“That’s a fantastic swim you had!”
“Wow, you rocked that!”
“What a catch!”
“I’m so proud of you!”
The praise and encouragement is positive, uplifting . . . and addictive.
Alongside meeting daily expectations set by others, such praise can create an unintended habit of people-pleasing as the athlete steps up to standards set by others. Our early environments can create subconscious behaviour patterns in our later lives. Constantly trying to satisfy authority figures is a never-ending game. It’s natural for children to want to please the people they love, respect, and learn from. This can quickly turn into a habit of performance for praise, but when the child does not perform, the praise might stop. For every star athlete there are many youngsters who never reach the heights that others hope for them and so may believe they have disappointed the adults in their lives.
THAT FIRST REAL BREAK (HOWEVER SMALL)
My first real break as an athlete came when I was ten years old. In fact, it wasn’t really a break, and I didn’t really consider myself an athlete in those days, but I did win the Bike Safety Rodeo Award, a prize sponsored by the London, Ontario, Optimist Club. That sense of excitement and accomplishment, the realization that other people were watching and supporting me, the idea that I was in charge of my own performance and result, the joy in feeling encouragement and celebration—all these things affected me back then, and the reverberations of them stay with me to this day.
When I received that award (the plaque is now in a box somewhere at my parents’ house), I felt profound satisfaction. It didn’t really matter that my two older sisters laughed at me. “Big deal!” their laughter implied. “That award is for nerds!” To me, the prize was so much more. It signalled that I was beginning to test myself, to find my unique strengths. My oldest sister was good at school and rode horses. My other sister was interested in music. And then there was my brother . . . the boy. This first award, my award, demonstrated that I, too, was special.
Not long after I won the award, a family friend encouraged me to start swimming. My long arms and legs and my big feet may be why people saw athletic potential in me. My parents had encouraged me to take a Red Cross swimming and water-safety course, and one of the instructors suggested I consider competitive swimming. In my naive enthusiasm, I went home and asked my parents to sign me up.
I didn’t realize I had to try out, and I didn’t understand the swimming hierarchy: there were big differences between the “A” pool group and the “D” pool group. I was thrilled when I was selected for the “C” group—I thought I had won the jackpot! I was now doing “competitive swimming” for forty-five minutes, three times a week. From that moment on, I’ve never looked back. I had found something I wanted to be good at.
This expanding encouragement was part of the pathway that eventually led me, at the age of fourteen, to leave my home and family in London, Ontario, for Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where I attended Pine Crest high school. I was excited by the adventure and the opportunity, but it also meant I would be swimming in uncharted waters. When I moved away from home, the only condition my parents set was that I commit to spending an entire school year in Florida. When I visited them at Christmas, I knew I had to return to the States for school at the end of the holiday.
Early involvement in sport shapes elite amateur and professional athletes. Your natural physical abilities, the capacity to train and work hard, the willingness to take instruction, and the success (and sometimes the money that results, in the massively successful spectator sports) are what you become known for and what society celebrates. But, just as with me, it all starts with a little sprinkle of support, a speck of personal pride, a commitment to try, and a bit of recognition by those who have influence.
THE GROWING COMMUNITY
At this early stage of development, members of the larger team—parents, coaches, and friends—form around you, influencing your trajectory. Your communities can be incredibly influential. Whether it is in sports, school, or the arts, we are all sculpted by those that surround us.
George Gross Jr. is one of the most successful water polo players Canada has ever produced. His parents and first teammates played a huge role in how he became a top-level athlete, but the path there was not direct. Perhaps influenced by his father, George Gross Sr.—a sports journalist who was inducted into various sports halls of fame and received the high honour of the Olympic Order—George Jr. started out playing in multiple disciplines (soccer, volleyball, basketball, tackle football), trying to become excellent at each. But the wisdom of his mother stayed with him. “One of the favourite sayings of my mother, which came to her from Hungary, where she grew up,” he says, “was ‘If you try to sit on too many chairs at once, you fall on the floor.’”
George’s mother encouraged him to be a swimmer, even though he was, in his words, “deathly afraid of the water” until he was nine years old. He was too small to play hockey, and his family couldn’t afford to buy him hockey skates, so swimming it was. His mother suggested that he go to a summer swim camp, where he learned how to get comfortable in deep water. That fall, she recommended he join a competitive swim club that family friends were sending their daughter to: “So I walked on the deck and the coach for my age group said, ‘Okay, everyone get in the water and warm up with a 300-yard swim,’” George says. “That was twelve lengths! I turned around and walked off the deck. Swimming twelve lengths? I couldn’t do it!” But with his mother’s encouragement, he stuck with it.
He made three new friends who were national record holders, and they needed a fourth person for the relay team. “So there I was,” he says. “I had barely learned how to swim and was winning and setting a Canadian national record as part of a relay team. All I had to do was get to the other end of the pool. That’s how my career in swimming got started.”
Talk about the importance of first teammates! Before he could even appreciate them, George had strong connections to sport and understood the importance of the team. And what if there hadn’t been a three-boy swim relay team looking for a fourth member? Would he have had his incredibly successful career in the pool, which included his Yale University team going undefeated for three years, the 1976 and 1984 Olympics, and then his distinguished career as a coach and administrator?3
For others, testing the waters truly begins when they break away from negative influence and forge forward with new plans. Sports can provide this shift. Andrew English, who eventually played for the University of British Columbia and the Toronto Argonauts and Hamilton Tiger Cats in the Canadian Football League, recalls that, in Grade 8, he sensed he was heading down the wrong path. “The best mark I had in school was a C- in gym. Everything else was awful,” he says. “I was into hanging out with the cool crowd and going to parties and that sort of thing. Then something clicked inside me: that I didn’t necessarily have to be that way. I had a couple of friends who kind of motivated me . . . I started to see where I was heading. And knew that I didn’t want that future.” For Andrew, by choosing sport, his attitude shifted, his view of his identity changed, and the regulation of his daily schedule helped focus his attention toward healthier options and opportunities.
THE ENVIRONMENT
We are all influenced by our environment. For athletes, the culture of sports can become the air we breathe; it’s there on the dusty soccer fields near our homes, it’s waiting for us on those cold early mornings at the local hockey rink. It’s part of our being. A child in Texas or Nebraska will likely be encouraged to play football. In many countries of Europe or South America, kids kick a soccer ball around as one of their first outdoor activities. In small-town Canada, there’s usually an ice rink not too far away. Skiing in Colorado. Swimming in Florida. Running track in Jamaica. Cricket in India. The list goes on.
In an autobiographical essay for The Players’ Tribune, Brazilian footballer Ronaldo reminisces about a World Cup tradition from his youth:
In Brazil, there’s this tradition every