Freshmen basketball player, Lauren Hill, of Mount St. Joseph's College, has incurable brain cancer and has months to live. On November 2, 2014, she played in a college game and scored the first basket of the game. Lauren has taken on the mission of increasing cancer awareness, and raising money for research. Her attitude is admirable - she has willed herself to focus on something positive out of a tragic situation. My thoughts go to her and her family.
Though this story is a bit of a tangent for this blog, the story spurred me to think about sport and the role it plays in contemporary US society. Why sport in a time of difficulty? For Lauren, the answer is simple. It was her dream to play college basketball, and she was thrilled to do it and raise attention for a worthy cause. She was heartened by the support.
One of the things that sport does is to literally bring people together - as in the same building. In this case, people showed up to support a young woman's dream and a young woman's cause. The game was attended by over 10,000 fans who filled Xavier University's basketball arena in Cincinnati. In the US, sporting events and major pop music concerts are two events that can reliably bring people to share the same physical, and often psychic/emotional space. Sport can offer a forum to express some of our thoughts and emotions.
How else could 10,000 people show up to support a person, or a cause, in a clear way? I'm not saying that this is a good thing, but it's a reality of the culture we live in. Sport reflects and inspires all sorts of human behavior ranging from greed and arrogance to achievement and self-sacrifice. Stories like this show the good that sport can help bring out. Thank you Lauren.
No comments:
Post a Comment