Contrary to popular belief, not all sports involve balls.
I’m arguing that nontraditional sports deserve a little bit more credit.
The sports world is stuck in a restrictive bubble. Football, basketball, baseball, tennis and soccer tend to be the popular choices.
I’m not asking ESPN to stick kayaking atop the athletic hierarchy or the NCAA to host a Final Four for archery.
All I’m asking is for the sports world to widen its sphere, to be a little more open-minded, to make the term “sports” a little bit more ambiguous, a little bit more inclusive.
Is it so hard for the sports world to welcome people who do sporty things in sporty ways to its community?
Ironically, I’ll advocate ambiguity with an unambiguous definition. According to my favorite paper-writing tool, Dictionary.com, a “sport” is “an athletic activity requiring skill or physical prowess and often of a competitive nature.”
Take martial arts, for example. From jiujitsu to ninjutsu, hapkido to Jeet Kune Do, the list of martial arts could go on forever.
The closest traditional sport to martial arts has got to be boxing. In fact, judo became an Olympic sport in 1964 and tae kwon do in 2000, but most people would prefer to watch Mayweather v. Marquez rather than a Muay Thai fight.
Not to mention the training ““ the blood and sweat ““ that goes into practicing martial arts.
From researching the Muay Thai class at the John Wooden Center, I found out that just to prepare for a Thai boxing camp, the students started training at the crack of dawn every weekend for three months ““ running, doing pushups, running, shadow-boxing, sparring and even more running.
Running the bleachers at Drake Stadium, running in the gravel, running at the beach.
Cue “Eye of the Tiger.”
I’m having a hard time believing martial arts is not “an athletic activity requiring skill or physical prowess and often of a competitive nature.”
Martial arts also holds practical values. Sure, terrific basketball players who get drafted into the NBA can sign multi-million dollar endorsement deals. That’s pretty practical. But what happens if a masked robber holds you at knifepoint?
You roundhouse kick him. Merely getting into fighting stance and grunting would probably send the guy running. And sorry, sucker punching him, a la LeGarrette Blount, doesn’t count.
Another example I feel passionate about defending is dance. OK, this is a little harder to argue. But really, does dance differ that much from gymnastics? Gymnastics is both an Olympic and NCAA sport, minus the back handsprings, bars, vaults and rings.
I’m not talking about jamming in your underwear like Tom Cruise in “Risky Business” or jerking to impress your friends at the party. (Personally, I don’t find skipping backwards in place very impressive.)
I’m talking about competitive dance. Performance dance.
I would like to find a football player who can nail triple pirouettes or air flares. Dance is a sport because it’s “an athletic activity requiring skill or physical prowess,” even if it’s not always “of a competitive nature.”
But dance, especially in a competition or a performance, requires from its athletes something that traditional, mainstream sports don’t, something beyond that: musicality.
Musicality is completely unique to dance. Someone watching a dancer with musicality is able to see, with his eyes, the music that he hears, radiating from a dancer’s movements. A dancer with musicality can make the most difficult moves look effortless.
In the musicality of dance, each syllable in the lyrics, each beat or snare is captured and witnessed in a dance routine. Musicality requires performance and execution, personality and body control, letting music run through your body.
There’s no regiment or conditioning to learn musicality. You can’t hit the weight room or run laps at Drake Stadium to learn musicality.
For that, dance is a sport because of its demand for precision and physical skill, but it’s so much more due to intangible musicality.
I’m not knocking on football or basketball. I’m just saying that these other sports deserve a little more credit.
Because we recognized that the “lesser,” nontraditional sports at UCLA are not as highly recognized as UCLA’s NCAA programs, Daily Bruin Sports is determined to bring you coverage of the club, intramural and recreation sports every week. Even if the definition of “sports” is ambiguous.
If you’ve roundhouse kicked a masked robber before, e-mail Lee at rlee@media.ucla.edu.