Importance of Sports

Sports have been around for a long time, but despite literally thousands of years of history, the basic concept of a public spectacle where athletes compete hasn’t changed much. Here’s what you should know about the importance of sports to you, to history, and to the future.

A Brief History Of Sports

We don’t know when people first began competing in sports as entertainment instead of daily necessities. There’s evidence of people doing running, archery, and wrestling over 17,000 years ago, and suggestions for swimming from at least 8,000 years ago. We don’t know if all of these represent competitive sports, but it’s entirely possible they do.

Even focusing on modern history, events like the Greek Olympics definitely go back more than 2,500 years, with some interruptions. Most cultures seem to naturally develop sports unless their government outlaws them, suggesting that they exist as a natural part of human behavior. In modern times, the most common sports are:

  • Solo sports versus others (most swimming, boxing, etc.),
  • Team-based sports (baseball, football), and
  • Solo performance on a team (archery teams, etc.)

With that ultra-condensed history in mind, let’s take a look at the importance of sports in modern life.

#1: Sports Teach You That Winning Isn’t Everything

Sports are one of the best ways to learn that winning isn’t everything in life. It’s true that everybody loves a winning athlete or team, but for every champion, there are dozens if not hundreds of people who are only footnotes.

That said, few people look down on the teams that got into second place. Just doing reasonably well during a season is enough to make a lot of people happy, and outsiders, it’s clear that losing isn’t the end of the team. It’s just a brief pause in an ongoing story. That’s an incredibly valuable lesson in life, and it’s one that athletes learn on a personal level.

#2: Sports Give The Opportunity To Travel

Travel is a great way to broaden your horizons, experience new things, and otherwise change your perception of the world. Few things support travel better than sports. Whether it’s traveling to another school to compete against a different team or traveling internationally to the Olympics, travel is a fundamental aspect of competitive sports.

This travel isn’t limited to players, either. Fans can travel along to watch games around the world, or stay at home and see different cultures portrayed on television. Sports emphasize seeing and understanding new places, and that’s always healthy for your personal development.

#3: Sports Promote Lifelong Physical Fitness

What if exercise didn’t need to feel so much like, well, exercise? As important as it is to stay physically fit, it’s a lot easier to exercise when you have a goal and work towards it with a lot of other people. Even if you aren’t in prime sporting shape for your whole life, the habits of exercising and staying fit can stay with you long after you stop playing.

It’s not just the habits, either. Even if people let themselves go later in life, a youth spend active and healthy will benefit them for literally decades to come. Sports are associated with stronger hearts, better bone density, and myriad other health benefits large and small.

Athletes are better at staying on their feet for long jobs, have the stamina to persist through challenges, and bounce back better after a particularly tough day. These are the types of traits that employers value.

#4: Sports Offer A Shared Interest For People

Outside of their immediate impact on physical development, sports offer a way for people to connect when they otherwise have little or nothing in common. A shared interest in the performance of a sports team, or of playing the sport, can spark a lifelong friendship that enriches everyone involved.

Interest in sports transcends many geographic and cultural boundaries. This isn’t a coincidence, either. Most people value sports a lot, and as humans, our focus on groups is one of the driving forces of our status as the dominant species on this planet. Once we accept people as part of a group we care about, we start caring about that person and what happens to them.

#5: Sports Give Children A Way To Interact

Sports are a great way to get children to interact with each other, too. In an era of smartphones and streaming devices, I’ve talked to plenty of parents who are worried that their children aren’t socializing enough. Sports offer children a way to put down the devices and engage with other people offline.

Sports offer different types of interaction, too. From working with teammates to getting instructions from older athletes to taking directions from coaches, children benefit from constant socializing and interaction while they’re playing sports. Eventually, they may even become mentors and practice helping people who aren’t as experienced as they are.

All of this makes a big difference in their ability to engage with other people later in life. Sports are particularly useful for breaking down cultural barriers among children. As with the shared interests I discussed above, having a shared interest where they need to support each other can help children overcome their prejudices and focus on what matters the most to them.

