Sport is one of the most important forms of social interaction and offers tremendous rewards for youth. It helps students learn how to work together in a group, develop self-esteem, and improve overall mental health.
How to Write About Sports
The key to writing about sports is to transport readers into the world of the game or event you are covering. This can be accomplished through vivid description and emotion. Readers are most likely to be sports fans, so a story that appeals to their passion and enthusiasm will be the most successful.
In elite sports, athletes and their coaches have internalized a set of “feeling rules” that guide their expressions of emotions during a game. These “feeling scripts” range from the pregame arousal of expectations and the production of “butterflies in the stomach” to the postgame celebration after a win or loss.
Emotional displays are orchestrated by coaches and media pundits, who prompt the display of a variety of emotions from the athletes’ perspectives as well as from those of other players and spectators. The emotional displays vary from a fan’s passionate identification with their representative team to a feeling of despair after an injury or ecstasy when a last-minute goal transforms a humiliating defeat into a victory.
The globalization of modern sports is a complex process that involves interwoven economic, political, and social patterns. The process is driven by shifting power balances and has unintended as well as intended consequences.