RLSH700

This is something I've been thinking about lately since I keep hearing from people about how valuable team sports are in getting people to understand the importance of team work and I see so many movies on it, that I think I might become sick as I think it's fake. It has been my experience back when I was involved in "Team" Sports (football, basketball, baseball, etc.), the concept of Team work where you depend on each other to do each others part and you put in your best effort was supposed to be the outcome and each person is recognized for their contribution, yet I observed quite the opposite. What I witnessed back when I was in school was the "Team" was really centered around one athlete who was either the coach's son or someone else who was the obviously the coach's pet, who got too much credit for when things went right (even when someone else was clearly responsible for the success) and was the first to criticize everyone else when things went wrong. This caused people to eventually turn against each other instead of blaming the one who is at fault and this caused division and "team members" to grow distant of each other and were the worst to work with on any project. On top of this, when I went to college and had group projects, I normally found that the members who were the worst at not doing their parts or struggled the most with the idea of working together were actually people from team sports.

What I also observed is that more Individual Sports seem to create a better team spirit. For example, with swimming the sport requires a person to first perfect themselves in individual comparisons, then after these are complete, the respective swimmers will pair up into relays utilizing their specific strengths. What I observed here is although many times the members actually competed with each other, they were more willing to work together without fighting each other as much. Interestingly, in this situation, people who did NOT like each other were able to put aside their differences more readily and work together and support each other. I think the reason is it forced the more self-centered members to realize that there was no way around the fact that everyone was needed equally.

So basically, I wanted to see if this was everyone else's experience. It's possible that it could just be the local people in my hometown that have issues personality issues far worse than this. Which do you think does a better job of creating true team work? Team Sports or Individual Sports? Please post your reasons if you vote.