#6: Sports Support Other Activities

This isn’t as obvious, but most sports directly or indirectly support other activities in their area. For example, most stadiums mainly host games for one or more types of sports. However, they can also host conventions, meetings, and other types of entertainment that need space but don’t happen often enough to support a stadium all by themselves.

In the same way, many sports programs at colleges bring in money that supports many other types of clubs and activities. The money that goes into sports programs rarely stays with just those programs. By supporting other activities, sports directly benefit even people who don’t care about sports, never watch or play them, and couldn’t name any of their local teams.

Indirect support from other activities is also helpful. For example, broadcasting clubs may not care for sports very much, but the opportunity to practice broadcasting to large crowds make sports a particularly convenient thing for them to be around. Similarly, bands often play at sporting events and make use of the skills they’re learning.

If I described every way that sports directly or indirectly support other activities, we’d be here all day. Put simply, sports are good even if you don’t like them because chances are, they’re somehow helping something you care about.

#7: Sports Teach Teamwork

I touched on this earlier, but sports actively teach teamwork in a way that many other activities simply don’t. Whether it’s each player on a team executing part of a predetermined strategy or coordinating with coaches, trainers, and support staff for single-athlete games, sports are a fundamentally cooperative endeavor.

This also teaches respect for people who aren’t athletes themselves. While superstars get most of the attention, true athletes know that everyone has a role to play, and all of that matters in their journey to become the best athlete they can be.

Even when athletes don’t continue working in sports later in life, this acceptance of other people’s jobs is an outstanding leadership quality and something that can help them in whatever role they choose.

#8: Sports Build Confidence

Sports are one of the best ways to build confidence in life. In this context, confidence is the belief that you can succeed when you put effort into doing things. Even if you can’t necessarily be the best person to ever attempt something, knowing you can learn to do something well makes any problem see much easier.

In fact, sports are such a famous confidence-builder that this is one of the primary goals of one-on-one competitive sports like martial arts. When shy young children learn to defend themselves and develop a calm mindset, they come out much stronger than they were going in.

Children don’t need to go to championships to gain confidence, either. Most of them develop enough confidence simply from playing a regular season of the game and having fun in the process.

#9: Sports Teach People How To Follow The Rules

There’s a lot to be said for being independent and free-spirited, but knowing how to follow the rules is a crucial part of being an adult. Sports contextualize this and put it in a form that’s easy to address and not as harmful if ignored. Most athletes learn that the rules are there to create a fair playing field and ultimately benefit them.

Sports also teach the opposite side of this: that cheating is wrong and often more trouble than it’s worth. A moment’s success in return for getting kicked out of something you love for the rest of the season isn’t a good deal. By learning when to hold back on impulsive desires, children become more mature and ultimately contribute more to society.

#10: Sports Help Develop Persistence

Nobody masters a sport in a year. In fact, by most estimates, it takes about ten years to completely master a competitive game. However, particularly early on, athletes will see their skill grow by leaps and bounds as they practice. This teaches persistence, which is another of the most useful and fundamental skills.

Persistence is the understanding that by working over and over, you will get better at doing something. It also means continuing to work when things seem tough or discouraging, or even that you’re not making any progress at all. After people go through this a few times, they’ll be much more willing to persist at other tasks as well.

As an additional benefit, persistence encourages people to look for solutions to problems instead of giving up when easy answers don’t present themselves.

#11: Sports Stimulate Cognitive Development

The common idea in movies is that nerds are smart and physically weak, while jocks and athletes are strong but dim-witted. In reality, these stereotypes are completely wrong. Exercise stimulates blood flow to the brain. That, in turn, encourages cognitive development and can help students perform better in classes.

Athletes don’t need to focus on sports to do well in school, either. Many colleges accept students seeking a balance of sports and studies or even a preference for studies with sports as a side-concern at best.

Sports also encourage cognitive processing speed, the ability to pay attention, and numerous other benefits. In short, when children want to do better in school, setting the study books down and going out to play may help more than trying to cram in more information.

