X-Games

I can't resist putting my thoughts about the X-Games on "paper". I am a huge sports fan in every possible way. I love to compete myself, although I have no skills. I run road races, duathlons, bike rides, and will soon complete my first triathlon. I love to play basketball, soccer, lacrosse, and virtually any other sport I get the chance to play. As a teacher and coach, I can definitely see the value of sports in a young person's life. The lessons of trusting your teammates, being a trustworthy teammate, and handling winning and losing with grace are invaluable. The ability to find victory in defeat is crucial as well. (What did I do particularly well today? What did I learn today to make myself better tomorrow?)

The world of professional sports is an entirely different thing, though, and too often, youth sports seem to emulate that world. On TV we daily watch the desperate struggle to win, or to make more money than other athletes. Violence has become commonplace in professional sports, and we write it off as players' being emotional. All of us are emotional, but most of us don't get to punch somebody at work and write it off as really caring about our jobs!

This week, I've spent a lot of time watching the X-Games, and they always renew my faith in sports. Perhaps part of it is that there are very few events in the X-Games where people directly compete against others at the same time, but the sportsmanship is astounding. Simply thinking about the final night of the games on Sunday, there is plenty of fodder for optimism. I watched the Snowmobile Best Trick competition in which riders did insane things off a huge ramp with a snowmobile. Hoyer went for a trick that nobody had completed in competition previously - the double back-flip. Unfortunately, and somewhat gruesomely, he didn't complete the trick on Sunday, and instead crashed nose-first, with the 450-lb snowmobile landing on top of him. The injuries were bad, but not life-threatening. What really struck me about this situation, though, was the reaction of all his competitors, especially Heath Frisby. Frisby was also planning on trying a trick that had never been completed in competition - the front flip. Hoyer's failure greatly increased Frisby's chances of winning. Instead of celebrating his own good luck at Hoyer's failure, as many mainstream professional athletes would have done, Frisby dropped everything and sprinted for a monitor where he could see if his friend/competitor was all right. Later in the evening, when Frisby landed his front-flip, everyone in the crowd, including his competitors, went nuts. They were so excited about being witnesses to history, and so supportive of their friend's success, that nothing else mattered. In what other sport do you still see that kind of sportsmanship?

One other moment in that same broadcast of the X-Games really struck me as amazing. The games ended with the finals of the men's snowboard Superpipe, an event that Shaun White was expected to win. Not surprisingly, when it came down to White's final run of the night, he had already won the gold medal. He could have ridden straight down the center of the pipe without pulling any tricks at all and he still would have won. What did White do? He threw down the most difficult run in the history of Snowboarding! At the end of his run, when he was tired and had lost a lot of his speed, he combo-ed two tricks - one that only two people in the world can do, and one that only Shaun White can do - to finish his run. He wound up with a perfect 100, the highest score ever given in snowboarding. In the NFL, when a game is meaningless, the team sits its best players. In a similar situation, Shaun White took the biggest risk in his sport's history. I can't necessarily blame the NFL teams for this, because they have to be looking toward the future - they have a franchise to worry about. I do, however, appreciate the approach Shaun White took. This non-mainstream sport is still about the thrill and the love of the sport, not about winning championships and earning money.

In a world where sports have become a major business and fans have become jaded, the X-Games remind me of what sports are all about. A big thank you to Shaun White, Bobby Brown, and Sarah Burke for reminding me why I love sports and competition, and I can't wait for next year!