preview

The Success Of Team Sports Essay

Satisfactory Essays

For decades athletic coaches have preached to their teams the value of working together as one cohesive unit in order to achieve the desired goal: a victory. Players have endured countless hours of practice, learned their specific role on the team, studied offensive and defensive plays, and most importantly, were taught to trust the fact that the athlete next to him or her will fulfill their assignment on any given play. In football, when all eleven players work together in harmony towards a common goal, the likelihood of the team experiencing success on any given play, while not guaranteed, is vastly enhanced. It is because of this fact that coaches of team sports are oft to say “there is no I in team” (Anonymous, n. d.) as a means of emphasizing the importance of group unity and discouraging rogue actions. However, there are those key moments in a game when a single player does make the difference in the outcome of the contest. Still using the football scenario, it could be a running back reversing course in order to get into the open field; a quarterback crazily scrambling in order to make a pass; a linebacker causing a fumble; or a defensive back intercepting the ball. All of the aforementioned situations have the potential of turning the tide of the game and granting the team the win, but each event was the result of one player’s effort. Thus, in a team sport there are those times when the individual will do something independent of what the team has been taught and

Get Access