Estefania Caceres Acosta, Low Entropy Volunteer Writer
I believe everybody remembers when their physical education teacher asked the class to divide into two groups to make teams and assigned two captains for playing something like dodgeball. The captains would choose the players for their teams. I was never chosen first, always last, and I knew why. But most importantly, I was at peace with the reason behind that, because it was logical for me: if you are building a sports team and you want to win—because sports are often about competition—you should look first for physical abilities and second for competitive attitudes. It would work in the same way if I was building a team for a trivia game (what I like). Of course, I would want to choose people with abilities for winning the contest. That’s why I didn’t feel bad during the physical education class when I wasn’t chosen first, because sports weren’t among my strengths—and that’s ok.
The funny thing about my relationship with sports is that I like sports. I actually have favourite sports, but I am not a sporty person, and I was clear on that since my pre-teen years, around 10 years old. It might seem like I wasn’t around sports, but it was quite the contrary. I was part of the soccer—or football—team in high school, and I loved it. I enjoyed being around the ball, the emotion of scoring a goal, being part of a team, the discipline, how playing made you feel disconnected from the worries of life, and the fun (even my coach was funny and I have great memories with the team). Definitely, the sense of belonging and sharing something with my friends were my biggest rewards of playing football in my teenage years. I still follow some games of football, and I am a huge fan of the FIFA World Cup. I always try to watch the games, but I am not good at sports—and that’s ok. Even today, sometimes I forget the rules and positions, and I am not the kind of person who knows all the players’ and coaches’ names.
But I am a person who can join and share the emotion of winning or losing a game, who cheers, who can analyze a play or talk a little about sports, because I involved myself in the sports world first before tagging myself as bad at sports. I tried to understand the passion behind watching and playing a sport, and that helped me connect with what sports meant to me. I remember I volunteered as referee’s assistant during my high school’s basketball tournaments. I learned a lot about basketball and I enjoyed the hyper energy of a basketball game—when your team is winning but you know things can change in the last minutes, and how watching the ball bouncing around the hoop for seconds, expecting a basket or not, causes an intense, suspenseful feeling in everyone around court.
I would like to end this article by sharing what sports mean to me. Growing up in the Dominican Republic means you should at least watch baseball. It is unusual for a Dominican to not watch or like baseball, because baseball is part of our identity as Dominicans—it is part of our culture. Kids want to be baseball players when they grow up, and in almost every house people sit to watch the games. Everybody has a team—even the people who don’t watch baseball games during the season or don’t really like the game too much. So for me, sports mean tradition, being part of something bigger than me, and sharing emotions and feelings, more than just a competitive game of who wins or who loses. That’s why, even though I have accepted that I am not good at sports, I can be part of the emotion of watching a game with friends and family sometimes. I also respect others’ feelings, inclinations and opinions about sports, and I try to understand those dynamics.
Now, living in Canada, I also find in sports a sense of belonging, a thing to share with others, an excellent conversation starter and an essential part of culture. I’m glad that I didn’t close my mind to sports when I found that they weren’t exactly my thing, because even from things that you aren’t good at, you can learn. You can find different meanings in those things for you, find something that you like in a big world like sports, and build your own thing and purpose in it. My journey in the sports world is still in process. I know I like to join a team just for fun, meet people and spend time with them. Even not being too competitive or physically good at sports, I know being part of a team or something bigger than you can be rewarding for the mind and body—especially nowadays, in a society too connected to the online world. It’s good to connect with real life through sports. Because in the end, being bad at sports never stopped me from loving them, trying them and being part of them—and that’s more than ok.
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