Necessity of Sports

I can’t live without sports. This is, in all senses, a literal statement.

First of all, neither my body nor my mind can survive without exercise. You may find this assertion melodramatic, particularly considering all of the “exercise keeps you fit” and “exercise reduces stress” messages that saturate the media; however, I literally go crazy if I don’t exercise. I don’t start “bouncing off the walls,” as one may imagine of a person with too much energy; rather, being inactive actually makes me miserable. I feel as though I am being lazy, and then I feel guilty about being lazy, which then leads me to feeling defeated about feeling guilty but not letting this guilt drive me to correct the laziness. That cycle feeds upon itself until I become downright depressed.

I did an experiment one spring (albeit an accidental experiment, but the results were conclusive enough) during which I exercised every day for several weeks, after which I began to taper off into four-day-long jags of sitting around and doing nothing. What I found was that by day three, I had become so irritable that I was snapping at my family over trivial matters and that overall I felt a sense of dreariness and frustration. This never happened in the summer, because I was on a swim team then; it never happened in the fall, because I played volleyball then; and it never happened in the winter, because that was basketball season. However, I had never learned to play softball, tennis never really stuck, and the only time I ran track was in eighth grade. Thus, I had no spring sport.

The bottom line is that I need to exercise, and I need to exercise constantly. In a way, this could be considered an addiction. A thing becomes an addiction when you start needing it to feel “normal.” Some people are addicted to drugs; some are addicted to sex; perhaps I am addicted to exercise. Before you get jealous, however, consider this: people who don’t exercise especially often get a rush of endorphins when they finally get up and do something active. My body and brain, on the other hand, need that exercise-induced “rush” just to maintain their basic level of functioning. So for most people, exercising is a rewarding experience. For me, not exercising induces the punishment of physical/mental withdrawal.

Besides keeping my mental and physical well-being intact, the second reason I cannot live without sports is that they give me community. I strongly believe that everyone needs some sense of community, whether that community is the geographic kind (comprised of all the families living on a certain block or in a certain apartment building tenants), the circumstantial kind (created by a school or work atmosphere, where you regularly interact with the same people), or the mutual-interest kind (here the possibilities are endless: churches, boy scouts, book clubs…you-name-it). I have relocated many times throughout my life, the most drastic move being my relocation from Pittsburgh to Rochester, in order to attend college. I then relocated again when I studied abroad in England for six months, and a third time when I moved to New York City to pursue an internship—and ultimately my career—in publishing. Each of these times, I had to pack up and go somewhere entirely new, where I had no mental map of the area, no idea of the culture, and no pre-formed social circle. This last item—the social circle—was probably the most difficult obstacle to surmount, because in spite of what others may think, I do not tend to make friends quickly. In fact, the term “friend” is a title I am very hesitant to apply to any individual.

”Community,” however, is different from “friendship.” The two can be associated and even intertwined, but they are very different things. Friendship is a very specific relationship between two people. It can be affected by other people, friends, situations, but friendship is, in a sense, an “agreement” made between the two friends. Community is a group dynamic in which you as an individual feel known, accepted, welcome, and—perhaps most importantly—wanted by a body of people within a certain context or situation. Creating this context to meet these people—this is what sports has done for me.

A sport brings a group of people together who are working toward a common goal. Team sports are the best for this, because the goal is then not only shared conceptually, but it is shared in terms of responsibility, as well. Everyone is needed, and everyone therefore supports one another. Granted, this is not to say that community cannot be found elsewhere. I sought it through all sorts of activities, with many different groups of people. I tried attending and becoming active in various churches. I was a girl scout once upon a time. I participated in numerous music ensembles (children’s choir, concert band, jazz band, my church instrument ensemble, marching band), and I used to take dance classes. Yet none of these things have accomplished what sports have been able to do: to make me an enthusiastic, active member of their community.

