The Impact of Sports

WRITTEN BY KATY REASONER

My love affair with basketball began at Belgrade Intermediate School. I played in grade-school and then with Big Sky Basketball through the summer before ninth grade when my basketball career was ended by an injury. My stepdad put in a hoop at our house, buried at least 3-feet deep and full of concrete—a permanent fixture that’s still there, even though my parents moved away from that house in 2006. I spent hours and hours shooting hoops in the driveway by myself. The discipline learned from having a passion for sports can’t be learned anywhere else.

My own child’s journey to finding his passion for basketball started a little later than mine. After a move out of the Gallatin Valley to a small Montana town, he was encouraged by a coach of the seventh-grade team to give basketball a try. The rest, as they say, is history. We were fortunate that first year to have a great coach – one who was encouraging and treated all players with an equal amount of respect, held them all to the same standard and pushed them to be the best that they could be. And, wow, I saw all those student athletes thrive. Most importantly, they began to learn what sports are really about.

When you play on a team, you learn skills that will take you through absolutely every other experience in your life: how to operate within a team, how to trust others, how to motivate and encourage others, and how to push yourself to your limits, even when the easy option is to quit. My son is 14 now, and this was not our first foray into organized sports. We tried T-ball, soccer, Tae Kwon Do and flag football. None of those inspired him enough to begin to realize his potential, find his passion and learn that you get out of it what you put into it. We can thank that particular coach for the push and the experience that will now affect his entire life.

This eighth-grade season we learned how important it is to have coaches who are passionate and motivated. And my son learned a valuable lesson you can’t find anywhere else; he learned how to step up, encourage and motivate his teammates himself. This lesson will come in handy no matter where he goes in life.

Katy Reasoner is a CACFP Coordinator at Child Care Connections.