"I am very grate­ful be­cause this was a scary time, and you al­ways go back to what is safe and fa­mil­iar, home…"

Dur­ing the months of lock­down, the three se­nior in­struc­tors at Fine Line Fight Fac­to­ry con­duct­ed free on­line class­es for our cur­rent mem­ber­ship. It was our first ex­pe­ri­ence teach­ing via the on­line plat­form, ex­per­i­ment­ing with Zoom but get­ting hacked, go­ing to Face­book Live, and fi­nal­ly to the mes­sen­ger chat room, where­by we could still have a vi­su­al on all par­tic­i­pants dur­ing the ses­sions. As with most ven­tures at the be­gin­ning, there was buzz and ex­cite­ment, high num­bers, and con­ta­gious en­er­gy. Even de­mands and ex­cus­es. The in­struc­tors de­vot­ed their time and en­er­gy; be­cause for us, it came nat­u­ral­ly - du­ty called for us to pro­vide an op­tion to the stu­dents. There were fun ses­sions, along with mus­cle burn­ing and men­tal­ly tax­ing work­outs. There were great feed­back and mes­sages of thanks and grat­i­tude.

But the mes­sage that struck me the most was the one above. I knew that stu­dents were hap­py and grate­ful that they had the on­line op­tion. But for some, those ses­sions were more than just a work­out. It pro­vid­ed some­thing of a sanc­tu­ary. The in­di­vid­ual who sent that mes­sage in­di­cat­ed that the class­es were a life­line for her. She has been a mem­ber since the late 1990s but had not been train­ing dur­ing the past few years. How­ev­er, she knew the gym was and will al­ways be home.

What prompt­ed the on­line class­es wasn't sym­pa­thy per se. It was em­pa­thy. Fre­quent­ly the two words are used in­ter­change­ably, but their mean­ings are some­what dif­fer­ent. The on­line Mer­ri­am-Web­ster dic­tio­nary has four de­f­i­n­i­tions of sym­pa­thy, and those have sub-points as well. Per­haps an eas­i­ly un­der­stood de­scrip­tion is the act or ca­pac­i­ty of en­ter­ing in­to or shar­ing the feel­ings or in­ter­ests of an­oth­er, or the act or abil­i­ty to share the feel­ings of an­oth­er per­son. Sym­pa­thy of­ten sug­gests a ten­der con­cern.

On the oth­er hand, in short, em­pa­thy is the ac­tion of un­der­stand­ing, be­ing aware of, be­ing sen­si­tive to, and vic­ar­i­ous­ly ex­pe­ri­enc­ing the feel­ings, thoughts, and ex­pe­ri­ence of an­oth­er. Be­ing stuck at home, un­cer­tain, un­sure, wor­ry­ing, per­haps putting weight, look­ing for an av­enue, an out­let - we un­der­stood this. We felt it and knew what some of our stu­dents were ex­pe­ri­enc­ing.

Em­pa­thy is a sig­nif­i­cant ben­e­fit of sport that is over­looked or not of­ten men­tioned. While con­fi­dence, re­spect, re­spon­si­ble be­hav­iour, and sim­i­lar char­ac­ter­is­tics are not­ed, there is lit­tle ref­er­ence to em­pa­thy. Or the fact that em­pa­thy im­proves those oth­er traits. How­ev­er, there is ex­ist­ing re­search that shows how sport con­tributes to the em­path­ic de­vel­op­ment of per­sons.

Sev­dalis & Raab (2014) wrote play­ing sport is an ac­tiv­i­ty "that apt­ly em­ploys the hu­man body to en­able per­for­mance. This en­gage­ment of the body may in­volve, for in­stance, learn­ing move­ment pat­terns, co­or­di­nat­ing move­ments in space and time, or in­ter­act­ing with oth­ers to ac­com­plish con­crete ob­jec­tives. Such skills re­quire in­di­vid­u­als to pre­dict up­com­ing events, rec­og­nize oth­ers' in­ten­tions, and adapt one's own to oth­ers' ac­tions".

There­fore, the very essence of play­ing sports en­ables or teach­es an in­di­vid­ual to em­pathize - un­der­stand - what their team­mates will do, or how an op­po­nent may re­act. The re­view ar­ti­cle high­light­ed that youth sports pro­grams had pos­i­tive­ly im­pact­ed teenagers' lev­els of em­pa­thy and so­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.

"A re­la­tion­ship be­tween per­son­al­i­ty and em­pa­thy in teenagers' school sports club par­tic­i­pa­tion", Kwon, S.J. (2018), helps show the dy­nam­ic re­la­tion­ship be­tween sport and em­pa­thy. To curb Ko­re­an teen vi­o­lence and game ad­dic­tion, which con­tributed to an in­crease in sui­cide rates, the Ko­re­an gov­ern­ment felt that stu­dents' per­son­al­i­ties had to be im­proved. Al­though per­son­al­i­ty ed­u­ca­tion was con­duct­ed in the coun­try, it was based on on­ly giv­ing ba­sic eti­quette lessons, and the teenagers still lacked so­cial skills, com­mu­ni­ty spir­it, and con­sid­er­a­tion of oth­ers. A dif­fer­ent and more prac­ti­cal ap­proach was need­ed; thus, the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion im­ple­ment­ed sports club ac­tiv­i­ties in­to the en­tire sec­ondary school cur­ricu­lum.

Kwon re­minds us that "as pre­sent­ed in pre­vi­ous re­search­es, it can be found that a pos­i­tive per­son­al­i­ty is cul­ti­vat­ed through teenagers' com­mu­nal ac­tiv­i­ties in school life. The link to con­nect this with the em­pa­thy fac­tor is con­sid­ered to be the very com­mu­nal ac­tiv­i­ty, sports. In oth­er words, as sports ac­tiv­i­ty par­tic­i­pa­tion can ex­pect phys­i­cal, psy­cho­log­i­cal, and so­cial ef­fects, per­son­al­i­ty and em­path­ic abil­i­ty im­prove­ment can al­so be ex­pect­ed (Gano-Over­way et al., 2009)".

Sport is not just about the over­ly­ing re­sults of win­ning; it is about hav­ing a holis­tic ap­proach to de­vel­op­ing ex­em­plary, re­spectable, and good cit­i­zens. The re­spon­si­bil­i­ty lies heav­i­ly on coach­es to in­flu­ence em­pa­thy with­in their charges. "I coach to help boys be­come men of em­pa­thy and in­tegri­ty who will lead, be re­spon­si­ble, and change the world for good" - Coach Joe Ehrmann, high school foot­ball coach (Gano-Over­way, 2013).

Ed­i­tors' Note:

The views ex­pressed by Ria Ram­nar­ine are sole­ly her own and they don't rep­re­sent any club or or­gan­i­sa­tion.