SportsCheating

After reading the piece on "athletics is over the edge" [1], there are many points that I would have to agree with. Today, athletes think they have to do whatever it takes to become a winner. They will do anything and everything to make sure that their team, or they are the best. During high school I was very involved in sports and have played on many state wide teams and have been coached by the best in the state. As a player I have not been evolved with a team that did not want to win. That is part of playing the sport. Winning the game and doing your best to win are both important. AlthoughI had that attitude I never thought about taking anything to make sure that I was the best. As a graduate student, I am not that old, and the only thing that we had available to us at that time was just HARD WORK. Athletes who are not interested in hard work to be the best are just fooling themselves.

It seems that this kind of thinking is gone. Players want to be the best without putting in hard work. They look to do as little work as possible and still be the best. I find this true in school as well. Whether it is the classroom or sports, cheating is common. How does someone do that? The answer is simple. They have come to think that it is okay. Everybody is doing it, or they think that's true. So what is the problem with performance enhancing supplements or drugs? In my opinion, it is taking the easy way out. It has become so bad in sports that Major League Baseball had to have the United States Congress step in and make sure they would not have drugs in baseball.

It is hard knowing that the “pros” are doing whatever it takes to make sure they are on the top of their game. What kind of message does that send to the little leaguers just starting to play the game? Parents see this and they should be telling their children that what the pros are doing is the wrong thing and that no one should be going that far just to hit a home run. But, that is not the case all the time. At times, parents are just as guilty as professional players of willing to do what it takes to make their child the best. Now days, it seems that parents are always pushing their children to be winners. What is wrong with just playing the game? Why can't parents take a step back and ask themselves, "Would they have wanted their parents doing the same to them when they were growing up?" Parents have to understand that they can not make their children do what they themselves wish they could do. It seems that some dad’s in sports wish they could have been the best, so now they are trying to make their child the best.

I believe that if they asked the children what they wanted they would say that they want to do something different. Parents can take a sport that children might love and make it something they hate. When sports become a job, they are not fun and that will make a kid not work hard at it or even quit. I have known athletes who have stopped playing sports because someone was pushing them too hard to win. That "someone" is generally the parents! Many parents are crazy when it comes to their children’s sports. And, yet it is crazy to think that parents would want to teach their children that it is okay to cheat at something (such as drugs and supplements). If the parents give steroids to their children, I think they should be looked at by social services. They should be put in the same group of parents that abuse their children.

Supplements in sports have to be looked at as cheating. If someone is taking something to help himself perform at a higher level other than hard work, it must be looked at as cheating. One argument that I have is that when Sammy Sosa used a corked bat during one of his games, people believed that he was cheating. A corked bat is a way of performance enhancing; it is hard to say that this is not true. Corking a bat will help a player hit the ball longer and so will taking steroids. Both allow a player to have something more other than what is considered legal.

Parents have also been known to try to kick out a coach because the team is not the best or is not winning enough games. I believe that there are great coaches that do not win one game a season. I do not know why parents do not understand that sports last a season, but the lessons of life last forever. I had a coach in high school that did not know a thing about the sport that we were playing, but he was a great person. He taught us something about the sport, but more importantly he taught us about life. Those "life lessons" I still use today, but the sports knowledge is just something that is put away in the back of my head and is rarely used.

Sports should be kept clean. Sports are part of many peoples lives. They create friendships and bonds between people. They should be kept clean for the good of all who participate in them, especially the young kids. Athletes who are growing up see that others are using drugs and are successful. I am afraid they are going to have the attitude "if you cannot beat them, join them." If this happens more and more sports will be nothing. Children will not learn what it means to work hard for something. Sports will not be clean or fun. Sports will become a huge joke. Kids need sports and I can only hope that they can be free of performance enhancers so that they can learn the true value of hard work.

References

1. Boone, T. (2006). The Culture of Athletics is Over the Edge. [Online]. http://www.boonethink.com/