For as long as I can remember, I have loved playing sports. Growing up, I played a lot of youth sports. I consider myself a sports purist--I value good sportsmanship, playing for a love of the game, and being competitive and intense but keeping things in their proper perspective. In every sport at every level, in varying degrees of severity, there will be contaminants that creep in to the game. These could have the form of a parent banking their child's college education on an athletic scholarship, and pushing their child so hard to excel that all enjoyment in playing sports is lost. These could have the form of a coach picking favorites over skill, work ethic, and fair opportunity when choosing a team because he is friends with some of the children's parents but not others'. These could have the form of an organization that withholds opportunities to participate from some children because they are poor. For lack of a more specialized term, these detracting outside influences are often referred to as politics. When framed this way, politics in sports are negative by definition. For the purpose of the article I propose to write, this definition would be expanded to include possible positive influences as well, such as a coach's use of sports to teach important life lessons or to keep kids off the street and out of gangs. Anything outside of playing sports for nothing but the sake of the game will be classed under the term politics.
This seems like a broad topic, but more than arguing the efficacy of specific examples of politics in sports, I propose to argue the concept as a whole, and use specific examples to support it when such examples would lend clarity to the argument or illustrate an essential point. Elements of the concept of sports politics to be argued would include their developmental effects on children, and whether these effects vindicate, justify, or condemn the presence of politics. They would also include a look into why these influences are introduced into youth sports and where they often come from. Finally, based on the conclusions I will draw from the thorough research I will do, I intend to argue what steps ought to be taken to maximize the positive effects of sports politics on child and adolescent development.
Preliminary research I have conducted consists of quick internet searches that yielded enough recent information to convince me that this topic is a timely one. Based on both the articles I read and my own experience, my initial stance is that politics in sports play a significant role in the psychological development of children and adolescents, and that these effects are negative more often than they are positive. I am excited about this topic because I love sports and feel like they are a very uniquely effective medium for teaching and learning on many different levels, from concepts of hard work and mental toughness to inter-personal relationships to ethics and morals. Like any form of teaching, sports and their accompanying politics are neither inherently good or bad and it matters how they are used, because by affecting the minds, morals, and perceptions of children, they influence the future in a very significant way, and the future, as a result of choices made now, has consequences for all of us.
