One of the beau­ti­ful things about sports is its abil­i­ty to de­liv­er cap­ti­vat­ing mo­ments when we least ex­pect it as peo­ple or fans. We watch be­cause of the game, but of­ten­times we re­mem­ber be­cause of what hap­pens off the field.

Yes­ter­day marked 14 years since Trinidad and To­ba­go de­feat­ed Bahrain 1-0 on a Den­nis Lawrence win­ner to se­cure qual­i­fi­ca­tion for the 2006 FI­FA World Cup Fi­nals in Ger­many. We all re­mem­ber the eu­pho­ria and the scenes of joys and cel­e­bra­tion that gripped the en­tire na­tion on that day, a Wednes­day evening, No­vem­ber 16th, 2005. Every creed and race came to­geth­er. Man, you and I know how much we could do with such scenes again. These mo­ments show us that the tran­scen­dent val­ues of love, com­pas­sion, and em­pa­thy still have a place in so­ci­ety and through sport­ing achieve­ments.

In an in­ter­viewed with Leon­son Lewis last month on the 1989 Strike Squad ex­pe­ri­ence as well as with Stern John on the jour­ney to Ger­many. And both men echoed sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments on how much they were able to ful­fil dreams, am­bi­tions and con­tri­bu­tions to so­ci­ety by their ex­ploits as sport­ing per­son­al­i­ties and to this day it in­spires them to keep liv­ing with a pur­pose to serve and con­tribute to a bet­ter so­ci­ety and make a mean­ing­ful con­tri­bu­tion to those around them.

Re­call Ato Boldon’s races, Bri­an Lara’s in­nings, Dwight Yorke’s hero­ics at Old Traf­ford, Kieron Pol­lard’s first set of wins as Windies cap­tain or sim­ply Na­pari­ma’s Col­lege’s suc­cess at the lo­cal lev­el, these mo­ments are tes­ti­monies of what about sports that makes it so beau­ti­ful and cap­ti­vat­ing for the rest of us.

Against the back­drop of our “nor­mal” sports cul­ture, snap­shots of com­pas­sion and em­pa­thy con­tin­ue to cap­ture our at­ten­tion—and keep us fix­at­ed to see what could po­ten­tial­ly hap­pen next.

To the young Trinidad and To­ba­go Un­der-14 girls who had a chance to camp at the TTFA Home of Foot­ball be­fore their first in­ter­na­tion­al match against Grena­da, they will re­mem­ber for the rest of their lives what that felt like and it hope­ful­ly will in­spire them to want to per­sist to greater feats and earn their right to re­turn to the venue for more in­ter­na­tion­al out­ings in the fu­ture.

Over the last cen­tu­ry, sports have be­come tele­vised and amassed le­gions of fans who use their favourite teams or ath­letes as part of their iden­ti­ties. As a re­sult, the big events and oc­ca­sions work up a fren­zy of emo­tions and cre­ate mo­ments known even to those who aren’t ma­jor fol­low­ers.

Sports is not just about a race, crick­et or foot­ball game. The heat­ed games car­ry greater mean­ing and of­ten rep­re­sent strug­gles that en­com­pass race, pol­i­tics, gen­der, and health. And some­times, a time­less sports mo­ment oc­curs be­cause of the in­cred­i­ble ath­leti­cism of just one play­er.

The oc­cur­rences of 2005/2006 So­ca War­riors, the mem­o­ry of Hase­ly Craw­ford’s run in ’76, Keshorn Wal­cott’s gold­en throw and the list can go on must con­tin­ue to be used as a way to re­mind our gen­er­a­tion and those to come of what we are ca­pa­ble of and why we must not ac­cept or set­tle for medi­oc­rity. We must know that we de­serve bet­ter and once we earn that right in the process, we have to stay dri­ven with our eyes on the prize. Stand up and be count­ed.

Daniel Wann, a so­cial psy­chol­o­gist at Mur­ray State Uni­ver­si­ty, has spent the last 30 years elab­o­rat­ing that iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with sports teams is, at the very least, a means to boost self-es­teem—if not an op­por­tu­ni­ty to en­hance over­all men­tal health. Wann and his col­leagues have car­ried out more than 20 stud­ies in which di­verse groups of sports fans, in­clud­ing high school stu­dents, col­lege stu­dents, se­nior cit­i­zens, Aus­tralians, fe­male fans, hock­ey fans, NASCAR fans, and oth­ers, were eval­u­at­ed in re­gards to var­i­ous mea­sures by which psy­chol­o­gists gauge well-be­ing—such as a sense of self-worth, fre­quen­cy of pos­i­tive emo­tions, feel­ing con­nect­ed with oth­ers, be­lief in the trust­wor­thi­ness of oth­ers, sense of vigour and en­er­gy, and so on. In vir­tu­al­ly every sin­gle study, the de­gree of fan iden­ti­fi­ca­tion—that is, how de­vot­ed and en­thu­si­as­tic a fan is—shows a pos­i­tive sta­tis­ti­cal cor­re­la­tion with one or more of these fac­tors.

Wann's most re­cent study, which is pend­ing pub­li­ca­tion, found that high­ly iden­ti­fied sports fans have an above-av­er­age sense of mean­ing in life. This was one of those cas­es where A leads to B, but as a re­sult of C, the me­di­at­ing fac­tor: “We found that iden­ti­fi­ca­tion wasn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly lead­ing di­rect­ly to mean­ing, but rather it was go­ing through be­long­ing,” Wann said. “So iden­ti­fi­ca­tion leads to be­long­ing, which in turn leads to a sense of mean­ing.”

Wann be­lieves there is one very sim­ple rea­son fans are so deeply ful­filled, which has noth­ing to do with sports it­self. It’s not about win­ning or los­ing, he sug­gests; it’s about the hu­man bonds we form in the process. I agree with that and I hope you do as well.

Ed­i­tor's Note

Shaun Fuentes is the head of TTFA Me­dia. He is a for­mer FI­FA Me­dia Of­fi­cer at the 2010 FI­FA World Cup in South Africa and al­so cur­rent­ly a CON­CA­CAF Com­pe­ti­tions Me­dia Of­fi­cer.