Fitzpatrick

** A Pre-Game Warm-up **
 * Winter/Spring 2012 Mr. Dunne **

What do sports mean to you as an athlete and as a fan? To me, sports are hobbies that represent opportunities to become physically fit and have a great team experience. I'm not much of a sports fan so for me, watching the occasional game on TV is fun, but I don't follow professional sports teams as fanatically as others do. As an athlete, sports for me is really a mix of the social and physical aspects of sports. I'm a decent athlete, but not at the collegiate level. In other words, when I look back on the sports I've played. I'll remember mostly the great interactions I've had with the team rather than the outcome of races or matches.

What has been your experience with youth sports? Describe your best and worst experiences. As a younger child, my experience with sports was miserable. The theme of my younger sports careers was being deathly afraid of the ball/ puck. I was mostly fixed on the snack bar rather than the game I was playing. I remember I volunteered to play goalie for my pee-wee hockey team once. I remained enthusiastic up until the point where the "slaughter rule" was put in place for the first time in pee-wee hockey history. When I played soccer I mostly vaguely ran at the ball rather than make a serious attempt to score a goal. I was OK at baseball and was infamous for stealing bases up until the fifth grade when I was moved up to the league where sixth graders pitched. The speed of the ball was too much for me so I spent my season praying for a walk. Then when I entered High school I thought to myself that I had to put my best foot forward in sports or else I would forever remain obnoxiously unathletic. I joined Cross-country, track, and wrestling and have had positive experiences with all of them. While I may not be at the top of the league in these sports I'm definitely competitive which is something I never was when I was younger.

Do athletes make good role models? Identify one or two professional athletes to make your case. I think that they're are many athletes on both ends of the spectrum. Therefore, I don't believe that children should look to athletes as role models unless they've gone out of their way to prove themselves as role models. I would cite the boston red sox as an example. The team's beer-fueled locker room antics have recently come to light and have received significant media attention. While some of these men may have displayed amazing athletic ability, their conduct is certainly not up to par.

What sports/teams do you pay attention to the most? How much time do sports occupy in your life? How do you spend that time (attending, watching, reading, talking, participating)? My relationship with sports is mostly dominated by practice every day after school. I don't really watch sports beside the Celtics, the Patriots, and March Madness basketball. I don't much read about sports except besides reading about NCAA Basketball to research for making the perfect March madness bracket. I enjoy playing sports at school, but besides wrestling, I don't practice outside of school. For wrestling, merely to stay competitive I've wrestled in the summer since freshmen year. One of my most memorable experiences in sports was being sent to a week long "Ranger Style" wrestling camp at West Point. This week felt like a decade and was the worst week of my life, yet the discipline I gained from a week of "Ranger" lifestyle is invaluable.

What sports-related issues would you be disappointed //not// to cover in this class? Why? I really hope to cover the influence sports have on international relations. Issues like the Olympics being used as a platform for International affairs (Berlin Olympics, Munich Olympics) are really interesting to me. Especially examining the fanatacism that surrounds certain sports and cultures like Soccer in Europe.