WHAT IS it like to center one’s life in sports?
Before we roam around the bush of that idea, what is the definition of sports?
According to ScienceDaily.com, sports is all forms of usually competitive physical activity which, through casual or organized participation, aim to use, maintain or improve physical ability and skills while providing entertainment to participants, and in some cases, spectators.
For most, they say sports is all about training and competing.
But for many sportsmen, sports is a vocation and beyond making a living.
Sports is a discipline, a way of life. This is the true and in-depth understanding of sports, and like any other vocations, sports chooses you but you decide if you are to embrace what it has to offer.
Sports and its principles can transform a man and the sportsman can inflict change through the moralities or the ideologies of sports.
Many accounts of sports that impacts people have been witnessed and told like how the sport of football was used by Nelson Mandela to transform South Africa who was regarded to be the first global leader to use sport as a tool to unite his people and to redefine a country's international image.
Another example is the “People’s Champ” and eight world division boxing champion Manny Pacquiao who continue to silence people with his capability as a politician, proving them he is more of a public servant than a politician.
He continues to serve equipped with the values of sports that lifted him to fame and fortune and now gives back to people by serving them still guided by sports principles and discipline.
For those who sees sports as physical development and physical competition to showcase physical prowess, they should look in deeper and decipher what it can endlessly offer.
Sports is a phenomenon that is beyond getting stronger and competing physically.
It’s more of the development and exalt of good character which could change the community or even the world.