Sunday, November 25, 2007 Sun.star Essay: Sporting chance By Erma M. Cuizon Sun.star essay
YOU cannot imagine how parents feel when their young one joins sports contests, especially during the breathing space between winning and losing. In an international game, for one, it must be terrible for parents who wait as though for a court judgment that would determine the future and change the youngster’s life.
But double this anxiety (and rush of adrenalin) in the young one, or imagine the pain of losing a game in the face of the expectations of the coach, parents, family, countrymen. The greatest of the fear is losing, for an error of movement that could occur anywhere at any moment in the game.
In the 2006 swim of the Mandaue-Mactan channel by Justin Daniel Junio, 6, he threw up just before the signal to start and the jump into the water. Was it out of fear?
For Justin, who swam across the channel again this year, there was no opponent except to show off the ability to swim so far in an age so young.
But in the offing is the thought of hitting the Guinness Book of World Records, and it would be like winning over the record holder, an American boy who did the waters between San Francisco and Alcatraz Island.
In the swimming sports, a variety of strokes have been developed so that one shoots away rapidly and strong, self-propelled. It’s an art of life self-saving, since humans don’t swim as fish and don’t move in the water as though taking a stroll. It’s a sports skill of techniques a swimmer must learn to excel.
In his swims, Justin paddled with all his might, his little arms pushing and stretching with and against the strong and murky current for almost two hours. At each end of his swim, the boy rushed to the boat to his mother, jumping into her arms. A news report said this scene brought tears to the eyes of some of the onlookers.
For the child, there will always be the mother but also the pressure of a competition. I looked at the photo of Justin swimming and wondered how much it took for a young one like him to stay brave.
Still, sports for the very young could be a stress too early in life.
Humans are born to be competitive in many ways, dramatically or quietly. It has something to do with the difference in races and culture, so reminiscent of the “confusion of tongues” in the biblical story of the Tower of Babel. As you remember the story, it was a tower that humans built with which to try to reach heaven. To punish them for such snobbish ideas, God turned the Babel into a tower of people who were now of more than one race, suddenly strangers to each other. This was diversity of human culture, instead of the blessing of peace and one undivided race.
Thus, competitiveness keeps breaking up the world, despite efforts of some to unite countries and people. So we have to be winners, to be ambitious, to dream to live through a lifetime of triumphs. The parents would bring up their children to be superior, to do well, to go far.
Perhaps that’s where we got our sense of clash in sports. If there were no babel of tongues and humans breaking up into races, would there have been sports at all?
As it is, there’s always a sense of getting less of what’s due to one, feeling cheated, blocked; also the fear of being run-of-the-mill, achieving less or nothing. It must be like the cave man trapped with unfriendly beasts breathing fire behind the rocks. But man learned better to turn fights and wars into games, in a more sensible climate and era.
In today’s sports world, there are fights outside or beyond the sports fight.
There are games of skills, yes, but also of violence in harsh rivalries in the field---indoors, outdoors.
The boy Justin doesn’t know much about where he got the push to swim like a fish, he doesn’t know anything much of why he’s doing it. Perhaps, soon enough, the stress will only be like a sore thumb, if he can come out of it unscathed.
