Finding The True Reasons for My Love for Sports Through My Sociological Imagination

Sportsociological Imagination

When I was a child, I was determined to play as many sports as I could. As soon as I was able to sign up for a sport, I was sure that I would play. It all started with T-ball when I was five years old. I was so excited to finally be a part of a team and to involve myself in a sport. The only thing I found weird was that one my T-ball team I was one of two girls. At five I was confused with why more girls did not want to play, but most of the girls were involved with cheerleading rather than baseball. I just came to accept the fact that I was one of two girls and continued to play. The next year I moved up from T-ball to coach pitch and then after a few years I was into softball.

The next sport I tried to conquer was basketball in second grade. It was a sport I was looking forward to playing, so before I was on the team I made sure I practiced in my driveway every day. There was always a sport in my life even though they continued to change there was still always one that was with me. In high school, I played volleyball and I threw the javelin. It was different than the other sports I had always done but I was happy to take on the challenge of learning new sports in high school. These new sports I took on became my saving grace because as soon as it came time to practice it felt like the stress of school was finally going away for at least a little bit. Sports were always a part of my life, but now I realize there are bigger things that played a part in my decisions to start playing sports and to continue playing sports in college. Using the sociological imagination, I can identify the bigger parts like family and culture that played a role in the decisions I had to involve myself with sport.

The sociological imagination was described by C. Wright Mills. His description explained the sociological imagination as the ability to understand how society has affected us in order to see how we can influence and change society (Korgen). A person who is using their sociological imagination is taking something that they are personally dealing with and seeing how society has led them to feel that way. We can take our personal issues and relate them to bigger things like the public issues that many people within the society are dealing with. When using the sociological imagination, I had a realization that there are many things around us affecting what we do as individuals even without us knowing that they are. Playing a sport is not an issue but it is still something I chose to do based on the outside influences of society on me. Family and culture had high influences on the fact that I started playing sports and why I am still playing sports.

As a young child, it seemed like sports were a normal part of every family. I noticed that everyone in my family played a sport at some point in their lives or watched a sport ceremoniously. I was immediately immersed into this world of sports from a young age. I grew up going to the Reading Phillies games since my grandparents had season tickets, and going to almost every game became a part of my summer schedule. I was there so often that the people who worked there knew my name and knew exactly who I was. This just kept enforcing the feelings in my head that everyone loved sports and it was a usual part everyone’s day. Family as a social structure influences a person’s individual values. Personally my family put a value on sports, therefore I also put value into sports. Sports began to be something important to me that I heavily relied on, because that was what was taught to me. Family is the first people that a child becomes socialized with, so they have a huge influence on what the child perceives of themselves and others. The opinions our families tell us shape us into the people we are become. I realize now that my family always talked about sports like they were the most important thing, so I began to think that if I was not an athlete that I would have no value to them.

The culture we are immersed into affects the decisions we make on many things. In our culture a fit physique is seen as something that is highly important. Athletes are typically considered to be in the best shape and are then regarded better by society. Even without realizing it I strived to ensure that I was a part of a team and that I was in good physical condition in order to do what the sport demanded. Culture puts value on many things and we perceive that value as important enough to make it one of our own values. As I chose to do sports at a young age I never would have thought about only doing sports because it will ensure that I remain in good shape, but they are some of the underlying messages conveyed by our society. Also in our culture, students who are athletes are considered to be more successful. Students already have a lot of things they need to complete, but athletes take on more things they have to do during the day. Even with the extra things on their schedule, like club volleyball tournaments, or extra track practices they are still required to do the same work as the others students. When they accomplish this they are perceived as more successful because they know how to get all of their things done. There is a perceived connection between athletes and success, and in order to want to feel successful people play sports. Many kids, such as myself, do not realize that this could be the determining factor in why they actually play sports. Culture puts many values and perceptions into our minds from a young age and it influences our decisions.

Many things around us have affected the decisions we made throughout our lives, and while some of them see obvious there are many that would not be noticed without the sociological imagination. Originally I thought that I only decided to play sports as a child because it was what I thought I wanted to do, but looking back onto now that I understand what other things could shape me, there was more than just my own decisions. My personal thoughts were affected by things such as culture and family when they both began to instill their values upon me. From the moment we are born our tabula rasa begins to disappear and we are filled with the concepts that social structures form and place into our thoughts. From the moment I was born the beliefs that I have about sports were being placed into my mind. I would have continued life without realizing the true reasons of why I do what I do, but through my newfound sociological imagination I can identify the social structures that affected my personal experience with sports.