This is the second in a series of blog posts by Rush Olson and Catalina Villegas on the intersection of sports and diversity. You can read it in Spanish here.
We’re each fortunate enough to call Basketball Hall of Famer Nancy Lieberman a friend. Recently Rush conducted interviews with ten young people who had just received college scholarships from Nancy’s charitable organization. Driving home from the shoot, he called Catalina because he was really excited about how the young people had responded to a question about how sports can bring people together.
Per the requirements of the Nancy Lieberman Charities’ scholarship, an applicant must have played at least one sport in high school. So each student has recent knowledge about how it works to play on a team. Tayla Slone, for instance, pointed out that “it's really good for communication and teamwork.”
Several talked about how sport had helped them make new friends. Alexis Gomez explained about “this one girl I went to elementary school with her, middle school, we went through all the grades together. But we never spoke. And until basketball, we were like ‘Oh, you know, like you're so cool. Like, like, how did we did we never meet or never become friends?’ And through basketball became really great friends.”
Through running track, Alexia Barnes made acquaintances she never would have otherwise.
“I would even make friends with people out-of-state and it just was fun and cool to meet people from different states,” she said. “They were friendly and we had a lot of things in common.”
Sharing an appreciation for a sport can ease acceptance of those aspects of life teammates may not have in common. Jeremy Griffin experienced that on his basketball squad.
“One of my teammates this year that I just graduated with, he came from Syria, like not even maybe three or four years ago. So I feel like it brings all types of people together - all types of cultures, races, anything. It's good because you learn a lot, learn a lot about different people. You can figure out what type of stuff you like from other people's cultures.”
Mackenzie Amaya, who participated in cross country, basketball, and softball, noted, “I think just bringing the different people together just helps us bond a little bit better.”
Gomez said, “We all have love for the same thing. We all have the love to play basketball to win games. But we also all have so many different other interests. And so whenever we all get together and play basketball, we're able to learn about other people. And it's just so amazing to know that, ‘Oh, we can all come together.’”
The young people who receive these grants ($10,000 each toward tuition) have to document more than their athletic pursuits. They must also demonstrate academic achievement. They’ve all graduated and are headed to college – basically, they’re smart kids. So they not only observe the effect sport has in overcoming differences, but they also understand why it happens.
“Because you play for passion, you don't really don't care (about) their background,” explained tennis player Seba Al Khawalda about playing on a team with people different from her. “The things that they get discriminated to, they're not as important as the unity of the game that you're going through.”
Jaedan Freeman's own experience provided an example of how the nature of sport discredits stereotypes.
“There's like, so many different races. And a big thing to me in high school is ‘if you're one color, you're not good at that sport.’ So for me, softball was, ‘Oh, you're Black. You're the only girl who's Black on the team. You're not better than anybody.’ And so when you get with a team, and you show them, ‘I'm just like you, I know how to do what you're doing,’ it really opens people's eyes to, like, ‘You're right. We're the same. We do the same thing.’ It's a strong bond. And also it's an eye opener for the world for others that just have a closed mind.”
Zaria Johnson saw the world’s eyes opened a bit wider thanks to a recently concluded sporting event she’d watched.
“The biggest example I can think of is the Olympics. We got people from all over the world coming together.”
Evan Davis played a pair of Olympic sports from opposite ends of the diversity spectrum. That he could enjoy both speaks to the power of sport.
“I play one of the most diverse sports in the world, soccer. Soccer is played all over the world, right? So it brings together a whole bunch of different people, because there's countries in Africa that play soccer, there's countries in Europe, Australia, and none of us speak the same language, but whenever we're on that field, we all know what to do. So I feel like it brings us all together as a family because of the game and how we play together.
“Swimming is predominantly a Caucasian sport. The stereotype is Black people can't swim. And I feel like I actually learned a lot from that,” explained Davis, who is African American. “It taught me how to get along with other people. And it showed me that swimmers are actually very athletic as well, because it's a very hard sport to do.”
The 2024 Summer Games will happen in Paris, France. The first time the city hosted the Olympics, in 1900, the program included an angling competition. It notably featured men and women contestants. Though fishing advocates have not succeeded in getting their pastime included in subsequent Olympics, Chaney Kelly does believe his sport lends itself to cutting across lines of not just ethnicity, but gender as well.
“We have a lot of guys who fish. And in the past four years when I've been fishing, we've seen more and more female interaction with the sport,” said Kelly, who competed for the Lovejoy High School fishing team. “I think that it's great, because everyone just thinks, ‘Oh, my dad took the son fishing.’ But we're really seeing more integration with female competitors. And I think that's a great thing for the sport. Because there's nothing masculine about fishing, we just go out there and try to trick some fish into biting our hook. So I think that in that competition, people of all races, people of all genders, everybody can come together and just try to catch as many fish as they can.”
The scholarship program also takes into account work in the community when deciding which students will receive their scholarship money. Helping others has long been important to our friend Nancy, including those who don’t look like her. She developed her appreciation for a diverse world in large part through her participation in athletic endeavors. When her nonprofit solicits support for building facilities like Dream Courts™, they often cite lessons learned that go beyond the basketball or tennis lines painted on the courts. They suggest that participation in sports can help children absorb so much more than just the game. Our experience with the charity’s inspiring scholarship recipients shows how spectacularly that plan can succeed.
My friend Catalina and I have posted our second blog post on the intersection of sports and DEI. Its inspiration came from interviews we did with some exceptional young people for Nancy Lieberman Charities' annual Dream Ball gala. sports diversityandinclusion DEI
