By Chris Rich
I’ll never forget it, walking off the field at Westminster High School, moments removed from playing my last high school football game. Or at Bethesda Chevy Chase High School as my high school basketball career came to an end. Even four years later, the feeling at Thiel College in Western Pennsylvania when I took the Grove City College helmet off for the last time.
It’s a feeling every athlete remembers. But, as I look back and reminisce, I am thankful.
I am thankful for every moment I had. Every chance I got to compete. And more than anything else, I am thankful for the opportunity sports gave me to be refined, to be taught and to grow each and every day.
Sports has a funny way of doing that, doesn’t it?
Each and every day we wake up, swivel out of our beds, put our feet on the floor and seek opportunity to get better. What happened yesterday doesn’t matter. We have opportunities to compete and fight to be the best we can be every day. We have a chance to go beyond the borders that we had the day before and be a little bit better.
Sports teach us things and how to overcome adversity. It teaches us how to work together. Sports teach us how to push ourselves beyond what we could ever imagine.
However, sports, in and of itself, is flawed.
It has borders.
Our world today puts athletes and coaches on a pedestal too high for anyone to reach. We idolize it’s figures and worship the talent that lies within the sporting world. We’ve created a synthetic culture that winning and losing is all that sports has to offer.
We need to look at sports without borders. It’s an avenue to grow, an opportunity to use the gifts and talents we are given. So that we can crash through the self-hallucinating borders we may percept and live in freedom to be who we were meant to be.
This is what “Without Borders” is all about. It is about stories and life lessons. It is about more than just sports. It is about you! We at Maryland Sports Access believe that sports were created in order so that we can grow, be refined and become the men and women we were created to be. And, when we are living as the man or woman we were created to be, we are powerful beyond measure and can change the world.
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