Most of us assume that, on Aug. 10, the U.S. Men’s Olympic basketball team will play for a gold medal, and I assume many Forest Park youth will be watching. What messages, subliminally, will they be getting?
When I was about 10 years old, my father took me to a Wisconsin Badgers football game. When we got to the end of the ramp and I beheld the field and the fans, I just about jumped out of my skin. Cheerleaders, 80,000 fans, and the marching band playing “On Wisconsin.”
And when the over 100 players, clad in red, charged onto the field, the crowd went nuts. To this 10-year-old, the whole experience was thrilling, intoxicating.
My father let me soak the whole dramatic scene in for a few minutes and then said to me, “Someday you’ll be out there.”
And I believed him.
I was inspired enough by that experience and by watching the Packers on TV to go through the torturous pre-season conditioning in the heat of August and put up with the bumps, bruises and injuries that went along with playing football from seventh grade through my sophomore year in high school.
That’s one part of the American myth, isn’t it? In America, you can become anything you want to be. If you just work hard enough and make the necessary sacrifices, you can achieve your dream.
I can picture 12-year-old girls in town watching Katie Ledecky setting an Olympic record in the 1500-meter freestyle, and the next day running over to the Forest Park pool, diving in the water and imagining that in 10 years they will be standing on the podium, wearing a gold medal and hearing our national anthem being played.
And I bet a lot of boys, after watching Stephen Curry, LeBron James and Kevin Durant do their thing, will hustle over to the Roos Center to practice their jump shots from outside the arc and shouting, “Nothin’ but net!”
A website called AI Overview listed the benefits of watching the Olympics, especially when done as a family:
Inspiration: The Olympics can inspire children to dream of becoming Olympians and to emulate the athleticism.
Sportsmanship: The Olympics can teach children about sportsmanship, respect, friendship, and excellence. These values can help children develop into well-rounded individuals who understand camaraderie, solidarity, and fair play.
Competition: The Olympics can teach children about healthy competition and collaboration.
Physical activity: Regarding this last benefit, the Forest Park Middle School athletic program includes boys basketball and volleyball; girl’s basketball, softball and volleyball; and co-ed soccer. D91 offers neither swimming nor gymnastics which were featured during the first week of the games in Paris, but Proviso East does have a swimming team.
How many times have we heard that we Americans are overweight and out of shape? If the Olympics can motivate our kids and their parents to participate in physical activity in addition to watching sports on TV, great.
The Olympics can give rise to dreams in our young people, but they can also create disabling illusions. For example, they say that cream rises to the top, but what if you are part of a bottle of milk that is 90% skim?
What we are watching night after night is the cream that has risen to the top. I enjoy watching these excellent athletes perform, but in so doing I have to resist comparing myself to Stephen Curry in terms of his ability and my worth as a person.
It took me four years of playing football badly, plus a brain concussion, to convince me that I was never going to play quarterback for the Wisconsin Badgers and to have fun playing intramural touch football instead.
Apolo Ohno, a retired gold medal-winning speed skater, said the quest to be the best, to win a gold medal can be so all-consuming that the sport becomes your identity. So when you retire, suddenly you no longer know who you are.
Jennifer Wallace wrote a book titled Never Enough. In an interview she said, “I have enjoyed achievements in my life, and I want my kids to enjoy them. But I believe the harm in our achievement culture is when our kids absorb the message that they only matter, that they’re only valued, when they achieve.”
Several years ago, columnist David Brooks said in an interview, “We have slipped into some bad values. … We steer our kids toward career success, and not toward moral joy.”
The Olympics can remind us of some core values — sportsmanship, respect, friendship, excellence and it’s not winning or losing but how we play the game.
So enjoy watching these high-performance athletes, but keep reminding yourself and your kids that you/they are worth as much as those Olympians are, not in the free market, of course, but as precious human beings.