The NBA and the NHL playoffs are happening as I write this. Visiting my dad recently, we had the games on in the background as we tried our best to beat the pants off each other in cards. Watching the Golden State Warriors battle the Sacramento Kings, giving everything they had down to literally the last 100ths of a second had me jumping in my chair and I didn’t even care who won (spoiler alert, it was the Kings). But it was only game 1 of the series so who knows what will happen?  That’s what I love about watching sports: for me, it is one of the greatest escapes of all time. I love not knowing how it will end, the underdog coming from behind to win – the Cinderella story!

I actually never played any organized sports because I was always afraid of letting people down by not being good enough (there’s been a lot of therapy around this and there will be a lot more). But I admire the players so much, the strength of mind is amazing to me – ice in the veins they say – to be down by one, standing on the free throw line with less than 3 seconds left on the clock, to me, is a perfect illustration of grace under pressure. I envy the camaraderie and discipline the successful teams seem to have. And, sometimes those uniforms are super cute! 

I started watching sports because of my dad. He was the only male in our house growing up – 5 women, a female dog, and my dad – poor guy had to deal with  soooo many hormones. I love him so much and wanted to be a part of the things he was interested in so I would plop down beside him to watch whatever game was on. At first I didn’t really get the appeal so I asked him why he liked it so much. He said that he liked not knowing what would happen and no matter what, it wasn’t going to truly affect the world one way or another. Even as a kid, I loved how safe that made me feel. 

For kids, sports is such a great way to learn to work together, listen, practice, be a good loser, and maybe more importantly, a good winner. I will always remember standing with a friend of mine (who is an incredible athlete) watching our college alma mater try to win the final 4. We were losing and people started talking about bad calls and he said you never want to blame someone else, overcoming all of the obstacles is part of the game. Talk about life lessons!  All of these lessons while getting some of that excess energy out before they come home? Sign me up.  And of course, little kids in their little uniforms are so adorable!

My husband will tease me that I know more about players’ personal lives and uniforms than I do about the rules of whatever game they are playing. He’s not wrong – I love knowing who they are married to, if they have a family, a dog, all the cute stuff. But that doesn’t make the game any less exciting for me, in fact it actually makes me more invested.

The point is, the world can feel hard. It can feel like no one can get along – but I’ve never seen politics or religion come up in a stadium full of fans cheering the home team on to a win. Sports help us remember we have so much more in common than we think. Go team!