NBC-2 SPORTS BLOG – The State of Sport in the States
-by Chris Long
This past week, I had a chance to meet the members of the United States National InLine Hockey Team as they held training camp all week at the Skatium in downtown Fort Myers.
I asked several of the players how it felt to be part of a National team, knowing they were just days away from representing the country at the World Championships next week in Budapest, Hungary. While each of them acknowledged InLine Hockey was pretty far off the general scope of our National sport radar… they all said they still got a rush every time they pulled on the red, white and blue jersey. Being part of the team on and around Independence Day made it hit even harder still.
One player, Taj Melson, had some truly terrific comments. He pointed out especially in this particular era of American history, any player in any sport who has a chance to represent the USA on the world stage has a very special opportunity… and responsibility. Melson, a Minnesota native, is a medical student at the University of Michigan… so he’s obviously a pretty bright guy. He has skated on three Team USA InLine teams and says it never gets old. He even said some of the guys on the team were talking about the launch of the Space Shuttle this past week as providing yet another cue for them to raise the level of patriotism coarsing through them.
Sure, the United States InLine Team won’t steal many headlines. Heck, they may not get any as they seek to collect a sixth gold medal at the Worlds next week. But the way things are going for American athletes on the world stage… we’d better take our victories where we can, and celebrate them to the fullest. Rest assured that’s exactly what the members of the InLine team will do.
Somehow, we need to get the rest of the country on board.
The entire nation was ready to get behind the US Soccer team in the World Cup. But expectations far exceeded the outcome. In three games, the US managed a single goal off their own feet (the other was an own-goal off the foot of an Italian defender).
The World Cup flop was just another in a long string of recent reminders that we’re simply not the athletic superpower we once were.
More examples: this year marked the first time since the days before automobiles trolled the landscape than not a single American man or woman made the quarterfinals at Wimbledon.
It’s been well-publicized that the last couple American efforts in the Olympics have been somewhat disappointing.
Sure, we own the X-Games, Football and other US-born sports… but that’s part of the problem, we can’t seem to dominate anything aside from sports we created. There really isn’t a single major (or even semi-major) sport outside of those which we created where we can truly say dominance is held by American players at the highest levels.
This is true even in our own major leagues. After sharing baseball and basketball with the world for years, the fruits of all that effort to push our games to the corners of the globe has worked. Baseball now has deep roots around the Southern Hemisphere and Asia. Basketball, a game whose innermost identity lies in the American inner-city, has a brighter immediate future among the stars developing in dimly-lit and somewhat mysterious gyms of Europe rather than blacktops and YMCA’s in the States.
Even ice hockey, not to be confused with the InLine variety, is no longer the exclusive domain of North America. The US has always yielded to Canada for hockey supremacy… but even our fraternal twin to the north has slowly been losing its’ grip on the sport it claims most dear to its’ own heart. Players like NHL Rookie of the Year Alexander Ovechkin and playoff goalie phenom Jussi Markinnen are among those widening the flow of talent from the rest of the globe.
I’m not rallying around the argument that the seeds of sport once planted in nearly every child in America are no longer are getting the kind of nourishment they need to properly grow. Sure, it’s clear that digital cable, Xboxes and the Internet aren’t exactly the fuel American’s next generation needs to reclaim athletic supremacy… but there are some factors in play that seem to work in our favor. There are exponentially more opportunities available to girls in today’s generation, and youth sports are far more organized today for both genders. The trend toward single-sport specialization would seem to encourage accelerated progress much more than the sandlot and backyard games of the past. They may not be quite as fun for kids as they’re structured now, but you’d think the product at the end of the mechanism would be superior.
All that said, we still have our share of stars in each sport. All-Star rosters and All-World teams in every sport will always have at least some form of American representation. But it’s just not the same as it used to be.
Some will say patriotism demands that we dispute this new global distribution of wealth, and fight to get the USA back atop the worldwide athletic king-of-the-hill heap.
I disagree. It’s no fun winning all the time. After a while any dominant player, team or program needs to be knocked back a bit. It happened to the Islanders in the 70’s, the Yankees in the 80’s and look where the once-mighty San Francisco 49ers are these days. They all celebrated dominant eras of glory, came back to the pack, and now either are… or have plans to be… back on top in the very near future. Their fans haven’t left them, and haven’t lost the faith. For some, it may have even reinvigorated their passion for their teams.
So rather than bemoan America’s reduced role in the spotlight, let’s do a better job of celebrating the times when we do hit the line first, when we do win the tournament, when we do hold the records.
Nobody seems to care that Justin Gatlin, an American, just recently broke track’s most glamorous record. He’s currently engaged in a fierce rivalry with Jamaica’s Asafa Powell to see who truly is the World’s Fastest Man. Yet we hardly hear a peep. It’s in the back pages of newspaper sports sections, and is an oh-by-the way on both nationally and locally aimed sportscasts.
It can’t be denied that we’re not raising generations of fine-tuned athletes like we once did. But that makes it even more crucial for the American media and the American public to get on board with cheering the successes when they occur and rallying around whatever worldwide victories we can muster.
…there’s always the US National InLine team.
CHRIS LONG is a Sports Anchor and Reporter for NBC2. He can be reached at ChrisL@Water.net. He makes every effort to respond to any comments, suggestions or criticisms you wish to convey.
