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Health & Fitness

The Art of Sport

Basketball season is upon us! It was a long off-season waiting for games to watch on TV, but this upcoming season should be an exciting one. Derrick Rose is back after missing a whole season due to a torn ACL. People are anxious for the return of Kobe Bryant; when he’ll come back and how he’ll play after recovering from his torn Achilles. Lastly, the notorious Miami Heat will try to be the first team to three-peat since the Los Angeles Lakers almost ten years ago.

The sport of basketball has been a passion of mine since my youth and I absolutely love all of the aspects involved with it. Last week, while I was in my class I overheard these two football players arguing about who the best NBA player is, best team, etc. They initially caught my attention because I have my opinions too, but I didn’t want to chime in since it was already very heated. Later during the argument, they brought up how basketball isn’t a real sport because a foul is called even when the player just barely grazes the other player. Players just whine and complain and the sport does not involve any real skill they said. My initial reaction was to start arguing, obviously, but I held my tongue and let them keep talking.

Their conversation had me thinking about what it takes to be great at each sport or which sport is the best, most difficult, technical, etc. Although basketball is my favorite sport, I would never be biased and say that it is the best sport, nor would I degrade other sports and describe it as “too easy”; especially if I had not played it competitively.

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Each sport takes discipline, dedication and a commitment to practice every single technique involved. Boxing, for example, is a technical sport that requires endurance, speed, strategy and cutting weight. I believe boxing is one sport that takes extreme dedication because the fight is individual, without teammates. Weightlifting takes focus, repetitiveness, physics, and maximal proprioception. These are just two out of hundreds that describe how difficult each sport is. Point is, people should appreciate the amount of work it takes for each sport no matter how “easy” it looks. Athletes spend each day to try and perfect their sport and that commitment itself is not “easy”.

By the lovely Helena Robel

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