As a sports fan, it is a busy week watching the Olympics. While the track events will start later, most fans here in the United States focus on swimming, basketball, and gymnastics. These three sports get the most publicity and coverage. Since a sports fan can watch the Olympics almost 24 hours a day over several stations other sports are covered. Some of the sports are not as popular in the United States and while sports like swimming, gymnastics, and basketball are usually sports at most colleges and universities in the athletic department, the others are often club sports in the recreation program. When watching the trials for athletes to be on the Olympic team the emphasis was again on swimming, gymnastics, and track. I started to wonder how the teams for rugby, team handball, skateboarding and break dancing were chosen. The same curiosity for rowing, kayaking, shooting, badminton, table tennis, and triathlon athletes were chosen. It just seemed that there was not that much coverage of the Olympic trials for these sports as the big three.
I think the best thing about these other sports is that there may be some youngster out there that will see his or her sport or activity get recognition as an Olympic sport. While the results of a competition are not always written up or shown on media outlets of these other sports, the possibility of making an Olympic team is a dream to follow for that youngster in their sport.
I went to a small college many years ago and in that long ago an athlete could be in more than one sport. I earned letters in football, wrestling, track and gymnastics in a small college. It wasn’t unusual for athletes to play more than one sport. Dale Brown, former basketball coach at LSU, was a teammate with me in football and track and was a star in basketball. Bo Jackson received a lot of publicity because he played and excelled at two sports. Being an athlete in multiple sports is more difficult in the sports world today as the skill level is so much greater if an athlete wants to be on a team in college or the pros. There are other pro athletes that favor playing multiple sports as a youngster to develop athletic ability that may help them in the one sport they may choose as they progress.
