I am a sports fan. I'm not the crazy, insane, rowdy fan you often see with face and body painted. I'm also not just a casual fan of one or two specific teams. I am a SPORTS fan. I'll watch any sport. Yes I have my favorites, soccer and baseball are at the top and I follow my teams as closely as my life allows without it becoming an obsession. I'm the fan that knows the backstory of a team or athlete. I may not have stats memorized, but I know who's had a good year and who hasn't. While I've watched almost every sport out there, I'm still not sure why poker gets air time on ESPN....
My love of sports is something that was passed down to me from my dad. The story is that as a baby, my mom would be out of hands and patience after dealing with three kids and she would plop me down in my dad's lap and say "it's your turn." I would then be perfectly content sitting in the brown leather recliner with my dad as he yelled at the tv. He taught me to love the game, not just a team. However, we do have "our" teams. At some point when I was growing up, my mom and sister banned my dad and I from watching sports together in the same room. We would both get so involved in the game and would be yelling at the TV together. Apparently we got a little loud. So now we watch the same game just in different rooms. This hasn't stopped our yelling and, if anything, it has made it worse. Now we not only yell at the tv, but we yell at each other down the hallway. Not too long ago I stayed several days at a friend's house during a heavy snow storm. My sister later relayed to me that my dad was watching the Razorback basketball game and would yell down the hallway as if I were there. She said at one point he came down the hall and started talking to her about the game like he does with me and although she gave it her best effort, it wasn't the same and she could tell he missed me being there. Sports are the base of my relationship with my dad. While my brother, sister and I were all athletes growing up, the two of them aren't huge sports fans. They'll get into a game every now and then, but for the most part they could care less. My brother and sister also tend to have a bit of a volatile relationship with our dad. Sometimes I wonder if that would be different if they were sports fans. Afterall, sport is what brings the world together.
Perhaps my favorite time of year isn't a "time of year" at all. The Olympic Games only occur every two years, alternating between the Summer and Winter Olympiads. Every two years I spend approximately 12 days in tears. You see, I'm not just a sports fan, I love everything that goes into sports. The unmeasurable elements that drive athletes to push themselves a little bit farther than the day before. Those stories of the underdog overcoming obstacles and rising to the top of his or her field, the kid that gets up for practice every morning because his disabled brother can't, and the stories of redemption when an athlete misses their "best" opportunity due to illness, injury, or a bad day are all the things that find their way into my heart and bring tears to my eyes.
I remember watching a movie with my mom and sister about a group of teenagers whose bus gets caught in a flood on their way home from church camp. In this movie, which was based on a true story, several of the teenagers died in the flood. At the end of the movie both my mom and sister were in tears. I was barely affected at all and my sister claimed I must have a "heart of stone." To this day stories like that rarely affect me, but I cry everytime I watch Miracle, Glory Road, Gracie, We Are Marshall, and several other sports movies. I even cry reading feature stories on ESPN.com that usually turn into their Outside the Lines segments. There's just something about sports that touches the very core of me.
Over the next two weeks, my television will be tuned into NBC a majority of the time. I've already watched men's and women's moguls, cross country alpine skiing, speed skating long and short track, pairs figure skating, men's singles luge, and women's hockey. Add to that the Opening Ceremony and it's pretty much been all olympics all the time here at my house. I once asked my mom if she knew when she married my dad that she would become a weekend widow due to sports. She said she knew my dad would spend much of his weekends watching one sporting event after another, but she never thought she'd lose a daughter to the same affliction.
While I haven't yet met the man God has intended for me to marry, I hope and pray that he is able to understand what happens to me when the Cubs game is on tv during the summer and on Saturdays during college football season, and during these two weeks every two years when the world comes together to compete in the Olympic Games. Hopefully he'll understand that I am a sports fan.
