The impact athletics can have on one’s life is outright astounding. Whether it impacts performance in school, work, or a wide variety of other activities one may choose to pursue, involvement in sports has the ability to lead one to success in practically all facets of life. There are several key lessons and abilities necessary to success which, through participation in sports, can be taught to kids from a young age and built upon through continuous involvement.
Perhaps the most valuable lesson that athletics teaches is that of commitment. As coaches and participants constantly reiterate, no person can experience sustained success without showing a strong level of commitment to their sport. Through not only the constant repetition of this saying, but also through witnessing actual examples of this lesson constantly being proven true, kids involved in athletics typically pick up the importance of this characteristic fairly quickly. The effect of commitment is evident both in those who display the trait and find success, and those who begin to fall behind due to a deficiency.
This is a lesson which transcends the realm of athletics and comes to promote success in all branches of life. Regardless of one’s natural abilities in a field, without sustained commitment to progress in that field, one will eventually find themselves at the point in which their well of talents has dried up and they are no longer achieving at the rate they had become accustomed to. A child exposed to athletics is far less likely to hit such a point, for they would have learned the necessity of commitment and the benefit it plays to them. This point is made apparent in a report released by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). In this report it was detailed how those who participated in a varsity sport in high school (a level requiring a fair amount of commitment) were significantly more likely to display higher levels of achievement in the classroom and have a much greater chance of finishing both any level of post-secondary education along with earning a bachelor’s degree. Another key note of this report was the notice that a student earning the distinction of being a varsity team captain or most valuable player (roles requiring even greater dedication than simply varsity participation) were shown to be even more successful in all of these areas used as common determinations of achievement.
As it has been shown, involvement in athletics is something which teaches the value of commitment and dedication to those participating, something which carries over and has positive effects in all areas of one’s life. It cannot be overstressed how crucial this bit of knowledge is to future success, and it is for this reason that the value of participation in athletics is something which also cannot be overstressed.