In the company of 40,000 other runners, I ran the Broad Street Run in Philadelphia. It’s a ten-mile race through the heart of the City of Brotherly Love, and on race day, the city earns the moniker. People line Broad Street cheering on the runners, bands play, and yes music from Rocky is heard more than once. It’s a grand celebration. I’ve run it five times over the past 12 years. And it should come as no surprise that I have not won a single race. Not even close. And I am in good company, joining the other tens of thousands of runners in joyous defeat. We grab our participation medal, congratulate each other on a race completed, hug our family and friends, but never acknowledge our failure. Yet, the numbers don’t lie. None of us, save one, can brag about being number one, none of us are getting an endorsement deal from an athletic wear company or being paid to star in a commercial with fluorescent sweat dripping from our foreheads, inspiring us to imbibe an electrolyte-laden sports drink, whether we need it or not. None of us can claim the mantel of champion and yet we go at it all the same, spending countless hours training when the result is completely predictable – 100% failure. In a culture where winning is claimed to be everything, why do we keep going when we know the only possible outcome is defeat? Are we all deranged? Or could it be the commercials, pundits, high school coaches, and inspirational posters on the walls of a national sandwich chain are wrong? That winning is not everything. That winning and losing are not a dichotomy. That there is winning while losing, just as there is losing while winning.
I like to think I’ve always known this, but history suggests otherwise. Back in the day, I was quite an athlete. The day being elementary school; back when nearly everyone played organized sports. Sports, yes plural. My sports were baseball and soccer, the former in the spring and the latter in the fall. Little League and Youth Soccer. I experienced the thrill of victory quite often. My soccer teams were often league champions, due in no small part to my stout defensive play. Yet my love, and talent, was for baseball. In fifth grade, I pitched a no-hitter. I still have a baseball signed by my team and coaches to commemorate the achievement. Yes, pitching a no-hitter against a bunch of kids who could barely swing a bat was not the world’s greatest accomplishment but still it was a rare event. It was a cause for celebration. I had the ability to throw strike after strike, putting the ball where I wanted it to go, just straight-ahead fastballs that were not very fast. The combination of my accuracy and the batters’ inability to connect with those pitches was powerful. It worked at the time.
Of course, it would not work forever. The next year, the ability of kids to hit the ball grew faster than my ability to strike them out. A lot of this was due to self-selection. The torrent of kids playing organized sports in elementary school became more of a trickle in middle school. The kids who just liked to play sports because it was fun realized that sports were no longer to be done for fun. It was serious business. Sport became athletics. The wheat separated from the chaff. And all the little Wheaties were now expected to be champions. And being a champion meant practicing a lot more, and hiring personal coaches, and focusing on one sport, and joining travel teams. In other words, playing a sport became a huge commitment, of time and money. My family didn’t have the money and honestly, I didn’t have the commitment to the game. Because that’s what it was to me, just a game. It was not life. It was an enjoyable way to spend time with friends and teammates, get a little exercise, and be a part of something good. I didn’t want more than that, and thus couldn’t have any of that. Winning became everything.
I held on for another couple of years out of love for the game, but I realized the game had left me behind. One specific baseball game changed my relationship with the sport forever. As was typical for the time, the field on which we played had no back fence. A ball getting past the outfielder could easily roll out of play into the weeds, thus being ruled a double. But the only person close enough to the ball to make that call was the outfielder. This obviously set up a conflict of interest. The coach directed us before the game to call any ball even remotely close to the weeds to be out of play, even those balls that could clearly be in play. Better a ground rule double than a potential triple or homer. I was an honest kid – I knew the coach was telling us to cheat. My glory days as a pitcher behind me, I was stuck out in left field. The inevitable happened. A nice hit from the opposing team passed me but didn’t quite make it into the weeds. It was in fair play, but the coach’s words echoed in my mind. I listened and unenthusiastically called the ball out of bounds. The center fielder came by and really sold it, rushed into the weeds to demonstrate how far back into the rough the ball supposedly went. It was a good act. It was a lie. At the end of the inning when the two teams switched positions, I heard the other team still grumbling about that call, claiming, correctly, that I lied about it. I distinctly remember a kid on the opposing team, one of my best friends from early childhood, now drifted apart, defend me against his teammates, saying he knows me, and I wouldn’t lie. Yet I did lie because my coach told me to lie. I did what I knew was wrong because my coach, that purported wise adult, coached me to do so. And players are supposed to follow the coach’s orders. Winning was more important than honesty, even in sixth grade. Winning was everything, even in sixth grade. I don’t even remember if we won that game or not. I do remember losing part of myself. I was done with baseball. I was nearly done with coaches.
