That game was incredible. Admittedly, we reeked in the first half - it was actually slightly disgraceful. However, after a mildly insulting, extremely verbally aggressive pep talk for the gods from our head coach, we let out the beasts within and rocked out. In the last seconds of the second period of overtime one of our players took a half court shot and we won the game 10 - 9. Hell yes.
However, as amazing as that was, I must say that I feel our sport is under-appreciated. Or at least under-exposed. There is so much hype over american football and baseball in this country that most other sports get lost in the background. I find it different depending on the place I'm in. Canada - hockey/curling, England - football (soccer)/rugby/cricket, Spain - futbol (soccer) etc. What does that say about the culture of each country? Americans love contact sports and testimonies to brute strength (perhaps related to this violent culture we keep talking about?). Canadians also enjoy aggression, but see value in the subtle skills of curling. The English value the physical fitness and patience involved in their sports, as well as toughness.
Any thoughts?
4 comments:
Our sport is all of those things.
Pep talks rock.
Really, you don't hear too much about Waterpolo. I have no idea if there's a professional team. Hey, maybe the Chicago Hurricane. Somebody make that Waterpolo team. I get royalties, of course.
I don't know about the whole physical contact thing though. America loves American Football, yes. But we also love baseball, which is pretty un-violent as far as sports go, and is more centered around skills. And soccer, as a former soccer player myself, can get pretty rough. I swear, I saw a statistic awhile ago that soccer causes the most injuries out of all the sports. Maybe that's wrong, and I managed to make that up in my own mind, but I think I saw it somewhere. It's certainly not so overt as American Football, but it's there, like most soccer players know.
Also, given that Hockey is so popular in Canada, and their violence rate is so low, I'm cautious to declare any real connection between the popular sports of each country, and their violence level.
Well American football is a rather contact sport, but I haven't seen baseball players tackle each other as part of the game in a while. I could see the tie to the violent culture, but you have to watch the athletes themselves because on the field they're violent, but they often view that as part of the game and don't take it with them. That's not the case all the time. I'd say you got a good idea about the culture of sports going, but water polo seems violent to me, so why don't Americans LOVE it? It is underexposed, admittedly. I think the terrain and climate of certain countries could play into it too? Italy seems far to temperate a place for curling to evolve naturally and in England baseball wouldn't be much of a success with all the rain. So maybe the cultures form around the weather and the sports around those? I'm losing myself. Good ideas, I'd love to see them taken further!
No, Ryan I think it should be the Chicago "Flood" (after the flood of 1989) or how about the Chicago "Lakefront"? :-)
I think you are on to something about the culture and the sport, but what does curling say about Canadians? haha:-)
BTW Great win Holler! Congrats.
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