Should you spur your toddler to play risky sports to become an expert athlete and make a boatload of money? De la chanson or it depends on the child, discern, skills, cause, and opportunity. The answer is a powerful “no” if you ask this figure of four. I will explain more of my rationale later. For a starter, caveat emptor: sports, like other groups, have exploitative under-bellies few see or need to see. Being proactive is prudent because the advice is given after damage tantamount to the medicinal drug after demise. You can still acquire purposeful capabilities from gambling various sports: teamwork, perseverance, dedication, winning, and resilient conduct. Also, playing sports activities can be useful to at least one’s typical fitness.
Obesity is world-huge fitness trouble with recognized outcomes. Some of those consequences are excessive blood pressure, Type II diabetes, coronary heart sickness, sleep apnea, joints disorder, numerous cancers, to name a few. But do not inform that too many Nigerians (mainly and Africans in widespread) consider that being fat is an excellent factor, a standing symbol, proof of appropriate dwelling, and wealth. Engaging in bodily activities throughout one’s lifestyles is worthy behavior that promotes both the amount and the quality of existence, consistent with fitness professionals.
However, there’s a big divide between gambling sports activities recreationally and playing them professionally. No game is danger-loose, but some are riskier than others. The admission prices to the expert athletes’ club can be too excessive; frankly, they might not be well worth it.
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In my 20’s I preferred to observe boxing. Sugar Ray and Thomas “Hitman” Hearns II combat involves the mind. Marvin Hagler, Larry Holmes, Michael Spinks, Mike Tyson, George Foreman’s 2d coming were my favorites. I watched the ones fights each threat I got. At one Pay-View event in 1987 in Oakland, California, I was seated close to a former boxer. After the interesting combat, as we walked out of the venue, he made statements that stuck in my thoughts when a spectator begrudged the tens of millions the opponents earned. He said, “those warring parties can pay dearly for the rest of their lives for the hits they’ve taken today.” He endured by saying, “all of the millions they made nowadays will now not be enough to heal the life-time of pain and suffering.”
Looking back, his utterances were alternatively prophetic due to the fact little had been recognized than approximately the outcomes of concussions, hits to the top, overall performance enhancement capsules, Parkinson’s disorder, reminiscence loss, and slurred speech troubles. Some of the sports activities we ship our youngsters to play nowadays are equally dangerous, don’t permit the hype, money, fame, and scientific advancement fools us. Remember that pork got here from a cow or because the Igbos say, “Suya ahu si O’ahu name”!
Seeing the big money and reputation in those sports, it changed into only a be counted of time before Nigerian mother and father and/or our kids themselves started pursuing these sports’ trappings. Some might also want to achieve the plain benefits without seeing the latent pitfalls. This dad and mom and youngsters should adhere to this Einstein quote: “research the rules of the game [first]. And then you have to play it better [on and off the court] than all and sundry else”.
I need to commit a paragraph and pay homage to Nigerian, and indeed Global’s, athletic heroes. Dick Tiger, Christian Okoye, Hakeem Olajuwon, and modern-day professional players have shown glowing examples and stale the stage. They stay the beacon of everything high-quality about Nigeria and Nigerians. When become the remaining time you heard something terrible about those heroes? Through their actions, they hold to varnish our Motherland’s image whilst corrupt politicians and 419ers are bent on tarnishing her global picture. Like thankful Nigerians everywhere, I salute these evergreen heroes. Are these motives compelling sufficient to permit your toddler to play risky sports activities?
I hope Nigerian mothers and fathers, each at home and, especially abroad, aren’t pushing their children into these sports to cash in. Often, we’re humans with all-out dispositions to make money in any respect value. Some may need to dispel a fantasy accessible and come to be exposing themselves and their kids to hidden risks. According to one sportswriter, “humans are skeptical approximately Nigerian gamers; they are gentle, not tough sufficient and too knowledgeable.” That’s a loaded statement! Trying to “show a negative” may cost a little one dearly. You may additionally recollect Loyola Marymount basketball big name Eric “Hank” Gathers, who died on the court docket in 1990 at some stage in a televised sport. The younger man had a recognized heart circumstance; however, he continued to play without taking the medicines that made him too drowsy to perform as much as his famous personal quality.
