An athlete walks down the street and sees the walls of buildings as a place to hit tennis balls against. Athletes see the world as a playing field; the time between when they are born and when they die is the game. And during their lifetime, how they view sport will change a number of times.
My answer to the oft-asked question “What motivates you?” is different now than when I was 32, 27, or 17 years old. And still I cannot say what that answer might be when I am 44, 57, or 63 years young.
Are there patterns from which we can learn? I believe that a child athlete first looks at games
with a wild-eyed sense of wonderment, an innocent blank page waiting to be filled with all the
ideas and concepts that are part of this newfound method of play. He or she has no expectations;
the rules are clean and simple, but important. The world of ambiguity, deduced reasoning, and
shades of gray have not yet been introduced to them. Winning is immaterial. The activity takes
precedence over all else.
From this beautiful place an athlete moves into his or her first period of fulfillment after
realizing that sport can begin to fulfill some of the basic needs of living. Sport can foster
socialization, involvement, respect, recognition, and belonging.
An athlete’s “seasons”
After preteen boys or girls reach a point when their basic needs are fulfilled, they begin to
stretch their wings and look for additional opportunities to learn and grow. An athlete will
consider the tangible benefits of playing sport through his formative years. Every 15-year-old
boy who goes out for the football team asks himself “Will it make girls like me more?” Every girl considering volleyball or cheerleading does the same in a different way. Acceptance is what they are both after at that season of their life; athletics becomes a tangible benefit in their quest for this sense of belonging.
This is also the period of their lives when they begin to consider the future. What about college?
Where will I go? How will I pay for it? How will I make friends? All of these questions and more
can be answered with a nod toward athletic involvement. Again, an athlete may not consciously
think that sports will solve all of life’s mysteries, but by this point in their lives they will have the anchoring feeling that “The Game” has given them time and again. For an athlete making a major life change, the constant of sport can be most comforting.
The next stage takes an athlete in a completely different direction. This is the period when
athletes will not only have achieved a degree of mastery in a sport but will nearly always fail to
understand its meaning and significance. They have now reached a level of competence and skill
that allows them to receive accolades from many corners. They are confident of their ability and
often extend that confidence as a show of braggadocio. Sometimes this is a means of covering up
deeper feelings of inadequacy and other times it is tactical posturing for competitors. Either
way, overconfidence and overidentification with a sport are often predecessors to feelings of
betrayal, doubt, and cynicism toward sport at latter periods in life—unless an athlete places
sport’s role in a proper perspective.
Many athletes go through a period when they lose their natural love of the game. Perhaps it is
because we see professional athletes being tried for assault and battery. Perhaps it is because
the pressure to win has caused our closest friends to cheat in a neighborhood basketball game.
Or maybe we just forget how to play for the pure and simple pleasure of it all. Whatever
the reason, this period of doubt and cynicism must be addressed if an athlete is to move into the
next phase of his or her athletic life without the tainted baggage of anger and remorse.
In my next column I will address the final three seasons of an athletic
life.
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