The Definition of a Team Sport
Millions of children and adults participate in team sport. These sports bolster children’s mental, emotional and social health while endowing them with essential life skills like character and discipline.
The definition of a team sport is any athletic activity that requires the cooperation and collaboration of multiple individuals working together to achieve an objective, typically requiring coordination and movement on a shared space. This includes both traditional team sports, such as soccer, basketball, baseball, hockey, and lacrosse, as well as other more unusual group movements, such as rowing.
Team sports require a tremendous amount of communication, both spoken and unspoken, between members of the same team. Whether it’s listening to the locker room pep talks, reading body language cues during practice sessions, or communicating thoughts with coaches and teammates in post-game debriefing, the ability to communicate effectively is one of the most important traits of team athletes.
Additionally, team sports provide opportunities for kids to be mentored by a variety of people including coaches and fellow players. In turn, these mentors can be effective role models for a child and teach them about the value of hard work, dedication and the importance of setting and achieving goals. They also help kids understand that it’s okay to lose sometimes but that they should strive to improve in order to win next time. This is a valuable lesson that can carry over to other areas of their lives and help them succeed in both academics and relationships down the road.