All sports activities have inherent dangers. As Italians say, “ogni rosa ha le sue spine” or “each rose has its thorns.” I like to journey bicycles. Lots of cyclists get hurt or even killed whilst bicycling. Just three weeks in the past here in Austin, Texas, a bicycle owner pushing his disabled bike to become killed using an inattentive driver less than 10 miles from my house. Do you recognize that ladies’ soccer players sustain the second highest quantity of concussions after American football gamers? To determine that one. However, a few sports are like cigarettes: they may be dangerous whilst performed as prescribed. Some of the injuries are cumulative from very young a long time (fundamental and center colleges), and the unwell-effects aren’t absolutely felt until after one’s gambling days are over.
The odds of making it to the pros are pretty infinitesimal. As a friend who played one of these sports activities professionally tells me, “people most effective see the very few who efficiently jumped over to the other facet of the ridge. But look down inside the abyss to peer the multitude that did not make it.” The few that make it to the pros end up dwelling painful lives after their injuries start to occur, while their coverage advantages are no greater. They quickly squander their earnings because of bad financial management competencies. Just like too many Nigerians refuse to plan for retirement, those athletes think they will usually be in the money. Those who help you waste your sources will now not be there for you while you want them. Wake-keeping, if that, can handiest bury one after one had died, it might not preserve the residing.
I am no longer advocating you or your youngsters eschew novice or professional sports activities. Neither am I singling out any one sport. Like I said, each rose has its thorns; no sport is danger-loose. I am recommending that you can behavior your very own research before exposing your own family to any sports activities. If, despite everything that you still experience, the sport is for your child, and she or he has the wherewithal to come to be the one-in-a-million Victor, cross for it. I wish your circle of relatives properly. Please pay attention to all that can be brass, not gold.
Ask your self these questions:
How come only a few offspring of seasoned players observe the footsteps in their mother and father? Did the genes that propelled their parents to stardom “leave out the road”? Why don’t crew owners, coaches, group medical doctors use their huge clouts to play their children in those evidently rewarding sports activities? Other groups, including preachers, teach their kids inside the family company, why not as dangerous sports gamers? Could it’s because of they the reality or, to paraphrase Ben Franklin, society writes accidents in dirt and advantages in marble?
Are sports activities the only way to earn college scholarships? Academic scholarships are higher than maximum sports activities scholarships—the graduate’s extra students than the latter. Reading will no longer give you the aforementioned accidents. If you don’t know any ex-professional gamers in the sport your baby might be inquisitive about, Google or Facebook seek to locate one to talk with. They are quite clean to discover, and you’ll locate them willing to help you. Listen with an open mind to what they inform you; don’t take their comments as sour ex-players remarks. That is what I did years ago before my kids have been of age to play famous American sports. As a proactive step, I began discouraging my sons from gambling football. I changed into stunned when my center schooler advised me he was requested to try out for his faculty team.
My wife and our children had been first jubilant at the news. I went into high gear to talk him out of playing football. When he refused to back off, I blessed him however told him I might not visit any of the games. They stated he was good at it. He satisfied his mom to go to one of the games. I must inject here that she’s inside the scientific field. After looking at the sport, stay and listening to the sounds of war… I suggest she hits the on the field that day, she back home to enroll in me to dissuade our son from playing that recreation. The hits’ sounds had been no longer like something she hears from soccer video games on TV. My reaction became if she thought the center college gamers hit tough, she would imagine how harder the excessive schoolers and university players hit, not talking to expert gamers. I couldn’t stand watching my child play soccer; I just cannot. Call me fowl!
After that first yr of football, our son announced to our delight that he turned into giving up the sport; I asked why, he said none of his group participants were in his Advance Placement instructions; in reality, most of them were not doing nicely in faculty, in part due to overlooked instructions due to injuries and/or sports distractions. This is the case in Africa and someplace else. Some excel in each sports activities and teachers. Thank goodness my son did not get harm and his grades continue to be excessive. He talked about extreme accidents different footballers sustained, how they had been inspiring to consume and weight-elevate extra to get bigger, stronger and hit harder, and run quicker. He mentioned sub-par device use and the frenzy to pay for college scholarships and seasoned possibilities. Academics had been not a concern; working towards and winning games had been! Finally, he said he discovered that we wanted what became excellent for him each now and ultimately. He realized we did it with and for love. And we will live with that!
