Athletes should try to expand their identity

Ultimately competitive sports comes to an end for all

Tim Vanstone salutes Prince Albert Raiders fans after his last game.

Competitive sports will come to an end for all athletes.

Whether that end comes today, tomorrow or more than 20 years from now, all athletes eventually leave competitive sports. The end can come via injury, a health matter that pops up, a decision by a coach or manager or you ultimately get brought down physically by Father Time.

Father Time is undefeated, even though NFL greatest of all-time quarterback Tom Brady is trying to do his best to change that record.

When the end comes, the biggest hurdle athletes deal with is loss of identity. For athletes that compete at the highest level their sport has to offer, they have usually been life consumed by their sport to the point that they don’t have any other way to identify themselves besides being an athlete.

With sport specialization taking place at younger ages in Canada, that only adds to streamlining a person into seeing themselves as an athlete. Outside of school, the only people school aged athletes deal with are usually other athletes and coaches.

It gets to the point that the idea of going to a function like a school dance is laughable.

You are a hockey player, a football player, a baseball player, a softball player, a gymnast, a lacrosse player, a swimmer, a hurdler in track and field or a competitor in whatever sport discipline you pursue.

The Saskatoon Blades enjoy a win in December of 2020.

Back on June 8, 2015, Claire Hanna likely wrote the gold standard piece regarding athlete transition and identity on her personal blog, where she went through what it was like to be cut from Canada’s senior national women’s volleyball team. If you want to check that piece out, you can do so by clicking right here. It is well worth your time to read Hanna’s piece.

Now in 2021, it is crazy to think there are people out there that don’t even think of Hanna as a star volleyball player or know of her ties to the sport. They see her as a sports media personality for CTV Regina.

Due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic that has clamped down the world since March of 2020, athletes have had to deal with the loss of identity issue in one form or another earlier than they had to.

In Canada, most athletes that are under the age of 18 have seen their lives in sports ground to a halt. The lucky ones have been able to train on a regular basis.

The extremely lucky ones have participated in a handful of competitions.

The unlucky ones have had to keep motivated training at home as they aren’t able to get into any sports facilities due to restrictions brought in via public health orders.

Athletes have had to deal with how these changes have impacted their mental health. It would not be an exaggeration to say some have taken the halt of sports a lot harder than others.

U of Saskatchewan Huskies football players enjoy a TD in 2019.

For a lot of athletes, it seems like they have lost the purpose for their very existence.

What seems to be forgotten is the root problem is that sports have become the thing that defines these athletes as a person. Sports become who you are versus what you do.

To think this can happen to a person under the age of 18 or like someone who is 11 or 12-years-old is crazy. They are only just starting out on the grand marathon of life.

For the athletes that have hit the point where sports defines them as a person, they got conditioned to think that way, because there is such an emphasis in sports specialization to pursue a chosen sport at all costs with tunnel focus.

This is often instilled in athletes even as young as age 11 or 12.

For these athletes, it is lost that they are also a son, a daughter, a grandson, a granddaughter or a student at the school they attend. These identifiers are not as sexy as being an athlete, but those identifications are there.

To be fair, even those in the adult working world can fall into that trap. If anyone is doing anything that consumes them, they can fall into that trap.

For athletes, the best way to manage the funk where sport becomes the thing that defines who you are is to find another interest. If an athlete is out of action due to restrictions that were put in place to combat COVID-19, now might be the opportune time to find another interest.

The Saskatoon Stars enjoy a win in 2020.

Finding another interest doesn’t have to mean finding a career, but you can do things like taking first aid training to maybe lean towards maybe working as a paramedic one day.

Interests could mean being a fan of a musical artist or band. You might even take up playing an instrument like a guitar or drums or you might become a singer.

You might get into things like following science fiction and get to know all the ins and outs of a franchise like Star Wars. You might take an interest in comic book heroes put out by D.C. or Marvel.

You might even get into following the sports entertainment spectacle of professional wrestling in the WWE or AEW. After I started following WWE and AEW a little more closely back in January, I found out talent like Alexa Bliss, Sasha Banks, Britt Baker, Bobby Lashley and Drew McIntyre have interacted with youngsters that are training to be just like them.

It should be noted this training does not include trying moves you see in WWE and AEW programming outside of a supervised training environment.

Besides those suggestions, you could also take up a hobby of making your own clothes or perfecting your cooking skills in the kitchen.

Come to think of it, high level athletes that come from farm or ranching families might have the advantage of being a bit more rounded, because they have been likely helping out with activities on the family farm or ranching operation at a very young age.

The U of Saskatchewan Huskies women’s hockey season end in 2020.

Overall, it will be beneficial for competitive and high level athletes if they can find ways to expand their identity even in a small way.

Even after the COVID-19 pandemic passes, the day will still come when competitive sports come to an end for all athletes.

If you have any comments you would like to pass along about this post, feel free to email them to stankssports@gmail.com.

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