Most of my college graduates who studied athletic training with me, were former athletes or athletic in some form or fashion. I was no exception to this profile and continue to challenge myself athletically. I decided this year, already in my 30s and after experiencing child birth, to pursue my desire to learn two new sports—parkour and surfing—and although I may never become the most impressive athlete in these sports to witness, the challenge both psychologically and physically have played a tremendous part in building confidence in myself, personally and professionally. The experience of learning something new is always a humbling one, especially as an adult. Despite being in a position of authority in your chosen field, once you step into unfamiliar territory, you become the student again, subject to the bumps and bruises of being a novice. Reaching small milestones to mark improvement are fervently celebrated with a sort of candid pride. Such sentiments keep a person in touch with their inner youth while, relative to this case, appreciating the beauty and discipline of athleticism. I wonder sometimes, if some individuals working in the sports industry (not including the athletes, obviously), would benefit from retreats of this nature.
Perhaps once a year, executive management can go through a “Hell Week” to remind them of the physical and mental grind that is involved with achieving athletic excellence. It seems priorities become skewed over time and it is eventually forgotten that the athlete is the main stakeholder when it comes to sports. The athlete’s body is the greatest asset of all assets in the sports industry and before all else, this asset should be properly tended to. Clearly, in T&T, this is not the case when national teams are still travelling to participate in tournaments without medical support and athletes are part of training programs that are grossly imbalance, causing injuries and burnout—just two very common representations of bogus management and woolgathering (a.k.a. BMW) that litter the local sports industry. Yet, we remain heartbroken and devastated when our athletes do not come up trumps in international competition.
Emily Dickinson claimed, “If you take care of the small things, the big things take care of themselves. You can gain more control over your life by paying closer attention to the little things.”
This philosophy can extend beyond the personal into the business realm, including that of sports. I understand the dynamics of the sports industry as a business and how other industries become tied in, that make it the hugely profitable and exciting industry that it is—corporate sponsorship, the media and marketing, etc. In T&T, however, such concerns are on a small scale keeping the supporting complexities at a manageable level. My point here is, without the wins a sport becomes not much more than a past-time or hobby and there is no money to be made at that level. Fewer wins mean less hype, fewer fans and less revenue. So while we operate on such a small and simple scale, why not keep it simple and focus on providing the little things such as health care and training needs. There consistently remains one grossly neglected area of local sport and athletics that must be better and more consistently highlighted and that is the psychological part of it. A game loss for an athlete is as devastating as a bad call on the stock market for a trader. Injuries for an athlete are in essence, the threat of being fired from your job.
The last minute notification of not being able to attend a tournament, regardless of the reason, is the equivalent to investing millions in a failed venture. For the young athlete in particular, when the fight to stay focused on training goes up against the tempting nature of care-free adolescence, the disappointments due to BMWs hit just as hard if not harder due to the fragile mental state of a child. Mistakes will happen in the sports industry, just as they do in any other industry but perhaps a better attempt can be made to minimise these errors. So, as I said, maybe a “Hell Week” ran by athletes once a year, when executive management step into the shoes of athletes will help identify what the small things are so that the bigger things can better take care of themselves.
Source: www.guardian.co.tt
By Asha De Freitas-Moseley