A senior seven-foot basketball player who is a Phi Beta Kappa scholar accepted at three medical schools for next year but who averages maybe two minutes playing time per game spoke movingly of the vacuum in his life when he is not with teammates he loves and enjoys. Several others talked of the transferability of teamwork principles to other situations in corporate and family life. Almost all spoke of early childhood experiences molding the habit of athletic participation-sandlot games, a star woman basketball player who grew up playing football and basketball with three brothers, a father who was a coach, parents who were athletes, high school athletic programs, and city leagues in several sports. Most mentioned the importance of competition. Competition sets standards against which to compete.
Competition establishes goals for which to reach.
One woman who is Wofford s first pole-vaulter spoke of the importance of competing with one s self, and all the other students nodded or said Amen. Self-esteem and the esteem of others are important explanations, too, said several students. One spoke of the good feeling he had from joining an invisible long gray line of countless others who had been athletes, of a company of saints who had endured and persevered over centuries and rough courses. Others spoke of how linked to sound minds are sound bodies, and demonstrated how physical fitness heightens mental fitness. The Wofford student athletes were extraordinary articulate.