Of course, not all coaches are bad. In seventh grade, I decided to give wrestling a chance. Few kids grew up wrestling, so most kids on the middle school team were in the same place, just learning what the sport was about. Our coach, a mechanical arts teacher with a wrestling background, was excellent. I remember him saying once that it doesn’t matter if you’re the worst wrestler on the team, because you are still better than anyone not on the team. The worst is never the worst, it depends on context. He didn’t say it at the time, but it’s also true that the best is never the best. The victor today could be vanquished in the next contest. My coach planted the seed of the idea that winning and losing are not mutually exclusive.
I wasn’t very good at wrestling. My biggest problem, aside from the apparent lack of skill and muscle mass, was the lack of a killer instinct. This wasn’t too big of a problem in middle school. I triumphed a few times in 7th and 8th grade through strategy and dedication, even earning praise from my coach for the latter. But high school was a completely different beast. Our slightly psychopathic coach would give us pep talks about destroying our opponents. I would listen and simply wonder “why?” Maybe I was just too literal, but my 9th grade brain could not process how destruction of a fellow kid was an admirable goal. And no amount of listening to “Eye of the Tiger” was going to change that for me. I remember my uncle seeing one of my wrestling matches, and being dismayed by my performance, pointed to another kid on the team and suggested I be more aggressive like him. He could not have picked a worse role model for me. Aggression was all that kid possessed, both on and off the mat. No skill, no finesse, no technique, just aggression. He didn’t win much either. And not just in the sense of being victorious on the mat.
And herein is the root of the problem with amateur athletics – too often we focus on the wrong victories. I had an inkling of this back then, but the heavy doses of victory at all costs being injected into me like anabolic steroids caused rational thought to atrophy. Only years later, with the benefit of time, distance, and experience, could I more fully analyze the problem. So here it is, athletic competition is not actually competition. Now before I am tarred and feather for athletic blasphemy, let me explain my perspective, as it is based on my training as a scientist. In the scientific discipline of ecology, competition is defined as a negative-negative interaction, meaning both participants would be better off in the absence of competition. One of the participants will “win” but whatever benefit one gains from obtaining the scarce resource would be less than one could have gotten without having to compete for it. If two birds fight over a territory, the winner gets the area, but the winner also loses time and energy, and possibly suffers bodily harm during the contest. He would have been better off having the territory without the battle. In other words, the winner would have benefitted more without competition. Evolutionarily, there is strong selective pressure to reduce competition, to lower the costs for all participants.
So, what does this have to do with sports? When two wrestlers start a match, they focus on the same scarce resource – a victory. Only one can win that match. What I didn’t know, and I doubt any of my rivals and teammates knew either, was that by training, by preparing, by walking onto the mat, each of us already won. The actual score at the end was largely irrelevant, except to our ego and the bragging rights of the school. Yes, more blasphemy. I can hear an indignant reader quoting football coaching legend Vince Lombardi “If it doesn’t matter who wins or loses, then why keep score?” I would answer Mr. Lombardi by saying we keep score to provide motivation. By striving to best an opponent, by practicing, by devoting time to a team, by becoming more physically fit, each athlete engages in activities that selfishly benefit themselves and their opponent, regardless of the final score. This is why participating in sports can be a great thing, why thousands of runners run in races they cannot win, because they have already won. In ecology, this is mutualism, an interaction that benefits both participants. In mutualism, each participant strives to reap the optimal benefit for themself, but it just so happens that by doing so, the other participant also benefits. A classic example of mutualism is mycorrhizal fungi growing into plant roots. While the fungus superficially looks like a harmful infection, it provides the plant with inorganic nutrients while it receives sugar from the plant. Each species benefits through the selfish actions of the other. Mutualisms usually involve more than one species, but the mutually beneficial argument can still hold for one species, in this case humans.
For evidence of sports as mutualism not competition, we just need to critically examine and believe the arguments we already make to tout the benefits of sports for kids. Each of us may have our favorite reasons to play sports in school, but chances are they are some combination of things like having fun, earning better grades, being more physically fit, playing for somebody beside yourself, making friends, learning leadership skills, learning to be part of a team, effectively managing time, and preparing for future challenges. It’s hard to argue that any of these stated reasons to participate in sports are not valid. By participating in sports, by achieving some or all the goals above, each athlete benefits from every other athlete. It is a mutualism, a win-win, regardless of the score when the buzzer rings. The benefits of sports accrue regardless of any championships. We already know this, and yet we too often choose to focus too much on that final score. In fact, being too focused on the score, on the outcome of the contest, can create significant costs that outweigh the victory.
