The Unrecognized Power of the Individual Sport
An early blog post “How Sports Can Lead to Greater Female Success”, discusses the benefits sports can have for females and demonstrates why all young girls should be encouraged to play sports. We are trying to build the future generation of victorious women. Female CEO’s. Female Doctors. Female Scientists. We want to cultivate an era of strong, independent, successful women, and as proven, sports can assist us in doing so. Yet, a lot of times when we think about how the athletic community can drive female success, we think about skills such as team building and leadership that typically only come with team sports. What if we started rewiring the way we address the benefits of sports and also encourage young girls to play individual sports? How can this contribute to the next generation of female CEOs, doctors, and scientists? Here are a few life lessons that individual sports can teach people, allowing the next generation of females to thrive:
Motivation and Determination
Whether its golf, swimming, tennis, or marathons, individual sports require the individual to one, love the sport, and two, create a sense of internal motivation and determination, if one wants to be successful at least. In a team sport, if one doesn’t feel like attending practice, they are affecting other people, the practice plan, and bringing the moral of the team down. However, aside from a coaches schedule, an individual sport forces one to push themselves to go practice on days they may not want to. This leads to an inner motivation and drive to be and do better in their sport, a skill that is necessary for becoming successful in any occupational field later in life.
Self-Accountability and Self-Reliance
These values and traits go along with motivation and determination, as when participating in an individual sport you must be able to hold yourself accountable. Like previously stated, there might not be anyone to hold you accountable for coming to practice or putting extra work in. There is nobody else to blame a bad rep on besides yourself. There may not be someone to inspire you on days you just don’t feel like it. Furthermore, with an individual sport comes with the ability to rely on yourself and your skill as there is nobody else to blame or complain about when you don’t perform well. On a team, it is easy to blame others for a range of situations. These skills can be very helpful in the future work as place as holding yourself accountable and relying on yourself to complete a task would be beneficial in any field. Further, this is not a skill you can teach so if you develop these traits through your individual sport you can put yourself in a better position for workplace success.
Coping with Loss
Losing is one of the most difficult parts of sports to confront. No athlete likes to lose. Yet every athlete does. When on a team sport, you can lean on your teammates after a tough loss and have people to boost your confidence. However, coping with loss when playing an individual sport is much more difficult, mainly because of that accountability aspect. Not only is there nothing to blame besides your performance, but also there is nobody there going through it with you. Sure maybe your coach or your parents are devastated by your loss, but they may not encounter the same feeling. There is no secret to the ideal way to deal with loss but it is something that over time you can learn through sports, and the lesson will be even larger through an individual sport. This trait can be so valuable in any field as you will know how to comeback after a unsatisfactory job interview, a complete mess up while working, or even a failed experiment in your lab.
It is important to note that athletes who play individual sports still have a huge support system of family, coaches, and other participants. The takeaway should not be that if you play an individual sport that you will be on a deserted island, rather that if you play an individual sport a lot of these skills will have to come from you the MAJORITY of the time. That is the fact that can help cultivate the next female CEO’s, doctors, and scientists. There are lessons in everything, and individual sports is no exception!