The Religious Athlete

It's impossible to watch ESPN, or an NBA game, or read the sports section these days without hearing or seeing a reference to Jeremy Lin.

From the awful ("Linevitable"?) puns in the New York Post to breathless "Top Ten Lin Moments" on SportsCenter (after one week as a starter? seriously?) he has been everywhere. And not without reason - his is a "feel good" story if ever there was one, although one suspects if he was plying his trade in Houston or San Francisco, his two former NBA teams, he wouldn't be getting nearly the press that comes with playing in Madison Square Garden.

Lin shooting over a Laker in a recent game.

By far the most interesting analysis regarding Lin's instant fame, however, hasn't been from ESPN or even the New York Times sports section. It's been from David Brooks, the Times' columnist, who analyzed Lin's faith and, as Brooks sees it, the inevitable conflict between devoutly religious athletes and athletic success. 

Brooks believes that success in the sports world and living a religious life are antithetical. Far be it from me to summarize Brooks' position -- he is perhaps the political and social pundit whose writing and intellect I admire most -- so let's just let him say it:

Ascent in the sports universe is a straight shot. You set your goal, and you climb toward greatness. But ascent in the religious universe often proceeds by a series of inversions: You have to be willing to lose yourself in order to find yourself; to gain everything you have to be willing to give up everything; the last shall be first; it's not about you . . . Sports history is littered with odd quotations from people who try to reconcile their love of sport with their religious creed -- and fail.

As much as I agree with Brooks regarding many star athletes, I disagree just as strongly with regard to sport in general, and amateur sports in particular. Devotion to a craft or simply a belief in one's natural talent may result in self-centeredness at the pinnacle of a sport, particularly individual sports, which may be difficult to reconcile with subservience or submission to a great power or the greater good. But Brooks paints with too broad a brush. While a belief in oneself or the need to prove oneself may be necessary to the inner drive that is required to succeed at the very highest level, team sports teach us something very different.

The concept of team, and with it that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, is the very essence of sport. It also permeates every aspect of our daily lives, on the field and off. Being a "team player" or "taking one for the team" are concepts that everyone in our culture understands and most value. Sports at any level can and do teach us that practice, hard work, and perseverance can help make even that teammate who is not naturally gifted or athletically talented a valued member. Even if it's just by working hard in practice, or providing a warm body to scrimmage against, or supporting teammates during a game.

These values that anyone can learn by participating in a team sport - loyalty, honesty, hard work, self-sacrifice - are exactly the same as those demanded by our religious ethos, or even more generally, by democracies. I don't see a conflict between succeeding as a team member and religion or society. In fact, I believe that what sports teach us about teamwork is another reason why our society values sport, and why it can and does make us better members of that collective effort.

There Is "No Need to Fail when Success is Offered Every Day"

I've been thinking a lot lately about the nature of sport -- why it still exists, why it has such an important place in some of our lives, and whether it should.

Not so much another boring history of sport or even a review of it -- the supposed links to warriors or skills that translate to prowess on the hunt or in the field. Not why people started competing. But why they still do.

Why does sport play such a vital role in our lives? Why does it seem more and more important to many at a time when, realistically, physical prowess is less and less important to survival as an individual and collectively to a people? Why do others ignore or barely tolerate or just plain don't "get" athletics and competition? And, finally, when all is said and done, could our time and energy be better spent on other pursuits than another practice or game?

This all started when I attended, to the bemusement of some of my friends, the Mountaineer Athletic Club dinner in Charleston this past week. The MAC raises money for scholarships for athletes in all of WVU's varsity sports. I was impressed by the coaches and athletes who spoke, not just because they were articulate in thanking the donors for the contributions that made their teams and their opportunities to compete possible, but because of the palpable impact that sports, and in particular the opportunity to be a member of a team, had made in their lives. But the skeptical part of me couldn't help but wonder if all that was money could be better spent on research projects, new classrooms, or visiting professorships than on athletics.

Later in the week a gentleman I met at the dinner introduced me, via email, to Jeff Usher. The similarities between Jeff's life and mine are eerily (and, truth be told, a little disappointingly) similar: Jeff is an employment lawyer, soccer coach, and author (well, he's really an author; so far my writing is confined to this blog and some articles, not an entire book). I hope to have the opportunity to talk to Jeff and exchange ideas with him about his approach to coaching and seeing how sport fits into his life.

The dinner and then reading about Jeff made me think more about why sport is still essential to our lives: that it connects us in a common purpose at a time when it is so easy to be a loner among friends, whether  it's pursuing personal goals (attending college, getting a promotion, buying a house, starting a family) or just simply living our day-to-day lives conversing with clients or customers we never meet or touching base with friends and colleagues through one less-than-personal method or the other. But, at the same time, it can also be divisive and even dangerous, particularly when it comes to fans (after all, the word is short for "fanatic").

My epiphany came when, by chance, I saw a piece on ESPN about Jim Tracy, a high school girls' cross-country coach in California. Both Tracy and his team (ironically enough, another University High School, this one in San Francisco) have faced and continue to face substantial, and ultimately insurmountable, challenges, but overcame them at least temporarily in some extraordinary ways.

The piece that ran on ESPN's Outside the Lines is below and remarkably well done, as well as being visually stunning.

Tracy and his team exemplify why competition is still so vital to our development individually and collectively and how sport can help us meet -- head on -- the challenges we will all face. The bond between teammates, and between coach and team, is something that cannot be taught in a classroom. It has to be experienced. While winning is obviously important to Tracy and his team (and they are very adept at it) competition, teamwork, and mutual support are lessons that he knows his players will take away from his program that will better allow both him and them to face the obstacles that they will encounter in life. It is truly the means, not the end, that is most important.

"I'm a person who sees no need to fail when success is offered everyday" Tracy says near the beginning of the story. We can take that comment quite literally: that Tracy, with his multiple state championships, tells his girls every year that they have the opportunity to win another and should expect to.

I suspect, however, that Tracy is referring to something much bigger than just a cross-country meet or even a state championship. Each of us has within us the means to accomplish great things and everyday has the opportunity to do exactly that. Sport still has the unique ability to teach us to discover that talent within ourselves, and then reveal the will to push it to its absolute limit. That is a lesson that is learned only by preparing to compete, and then by competing.