The “athletic community” wasn’t nearly so integral to my identity in high school, because at that time, other “communities” were more prevalent. Everyone deferred to their own pre-formed social circles, so sports teams were “extra.” If you got along with your teammates, great, but otherwise you just played together and then went to hang out with your “real” friends, whoever they happened to be. However, once I left for college, all of these pre-formed social circles vanished. No one knew each other, so everyone had to find some common basis for relating to one another. Sports were one way to do that. College athletes banded together like little tribes, spending not practice time together (which constituted a majority of their day), but also attending meals together, partying together, and essentially forming their own social groups—i.e. communities. I very badly wanted to be a part of such a community, and in my sophomore year joining the swim team. It was a lifesaver, because without that team structure and fellowship, I would have felt completely ungrounded and “identity-less” throughout college. In high school, I could easily fall under the “academic” category. At the University of Rochester, however, everyone was “academic!” By joining the swim team, I became a member of the community of College Athletes.

Midway through my junior year, I left Rochester and landed in Brighton, England to study at the University of Sussex for six months. In an entirely new culture, surrounded by entirely new people, I again sought some sense of community. Here again, I came upon like-minded people athletes at a local swimming pool. Granted, this team was nothing like my college team, but the attitude was the same: everyone wanted to get better, everyone wanted everyone else to get better, and most importantly, my attendance was welcomed, remembered, and even encouraged, which made me feel “part of the group.”

This same community-through-athletics happened again twice when I came to New York City. First, while I was living at Columbia University over the summer, I found a small running team in Central Park called the New York Harriers. They willingly took me along on their run the first Tuesday I showed up, and most of the people I met in the group remembered my name every time I returned after that. This was how I became interested in running: these people were all tremendously dedicated to this sport, and they were all very encouraging and enthusiastic. To spend time with them and become a part of their community, I had to become a “Runner.” And so I did.

I ran with the Harriers throughout the two months I lived at Columbia University. When I moved to Queens, the weather was about to get colder, and I began to look for a gym. Most gyms in NYC are inordinately expensive—on the order of several hundred dollars a month—especially those with swimming pools. This was what led me to look into publicly funded gyms, otherwise known as New York Park and Recreation Centers. Armed with a list of every location in the city, I began to visit each gym, surveying the facilities and—consciously or not—gauging the friendliness of the people inside.

On the night I visited the Chelsea facility, I discovered one gymnasium full of volleyball players. Contrary to my usual tentative nature, I went in and asked a girl if this was a league or anyone could play. To my delight, she said that you just had to show up—it was “open court”—and all teams were pickup. This sealed the deal: I paid my dues, joined the gym, and began attending open court volleyball sessions every Monday and Tuesday night.

One of the greatest challenges of moving to NYC was the feeling that I didn’t have any friends. Obviously I still had my friends from high school and college, but none of them were immediately present, and there is simply no substitute for in-the-flesh, face-to-face friends. Once I landed my job at Wiley, I became friendly with a group of lunchtime runners (so much so, in fact, that a group of us travelled together to Philadelphia to run a half marathon). This was certainly a start. However, most of these “work friends” had families. All of them were at least five years older than me, and because we all lived in such disparate parts of the city (or even in different states, since many of them live in NJ, while I live in NY), there was little-to-no chance of “getting together after work” for any reason, never mind on weekends. Also, now that I worked in Hoboken and lived an hour away in Queens, it was extremely inconvenient to try to run with the Harriers. Central Park is situated directly between these two locations, and I couldn’t exactly chain my belongings to a park bench while I joined the Harriers for their 7 p.m. Wednesday night runs. Thus, volleyball was my only other potential source of “friends.”

Finding “friends” at volleyball seemed very unlikely to me, though, because Monday and Tuesday night volleyball sessions were like mini UN meetings: everyone was not only from a different part of the city, but we were all different ages and different ethnicities. Everyone didn’t even speak the same language! Therefore, imagine my surprise when the first time I felt I could say I was “going out with friends” was last Friday night, when a group of thirteen arbitrary volleyball players from our Monday/Tuesday sessions decided to get together for a good-bye dinner. (One regular attendee, Mariana, was leaving to go back to Mexico and finish her master’s thesis.)

Just because I played volleyball with them did not make these people my “friends.” Just because we were going out for dinner also did not make them my “friends.” Instead, I realized that I truly enjoy these people’s company, and the fact that we are now making an effort to expand our social interaction beyond its ordinary, “safe” context was what made me suddenly realize that these people—who had created an athletic “community” for me here in NYC—had now become friends. But without that initial community, created by the sport of volleyball, I never would have come in contact with these people at all.

This is what sports do for me: they make me mentally sound, physically healthy, and socially complete. This is why I have stayed and must remain an athlete for life.