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28
SEPTEMBER
OCTOBER 201 3
Donkey Kong i sn’Äô t real’Äî
and there is no first person shooter on the
baseball diamond.
Videogames may have their time and
place, but I believe sports play a crucial role
in developing healthy children into healthy adults.
Participation in sports helps children build self-esteem, enables them to
improve physically and emotionally’Äîand, perhaps most important, teaches
themhow to learn. Today, there are unlimited opportunities for children to
play sports’Äîfrom classic team sports tomore individually focused sports,
such as swimming, running, and biking, to evenmore esoteric but no-less
physically demanding activities such hiking and rock climbing. There is really
no excuse’Äîfor people of all ages’Äîto not participate in sports.
Most of my peers played baseball and football as adolescents, but team
sports just weren’Äôt for me. I opted for the road less traveled and chose to
compete in whitewater canoeing. My experiences participating in canoe-
ing were incredibly important in my development throughout my teenage
years’Äîand I even ended up working for a time, before owning
Cityview
, as
a whitewater canoe instructor and guide.
The ability to focus was the biggest problem I faced during school’Äîbut I
never had trouble focusing on the river. I was always learning new skills on
the water, but how could I translate hard-earned life lessons frommy sport
to school and academics?
It was late in the day, mid-summer, in the mid-1970s, and I was sitting
on the banks of the Nantahala River in western North Carolina during the
American Canoe Association Open Canoe National Championships. My
event was open canoe slalom’Äîand there was one gate that eluded me
every time. I was watching the other paddlers to see if anyone was having
better luck with this one tricky gate. Many other canoers passed by and
experienced the same fate: washing sideways through a complicated
slalommaneuver. Then, one of the best paddlers in my division came into
view’Äîand with seemingly effortless ease cleared the gate.
I learned two things at that moment: how to use a compound back-
stroke’Äîand the importance of visualization. The latter was a real life
changer for me. I now understood if I could visualize a problem and the
answer I would be better able to retain the knowledge’Äîand much more
able to stay focused while learning. I continue to use this skill today in all
my work.
As many of my friends know, I remain enthusiastic about learning new
things each and every day. So, in many ways, my canoeing experiences
during my formative years taught me how to really learn and succeed in
school, and how to continue to learn all these years later.
Nathan Sparks
Publisher
From the
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