There’s been a lot this year written about athletics at Brown — why they benefit or don’t benefit the University, what athletes represent, issues about laundry. Before anyone gets upset, what I say applies not only to athletes here, but also to other community members who relish in demanding athletic and physical activity. I write to suggest a different way of looking at athletics: what can be learned from an athletic or physical experience that cannot be learned in a classroom.
The first is an understanding of commitment. Those who have played a sport or participated in physically demanding activities know there are days they would rather not go out and train, row, run, climb, swim or play squash. But as an athlete, you learn to work through the tough days and commit to performing well despite low motivation. It’s easy to be tired when you have schoolwork — it’s easy to take a nap, watch a movie and tell yourself you’ll get up early to train instead. But no athlete who was ever great took a nap and put off training until the next morning. In athletics, effort almost always trumps talent. The same cannot be said in school.
Understanding commitment leads me to my second point: dependence upon others. Aside from the rare exception of the prodigy, an athlete is dependent upon his or her teammates and coaches for success. Athletes commit to showing up for practice not only for their own sakes, but because they understand others depend on them, and they depend on others. Athletics fosters an incredible exchange of trust given and trust received that cannot be found in the classroom.
On the field, in the boat and on the court, you depend upon others. You trust that your teammates will sacrifice themselves for you and you for them — that when you go into battle, they will stand and battle with you, as you will with them. Nobody asks you to do battle — to sacrifice yourself — in the classroom. The physical and mental obstacles that athletes overcome together foster a trust that cannot be found anywhere in academics.
Most important of all are those lessons that are built from overcoming obstacles, the lessons of mental toughness. Mental toughness in athletics is many things. It is the energy that pushes us to practice when motivation is low. It is the strength to keep going in the face of incredible physical pain. It is the resolve to put your best foot forward every time you are on the line and gather yourself in the face of staggering defeat or failure. And it’s the understanding that limits we think exist are often simply the barriers that block us from reaching our true potentials.
The lessons of mental toughness athletes take away from their experiences push them to do amazing things — in training, in competition and in their daily lives. Mental toughness cannot be taught. It must be learned through experience, pain and grit. The classroom can teach us failure, but it cannot teach us to achieve through failure. In the end, overachieving is nothing more than reaching one’s optimum potential.
Finally, athletics cannot be faked. It cannot be bought, screwed, manipulated or cheated. There are no shortcuts. Athletes are always under the gun, testing in training far more often than we do in school. Time trials on the track, splits on the ergometer, inches of your vertical — these are not numbers you can guess at, make up or change on the stopwatch. Athletes are at the mercy of their training in ways that students in school are not. Both athletics and academics demand a code of honor, honesty and integrity. But we ferociously vilify athletes who cheat, because unfortunately, we hold honesty in athletics to a much higher standard than we do honesty in academics. To those who have been honest throughout your academic careers, I deeply commend you. But I think you would be hard-pressed to find someone who has not taken a shortcut at one point or another.
Athletics is a test of concentration, time commitment, patience and skill. It demands that we concentrate on honing our bodies, perfecting techniques and sacrificing enormous amounts of time in order to improve. Athletes are artists, if I may be so bold. And I think it would be worthwhile to consider offering credit for athletics classes here at Brown. The time and effort athletes spend training is at least equal to that which art majors and theater majors put into their work. It would promote physical activity and encourage people to get up, get out and train their bodies with the same respect that they train their minds. If VISA 0100: “Studio Foundation” is a class, why can’t PHYSED 0060 be a class as well?
Danny Delaney ’15 enjoys sweating on the erg machine as often as possible.
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