Creating sports masterpieces

“A sports masterpiece”. What comes to mind when you hear these words? Do they describe a perfectly played game? Do they describe your team (or your child’s team) winning by a wide margin of points? Or do they describe an encounter that — no matter the final score or the ultimate winner — leaves everyone feeling uplifted, enriched, and part of something bigger than themselves?

My friend and colleague, Dr. David Epperson, describes the components of a sports masterpiece thus:

• Parents and the supporting cast (administrators) provide the canvas upon which a sports masterpiece is created

• By enforcing rules, officials create the frame that sets boundaries for the masterpiece

• Coaches equip artists with the skills they need to craft a masterpiece

• Athletes give form to the masterpiece as they express themselves while developing their own unique styles

• Spectators provide the colour that gives the creation depth and vibrancy

• The traditions of the sport set the standards for judging the artistry of the performance.

It requires the collective will of all these participants to create a sports master-piece for ourselves, our children, and teammates. But creating a satisfactory masterpiece requires expand-ing our mindsets to view sports and games in a new and different light. It requ-ires opening our minds to the numerous possibilities sport offers to change lives.

Many parents with child-ren in sports tend to underestimate this potential. The unrealised possibilities of healthy and open-minded participation in sporting activity — “playing the game” — are manifold. They include discovery of oneself through sports; bringing out the best in everyone; teaching life lessons and real world skills; uplifting the spirits of all participants; forging unity among participants; strength-ening family bonds, and healing fractures among disparate groups.

Parents, administrators and teachers can change their mindsets about the purpose of sports, and encourage healthy participation by

• Carefully selecting and supporting values they’d like to promote through sports — respect, civility, responsibility, fairness and community-building.

• Broadening perspectives so they are able to discover more in sports to celebrate — looking beyond what’s happening on the playing field, to discover additional sources of enrichment and fulfillment. This can mean everything from appreciating the beautiful weather to enjoying time spent with family and friends on playing fields and in sports arenas.

• Increasing opportunities for satisfying a wider range of basic needs through sports — attending to the universal need for affiliation, achievement and power.

• Adopting new images to help us organise our sports experiences — abandoning military imagery (winning, conquering, annihilating) in favour of poetic images (graceful, fluid, lyrical).

Of course outcomes in games and sports are important, as is individual development. Naturally, we all want our children to be the best they possibly can. However, winning need not be at the expense of engaging in sports to promote human connectedness, family ties, social responsibility and community enrichment.

Instead of adopting over-competitive training and coaching practices that alienate rather than connect sportspersons, it’s socially purposive for coaches, parents and mentors to abandon traditional practices such as fielding only the best players in competitions; singling out players for individual recognition; selecting MVPs (most valuable players) and all-tournament teams; according heavy emphasis to winning and breaking individual records, and excluding parents from involvement with their children in training and competition activities.

Instead it is socially and individually beneficial to

• Highlight how teamwork supports individual achievement

• Reward helping rather than self-centred behaviour

• Stress complementarity, rather than player differences

• Reiterate the virtues of teamwork

• Create friendly and playful practice and competition environments

• Devise ways and means to reduce interpersonal conflict

• Acknowledge the unique contribution of each player towards team effort

• Encourage awareness and sensitivity to teammates and opponents — their presence, movements, emotions.

When measures are taken to enable the connectivity rather than divisiveness of sports and games engagement, we will not only realise the possibilities of sport, but also learn to create true sports masterpieces.

(Dr. George A. Selleck is a San Francisco-based advisor to EduSports, Bangalore)