Choosing Your Family: Sports Teams as a Second Family

By Kathleen Martini on April 2, 2013

It’s difficult for a person who has never participated in a sport to understand what a team and the camaraderie that accompanies it mean to its members.  To outsiders, sports teams often appear to be cult-like organizations that have an unhealthy obsession with competition — not just with competing against other teams, but also with competing against each other.  Stereotypical views of “jocks” on television or in movies perpetuate the view of athletes as xenophobic bullies who have no tolerance for those who aren’t members of their team.

These views are just plain wrong.

I row, which is the ultimate team sport.  I wake up at 4:45 a.m. every morning to practice, and I put in at least an hour every day in secondary or tertiary workouts.  I don’t have time to have friends that aren’t my teammates.

There are anywhere from one to eight other girls in my boat with me on any given day, unless I’m rowing a single.  These girls are the other parts to my engine that make a boat go fast.  My success on the water isn’t up to me; it’s up to these other women.  I have to trust these girls implicitly to try as hard as they can to get the boat across the finish line.

Do I necessarily like everyone on my team?  No.  Would I still answer if they called at 4 a.m.?  Without a second thought.

These people are not just boatmates.  They are members of a family I chose to join.

It is difficult for people who have never experienced the second-family aspect of a team to understand how much it means to its members.  It is easy to make sweeping generalizations and write sports teams off as negative organizations.

As in everything, one should put oneself in someone else’s shoes before passing judgment on an individual or a group.  Sports teams are not just mindless, “drink-the-Kool-Aid”-type organizations.  They are second families to the members, sometimes the only thing that a person has outside of academics.

Think before you stereotype!

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