The Games That Unite The World
Sports have always had some sort of appeal to me ever since I was a toddler. It started off with the awe of how athletes, who were human just like me, were able to not only complete, but dominate what seemed to a little boy as an unimaginable feat. As I grew older and realized that these feats were still amazing, but way more realistically possible, my love of sports became more about how they can captivate an entire diverse community, bringing them all together in unity.
A preschool-aged boy sat right in front of the TV at his grandmother’s house, watching race cars fly past the screen at the speed of light, 200 times as they circled the race track. This boy happened to be me. At the time, I couldn’t fathom the speed at which these drivers were intensely competing against one another, just to see who could cross the finish line before the rest of the pack. The winner of the race meant that they were the fastest, and every preschooler wanted to be the fastest at everything they did, so watching the fastest of the fast gain a victory always left me amazed. These very first moments of gaining exposure to competitive sporting events would be the beginning of a greater passion for athletics.
During my elementary school years, I began to start physically playing organized team sports. My age presented a barrier to my career as a young race car driver. Since I was unable to participate as a racer, I decided to shift my passion toward the sports that I did play, straying away from racing. Starting out in Little League and youth football and basketball leagues, I developed a passion for all three sports. Being so young at the time, my passion was playing those sports rather than following the professionals through the media and on television that I didn’t really have lots of access to. But again, as all humans do, I grew older and found new passions.
When I got my first Xbox 360 at nine years old, I was introduced to the NBA2K video game series. Looking back, this changed my life forever. I can still remember the pristine green plastic case labeled “NBA2k14” with an image of LeBron James in his №6 Miami Heat jersey doing his signature chalk toss at the scorer’s table before a game. NBA2K provided me with my first access to every player on every NBA roster. I could easily select from any team in the NBA, and see each player with a rating attached to them. This video game rating only determined how skilled each player was in the game, but it also gave me a sense of how talented each player was in real life. These ratings helped me understand every player’s strengths and weaknesses along with how valuable they were to their team. Sitting down on the out-of-style white couch placed in the living room of the rental house my family was staying in at the time, for the first time in my life I watched NBA games with a sense of familiarization of each player and an expectation of what I would see from them on the court. I finally felt like I could truly enjoy games since I had found a purpose for spectating.
I continued to play NBA2K through the years, and my love for the video game enhanced my love for the game of basketball. Entering middle school, I decided that basketball was my true passion, so I quit playing football and baseball to focus solely on hoops. I joined a club team and continued to sharpen my skills and knowledge of the game by taking in information from my coaches and applying it on the court through hard work and practice.
Not only did I join a club basketball team in the sixth grade, but I also transferred schools for a private education rather than joining my elementary friends at the local middle school. This change in schools was one of the hardest trials of my life. I can still remember curling up in my bed at night looking at the black hole of darkness on my ceiling, wishing that I didn’t have to leave my friends to go to some nerdy school where I could be in a classroom of students at “my level” of learning. I would look up into that black hole with the feeling that I was being forced to leave my earth and dive into it. But that was not the reality. Basketball was the stepping stone to building relationships with my new classmates that would last to this day. My fondest memory of my first year at my new school was quietly walking toward the freshly painted blacktop basketball court and asking another shy sixth-grader that was also new to the school, “So what’s your favorite team?”. He responded with “The Warriors,” which at the moment I was a little annoyed with since they had just won their first championship that year. I decided to go on with the conversation, however, that one simple question that I asked another timid little boy began the friendship I share with one of my current best friends.
This life experience opened my eyes to the impact sports can have on people’s lives. Basketball constructed a foundation for me to form many of the lasting relationships I have developed with my peers. Sports are not solely just games in which talented professionals compete against one another for a living wage. They are not just activities that parents place their children in to keep them active and out of the house. Sports are spectacular events that unite whole communities of supporters for generations, all because they share the common interest of athletics.
