Growing up I played sports- my parents encouraged me to participate in extracurricular activities, so I did, and that most often constituted to weekday after school team sports practices, for most of my life until graduating high school. I played baseball in fourth grade, flag football and soccer, tae-kwon-do in middle school, cross country every year of high school, swim team for two years, soccer for three years, basketball for one year, and track for one year. I also played golf, tennis, and badminton from time to time.

A few highlights of my sporting days include scoring two goals in soccer from corner kicks, overtaking a friend junior year at the final cross-country interscholastic 5K to win second place, then in senior year winning first within the final 100 meters—neck to neck with a friend from an opposing school, and of course the team/group victories and camaraderie that was fostered through kicking or throwing or running together.

Mid-high school I also started rock climbing and mountain hiking semi-regularly; which led me to think I was more of a non-team sport person. I would continue to play team sports because my friends did, but I wasn’t anywhere near as big a proponent of them as my teammates were. I started to mentally check out a little from them, beginning to believe that team sports were over-hyped events where people run, kick or throw an object, typically a ball, into a specified region. This ideology continued to develop further, leading me to say characteristically hipster things such as “I’m not big into sports.” At university, I would rock climb at the recreation center gym, and run when I could, including a full marathon with inadequate training, but overall the appeal of team sports was fading.

I had no desire to attend college sports games- where I would be required to pay for a ticket to watch students play a game, so I didn’t attend any college sporting event until the latter portion of my sophomore year—and I was blown away. I went to a University of Cincinnati football game at Nippert Stadium. I had a blast, lost my voice yelling for my university, and felt a feeling I had been lacking in college up till then. I felt the whole institution, as a collective, united, rooting for our school. We were coming together and supporting something bigger than ourselves. We were all a part of this place, and here was an outlet, an opportunity to show it, to yell about it, to cheer our team on to victory in this otherwise dog eat dog world.

I attended the next three football games, became a fan of FC Cincinnati attending as many of their games as possible, have enjoyed basketball games, and am excited for the current football season that has just begun. I have come to realize I was wrong in writing off sports as I did, I have come to respect the athletes and games, and I think college sports are one of the best things a college student can be a part of. Why? Because anyone, no matter how they look, regardless of race, major, program, interests, age, gender, sexual orientation, religion, etc., can come together, and do come together, to root for their college’s teams. Join me to root for the Bearcats!