#12: Sports Look Good On College Resumes

Sports look good on college resumes because they demonstrate the ability to focus on studying something for an extended period to master it. While many of the details differ, this is the fundamental process of getting a college degree.

Unlike standard education, college degrees increasingly focus on specific, narrow topics. This is quite similar to the practice in sports of teaching everyone the basic rules, then each athlete learning the particular skills they need for their role.

This is especially true for colleges that are looking for well-rounded individuals to invite into their programs. Some places, like community colleges, are happy to accept any number of students from the surrounding area. However, better schools often have an evaluation process where extracurricular activities like sports count for a lot.

In short, regardless of whether your child wants to focus on science, the arts, or athletics, sports are a valuable part of getting continuing education. The more time they spend on a sport, the better.

#13: Sports Can Help Children Get Leadership Positions

This is mainly a side-effect of learning teamwork and leadership skills, but sports are a great way to help children land leadership positions later in life. When they know how to work with others, take charge as needed, persist through challenges, and work with people in different positions, they already have most of the qualities of a great leader.

#14: Sports Teach Time-Management Skills

Managing time is essential in every stage of life, and sports are particularly good at teaching this. When children know that they have to balance sports with keeping their grades up, they start looking for ways to become faster and more efficient at other tasks. This is ultimately a form of time management, and it’s one of the most useful skills they’ll gain.

Playing sports also teaches children to do things faster. They know that if they slow down too much during a training session, they’ll fall behind, and the coach will push them even harder to make them catch up. When they decide to work hard on their own and take the initiative, they’re far more likely to continue working hard in the future.

#15: Sports Offer Opportunities For Jobs

Only a tiny fraction of all sports players will become well-paid professional athletes, so that’s not what I’m talking about. Instead, sports create jobs by supporting a broad network of coaches, advertising personnel, graphic designers, architects, personal assistants, and other roles that all participate in a team’s success.

This is another area where sports have both direct and indirect impacts on the surrounding area. For example, when a store opens to sell officially-licensed merchandise, that store also employs several people from the surrounding area. There are hundreds upon hundreds of sporting good stores across the country, collectively employing thousands of people.

Similarly, sports don’t need to have teams to create jobs. Golf courses require consistent maintenance throughout the year and employ numerous people full-time to give guests a great experience. These people are fundamental to the sport’s ability to exist and the course’s ability to profit, so they have steady work and good prospects for staying within the industry.

Many of these jobs pay well because sports organizations want qualified, capable people on their team. You don’t win championships by having lazy coaches, and you don’t bring people into the stadium by having poor marketing strategies.

#16: Sports Create Motivation In Children

This isn’t true for all children because some of them simply aren’t interested in sports, but for those who do, the ability to play and keep playing is a powerful motivator for everything else they do.

In fact, this is one of the key reasons why schools often impose grade requirements for athletes. They don’t want to stop playing sports, so they’ll put in enough scholastic effort to stay on the team.

#17: Sports Teach That Limits Are Flexible

This is related to my earlier comments on persistence. While persisting is a great skill to have, it’s tied to the idea that limits aren’t always as fixed as they can appear at first. Often referred to as “breaking through the ceiling,” the idea that you can get better than you ever thought was physically possible is a reason to keep trying other things in life.

For that matter, there’s an enduring satisfaction that comes from achieving a personal best. Nobody stays at the top forever, so knowing they achieved all they could achieve can help athletes be satisfied as they get older and turn their attention to other things.

#18: Sports Teach Good Sportsmanship

Even in a casual society where few things seem to be important, we value sportsmanship in athletes. While it’s difficult to perfectly describe this behavior, sportsmanship is fundamentally the idea of athletes behaving in a noble, caring, and generous manner to others regardless of whether they win or lose.

Nobody likes a winner who mocks everybody else and lets their temporary time at the top of the podium swell their ego like an inflatable balloon. In contrast, we like it when winners are kind to the defeated and recognize the effort they put in.

