Ice ’n’ Go: Score in Sports and Life

Preface

Preface Sports coverage is a constant 24/7 in our world. For many folks sports offer a relief from their daily routine and often bring sundry people together, producing common ground for fans and athletes alike who would not otherwise be interacting because they are separated by ethnicity, age, geography, class, politics, or religion. Frequently that disconnect disappears when we celebrate together team’s triumphs or commiserate over athlete’s injuries. As never before we are amazed when athletes are able to perform unimaginable feats due to such game changers as innovative training techniques ; sports psychology; the emphasis on good nutrition; continuing, in-depth media coverage; the scope of medical advancements; and a new understanding of the importance of intense rehabilitation. Some of the pertinent issues I cover include the ways that children participate in organized sports, often at the expense of both their physical wellbeing and the joy they would experience in “unorganized” play. As an athletic trainer of elite athletes who perform at the highest level, I know the pressures their sport and our culture place on them, pressures that may also create impossibly high expectations for youth and recreational athletes as they too strive for excellence. In a modern, big-time university program, I think that what is of considerable interest are how conflicted some student-athletes become and how they deal with education, burnout, injury, and unrealistic expectations. I applaud sport’s many benefits. As athletes are maturing, they develop such values as dedication, loyalty, sportsmanship, leadership, team concepts , commitment, and a strong work ethic. Then again, I believe we ought to recognize the detriments—the fact that too many times sport emphasizes winning at all costs, and is fertile ground for homophobia and our culture’s deep insecurities over body image, shape, and size. Another topic worth examining is the evolutionary history of Title IX, the legislation pivotal to providing new opportunities to women and girls and placing gender equity in sport at the center of every educational institution . Sadly, we still fall far short of the goals. As important as sport is to so many of us, the role it plays is often out of balance. In this book my aims are both descriptive and prescriptive. Based on my years of working with Preface xiv highly successful sports programs and remarkable athletes, I see how great the players’ achievements are and unfortunately how skewed our views can become in a sports-obsessed culture. I prescribe antidotes to the ills that sport can cause to help every athlete who seeks balance, health, play, and fun in their lives. My own struggles to take the right road to achieve a healthy balance were instrumental in my developing the model SCORE, which I introduce in chapter one. After many years of rarely taking a break from the demands of being a full-time athletic trainer, I embarked on a twenty-seven-day odyssey pedaling my bicycle across America with twenty-four other cyclists. To our credit, we mostly didn’t compete with each other, and we weren’t trying to win anything. Surviving each day was victory enough! We did connect with this incredible country of ours, and while the trip was often grueling, my engagement in this “sport” gave me great joy. Every chapter contains excerpts from a journal that I kept during the ride, an experience that was the inspiration for this book. I hope that by reading it you will be motivated as I was to find the capable athlete, as well as the whole person within. A Note on Interviews The authors have been privileged to interview administrators, government officials, healthcare professionals, athletes, parents of athletes, and a number of other contributors to this story. We have tried to identify clearly whom we are quoting, and a thorough listing of interviewees can be found at the back of the book. In the interest of readability, we have elected not to provide formal citations for these quotations. ...