Column: Culture of sports

By Josh George

NEW YORK – Our bus was crawling up through the Adirondack Mountains last Friday afternoon when all of a sudden a ski jump burst from the tops of the fall foliage like a mighty arm striving to grasp the heavens. No, I’m not a ski jumper, but the site of the phenomenal structure marked our arrival at the Olympic Training Center in Lake Placid, NY.

Athletes – high caliber athletes – are a human species separate from everyone else. They aren’t necessarily better or worse, but they definitely have their own culture, with their own lingo, quirks and lifestyles. The culture is deeply rooted in a respect and love of sport, each and every one of them. This past weekend 17 of the top names in USA wheelchair basketball came together to celebrate its shared culture and to strive to make the USA wheelchair basketball team the best team in the world.

It was Thursday evening when a mass of athletes pushed their implements of choice (basketball wheelchairs, of course) through the halls of the Detroit Metro International airport. Now, it is common for a steady buzz from a group of athletes to be heard over the dim of anyone else in the room, but when wheelchair basketball players gather together, they make some noise. As a group of people who already stand out, we choose to exacerbate this point whenever in public places, just for kicks. By 8 p.m. last Thursday, Northwest gate 74 was turned into the campground for a group of wheelchair athletes tossing around a basketball and sporadically shouting “Spring Break” across the waiting area. The conversations danced around the topic of basketball, except for the occasional explanations to strangers who were curious about the mass of wheelchairs clogging the waiting area.

Twelve hours later, the public was spared the noise of athlete culture, as the team cruised into the main building of the training center in Lake Placid. They were home among athletes. No longer standing out, they became the norm. The cafeteria was littered with lugers, skeleton racers, bobsledders and ski jumpers. Legs were clad in Lycra blend training pants, muscles bulged through shirts, calorie labels rested next to every dish on the buffet.

At 10 p.m. last Friday, the USA wheelchair basketball team was finally done for the day. The session was heavily weighted in scrimmage sets. Halfway through the practice, a group of strangers gathered along the baseline and took to clapping and cheering while they were playing. With practice over, impromptu fans came to talk to us. In athlete culture, curiosity never kills the cat – it strengthens the bond and respect between athletes. Our fans happened to be skeleton racers on the Canadian Euro Championships team, in town for a small competition/training camp before they packed up for Europe. Having never seen wheelchair basketball, they were amazed by what we could do on the court. Having never hurtled headfirst down a chute of ice, we fired question after question about skeleton.

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That is how athletes roll: love and respect. As one of the sledders tried his hand in a basketball chair, a cute, raven-haired sledder attempted to explain how it wasn’t as crazy as it sounded to hurtle one’s self down an ice shoot at 67 mph. To a skeleton racer, speed means nothing; it’s just another day at the office. It doesn’t faze them. They’ve even been known to partake in nighttime libations and rides down chutes of ice on cafeteria trays.

To them, wheelchair basketball players seem like gung ho troopers, unafraid to push their bodies past their apparent limits. That is the culture; that is the respect. The players just see themselves as doing what anyone would do to win.

Respect. After gazing down the 26-story slope that a ski jumper launches themselves off of, after visiting the ice rink where one of the greatest sports stories ever took place, after talking with people who take pride in diving head first down ice shoots, our training camp left us with not only a better understanding of ourselves as athletes, but also the nature of all athletes. Respect.

Josh George is a senior in Communications. He can be reached at [email protected].