This is particularly true when athletes choose to lose something they could have won in order to help someone who needs it. Sharing glory isn’t always easy, but it proves athletes have learned the most important lessons from their game.

#19: Sports Teach Discipline

Discipline is related to following the rules but encompasses additional traits like the need to be patient instead of hogging all the glory. Baseball players love smashing a ball out of the park and going around the bases, but there’s a whole team of players, and they might end up going several innings without actually getting up to bat.

Discipline teaches that it’s not just okay to settle down and focus; it’s vital for the game to function at all. Instead of focusing entirely on themselves, athletes learn to focus on the team and their larger group, then work their hardest when it’s finally their turn to get up to the plate.

This holds true in solo sports, too. For example, in golf, there are strict regulations about timing and moving through the course. If you take too long, you’re holding up everyone behind you. However, it’s not appropriate to rush those ahead of you or try to cut in line (as it were). In short, you must have the discipline to coordinate with others.

#20: Sports Teach People To Accept Advice

Nobody likes being told that they’re wrong. Imagine how it feels for young athletes, though, to be told over and over again that they’re playing the game wrong, and they need to change themselves. That’s frustrating, but it’s also part of getting athletes to understand that the guidelines exist for a reason and that coaches do know best.

When you’re used to accepting instructions from others, it’s much easier to listen to them no matter what else you’re doing. This ties in with the leadership skills I mentioned earlier, but accepting advice is useful no matter what your position is or how much experience you have in a specific role.

At a certain level of skill, accepting advice is also a way to evaluate others and form a better understanding of how capable they are. This is particularly useful for leaders who often have to decide who to hire, promote, or nominate for other senior positions.

#21: Sports Teach People How To Give Advice, Too

This isn’t as common as learning to accept advice, but many sports have older athletes help younger athletes and their own teammates as part of learning the game. This is useful on multiple levels. Aside from teaching even more leadership skills, it teaches athletes to recognize the limits of others as something those people can overcome.

In other words, sports teach athletes to see the potential in people, not just their current level of skill. Athletes constantly see other people setting new records, developing physically, and even changing roles to try something new.

Part of the reason this works is that athletes remember when they were new and struggled to overcome their first limits. We say that some people are naturally gifted at sports, but the truth is that even the most gifted players spend thousands of hours bettering themselves.

#22: Sports Teach Players To Accept Limits

This may seem like an odd thing to say given how much of this article I’ve spent describing athletes breaking through their limits, but the other side of that is just as true.

For example, baseball uses pitching guidelines for children that mandate a set amount of rest based on the number of pitches thrown each day. The reason they do this is that they know pitching too much can hurt the child over time and lead to an early exit from the sport.

When you’re young and desperately trying to get better, the idea of adding more limits can seem harsh and unfair. As they get older, however, athletes understand each limit in the game exists for a reason, and that trying to go against those is counterproductive.

As a bonus, this teaches players to discern between limits they can safely challenge and limits they should leave alone. Accepting that there’s a time and a place for certain activities is extraordinarily useful in life.

#23: Sports Offer Positive Role Models

In today’s celebrity-focused society, sports offer many role models who are worth looking up to. When children aspire to be like kind, fit, successful people, they’re probably going to be better and more mature throughout their lives when compared to children who admire people that, frankly, don’t deserve the admiration.

It’s difficult to overstate the importance of having good role models. Children are not born with an innate knowledge of the world or how they should behave. Instead, they simply imitate what they see. The earlier they have good role models, the more likely they are to follow that model throughout their lives.

Final Thoughts

As you can see, sports are fundamentally important to people and society on many different levels. From ensuring physical fitness to teaching good judgment, leadership skills, teamwork, and more, sports are a valuable aspect of society and one that we should always encourage.

If you’re thinking about taking up a sport, do it. Even if you want to stay as a casual player instead of trying to go pro, we have plenty of reasons to believe that playing sports will benefit you both personally and professionally.

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