I remember an athlete in college from a few years back. He was an excellent wrestler, like in the run-for-a-national-title good. Truly talented. He also was recovering from his second shoulder surgery. Here was this young guy, not even old enough to legally drink alcohol, incredibly strong and skilled, in daily agony having shredded his shoulder muscles. And as soon as he could, he would go back on the mat, chasing that title, destroying his health in the process. To me, that’s insane. That’s when sports are no longer a positive. That’s when the benefits of a mutualism transform into true ecological competition. He may win that title tomorrow, but the costs of doing so will physically tear him down for the rest of his life. Perhaps that elusive moment of triumph would emotionally sustain him through a life of physical pain and missed opportunities, but it is hard to see how. Winning in the moment can cause losing in the long-term.
Each of us differently weighs the benefits and costs of any activity, but how often does an amateur athlete devoted to winning at all costs seriously consider the true costs of achieving that mark in the “win” column. The costs of missed opportunities in life, the monetary costs of equipment, participation, trainers, and health care, the injuries that inevitably happen to young bodies still developing, seriously compromising their long-term health. And if the athlete does consider these things, can they be strong enough to resist the pressure imposed by peers, coaches, families, the media, and faceless fans to continue no matter what, to settle for nothing less than what is advertised in sport commercials. Winning at a game but potentially losing at life.
We celebrate devotion to the game, too often ignoring the real trade-offs of that single-minded devotion. We celebrate the toughness of an athlete playing through an injury, ignoring or otherwise minimizing the long-term consequences to the individual for the temporary benefit of the team or worse, the spectators. Too often, we, from the comfort of the stands, push athletes to hurt themselves, physically, emotionally, mentally, so that they may entertain us. We reap the benefits while they absorb the physical costs of concussions and torn ACLs, and the mental anguish of over-the-top coaching and outright abuse. Of encouraging and demanding kids to lie and cheat if it helps achieve victory. Ecologically, this is an exploitative interaction, in which one party benefits and the other suffers the cost. It’s not too much of a stretch to consider ourselves parasites on the backs of these amateur athletes. We only need think of the horrors perpetrated on female gymnasts to consider how a single focus on winning can lead to exploitation.
Okay, that got a little heavy, a little dark. That wasn’t my intention, but it just goes to show how quickly a mutually beneficial activity like playing sports can devolve into something worse. How being a supportive fan and cheering on your team can quickly switch from a wonderful, shared experience to something self-serving and exploitive.
I remember my high school wrestling coach criticizing my friend’s father for pulling his son off the team on his doctor’s recommendation. My friend had a congenital heart defect that wrestling could worsen. To my wrestling coach, “making a man” out of this 15-year-old was worth the risk of heart failure. My coach’s ridiculous criticism of a caring father was a galvanizing moment for me. I left the team at the end of the season. In that climate where winning was worth any risk, I was a kid without a coat in subzero temperatures. I just wasn’t going to survive. In leaving the team, I lost the opportunity to reap all those benefits that could occur when engaging in wrestling even when becoming a champion wasn’t an option or even a desirable goal.
I imagine many people have a similar story, of being told, especially in high school, that participation in sports is only for those who will do whatever it takes to win, for the glory of the school, team, and individual. How many people stop doing what they enjoy because they got the message that they were not good enough at it to continue, that all the positive benefits of playing did not add up to anything, if those benefits did not add up to a simple, one-dimensional win?
My fellow racers in the Broad Street Run clearly demonstrate the fallacy of thinking only about a win in a one-dimensional fashion. They come from all walks of life, from every conceivable athletic background, with reasons for participating as diverse as their backgrounds. Yet, I can guarantee the tens of thousands out there pounding the pavement are not thinking about beating everyone else. They are thinking about improving themselves, physically, mentally, or by whatever measure each chooses. And by being out there together, the runners are helping each other achieve those individual goals.
Pushing yourself to be better is a worthy goal that sports can help you achieve, but that does not mean obsessing over victory. Benefits are earned regardless of the final score, but costs increase with fixation on the final score. You can still win by losing, just as you can lose by winning. This saying is unlikely to show up on an inspirational poster, but I think it’s closer to the truth than just about anything Mr. Lombardi or my high school wrestling coaches had to say. On my next road race, I’ll remember this truth as I enjoy the company of my fellow mutualists as we help ourselves and each other, mile after mile, achieve our wins as we lose the race.
Photo by Yuri Catalano on Unsplash
