Benefit Of Sports Essay

The Benefit of Sports Athletics is ingrained in the human experience and is an integral part of American culture. Because of that, many of my weekends and after school hours have been dedicated to either watching a game or starting one with the kids in the neighborhood. Athletics runs deep in my family. My great uncle was a professional baseball player and my family, including my father, three brothers and a sister, are all very involved with the various team sports. It’s this immersion into various sporting activities that has led me to the understanding that engaging in athletics has a very positive impact in our lives. Additionally, sports are extremely important in building one’s character through hard work, learning to work with others on a team and by learning how to cope with the joy of winning and the inevitability of losing.
You earn recognition, all your playing time, and a starting position through hard work. I grew up playing all kinds of different sports. I played baseball, football and later in life I started to swim competitively. In each case, I had to learn to take the responsibility to do my part—for myself and for my teammates. Practice was mandatory and took priority over other interests of mine. This was hard for me, since I missed out on school dances, family activities and other fun events because I had to be at practice everyday. It also forced me to learn good time management skills as I started to balance school, a social life, daily two-hour practices and games on the weekends. The coaches can only teach so much and, while they tried, couldn’t force me to learn my plays or study in my off time. I knew my hard work was paying off when my coach would say, “Good job Gunnar, I’m proud of you!” That one sentence made me realize that my hard work had paid off and that I should continue to work even harder, not only in sports but also in everything I