Identity in Sports

The Game I Love

I hopped out of the sliding passenger door of our Honda Odyssey van and sprinted for the entrance that led into the basketball court. I threw my bag down and laced up my neon blue shoelaces. I scuffed my shoes on the court just to hear my sneakers hit the shiny wooden floor.

…squeak squeak…

One of my favorite noises.

I ran with a big grin to greet my other fifth-grade teammates. It was my second season of travel basketball with all my favorite teammates. We joked and made up nicknames as we learned our plays that day. My coach stood in front of us as we lined up across the baseline, the distinct smell of peppermint gum drifting from him as we ran through ball-handling drills. The practice flowed into scrimmages, and all I remember feeling was pure joy. 

I loved this game.

Right outside the local school where our practices were held were four double-rimmed basketball hoops, a big grass field, and a tall brick wall that stretched the length of the gym. This place was my safe haven.

It was a short fifteen-minute bike ride from my house. I would bike there with my sports bag filled with my green Gatorade squirt bottle, agility ladder, and basketball. And in my hand was my lacrosse stick. On bright summer days I would train there by myself, doing shooting drills, wall ball, and footwork skills as the sun slowly set over the trees.

I loved the process.

It’s game day. I’m on the field. There’s a layer of snow covering the turf on this April day in Ohio. The score is 7–7. My favorite teammate to play with has the ball in her stick and curls around the goal. Three defenders try to stop her. I sneak up and follow right behind her. As she draws her stick back, looking at the goal, I swing across and she slings the ball to me. One cradle fake and I lose my defender. One more and the goalie jumps to the top right. Boom. I shoot to the left corner and the net flares behind it. I jump in the air as my teammates come rushing towards me. We shout, hit sticks, and celebrate the win.

I love the rush of victory.

The stands holler and roar. We come out of the locker room and I’m greeted with praise from the spectators.

I love the praise.

It’s a hot summer day. We’re drained from the sun that feels ten degrees hotter on the turf. But my teammates are with me. We tease each other and laugh at inside jokes.

I love this camaraderie.

I walk into the mile-long hallway of my high school and pass by friends, strangers, and teachers. They talk to me about this week's game. They congratulate me on getting Player of the Week.

They know me as an athlete.

I’m sitting in calculus class and it’s game day. As my teacher jots down the ending of the derivative, all I can think about is running plays through my head and imagining them play out.

Sports consumed my daydreams.

At first, sports were simply a gift. Something I loved because it was fun. A place of joy, friendship, challenge, and competition.

But slowly, something deeper began to take root.

When Sports Became My Identity

Without realizing it, being an athlete began to shape how I saw myself.

When I played well, I felt confident. When I didn’t, I’d beat myself up and struggle to be happy for my teammates. The praise from the stands felt good. Being known in the hallways as “the athlete” felt even better.

Looking back now, I can see how much of my life revolved around sports.

My joy, my schedule, my free time, my thoughts, my friends, my reputation and my sense of worth were all tied to this one thing:

Sports.

Being an athlete had quietly become the primary place I looked for my identity.

When I Lost My Identity

Then I entered college. I chose to study Athletic Training, which meant giving up the opportunity to play in college because we had to work with the athletic teams. Up until that point, sports had always been central to my life. It felt like I had lost a huge part of myself.

It was a hard year. I struggled to make friends without sharing the same playing field. I had lost the reputation of being “the athlete,” and now I was serving other athletes through my major instead of being one of them.

I so badly wanted others to know my high school accolades. I wanted them to know my talents on the field and court. Truthfully, I wanted people to know I could have played Division I sports if I had chose to. But instead of being on the field, I stood on the sideline, treating injuries, squirting water into players’ mouths, and chasing them down with Gatorade racks instead of my lacrosse stick.

I kept questioning:

Did I make the right decision?

What if…

What I didn’t realize at the time was that God was exposing something in my heart.

Grasping The Gospel 

One day I was in the bathroom crying. I felt the weight of loss, identity crisis, loneliness, and sadness. I called my twin brother, who has always had a way of sitting with me in my emotions and offering true encouragement.

During that phone call he said something that helped me grasp the gospel more deeply.

As I shared about my identity crisis, he said something along the lines of, “Jesus left the most glorious throne in heaven to come down to this earth… to serve us, love us, and die for our sins. Your worth is not in your own talents, but in Christ’s work in His life, death, and resurrection”

And the Lord opened my eyes.

The One who truly deserves all glory, praise, and honor willingly left it all, so that I could experience life with Him.

Slowly, I began to understand that the things of this world are temporary. When we place our identity or worship in anything other than Jesus, we will eventually be disappointed and left feeling lost.

Our worth does not come from our talents, performance, or accomplishments. Our worth is found in the finished work of our Savior who has paid it all for our sins.

The Lord began putting to death the idol in my heart – the place where I had looked to sports and my talents for ultimate meaning.

Restoring The Game

Now don’t get me wrong. It’s been many years since my first year in college…

And yet, there are still many moments when I need to be reminded of these truths. I still fall into the temptations of idolizing the very things the Lord has already shown me not to.

The world constantly invites us to build our identity on things that will fade, disappoint, and fail us.

But these moments remind me of my daily need for God’s grace. Grace to see my idols. Grace to lay them down. Grace to turn back again to the One who is worthy of all glory. My ultimate identity is not in sports or anything else. My ultimate identity is in Christ.

Yet there is still a child-like love of the game that lives in me. I still love the squeaks of a basketball court, the EVO grip rolling off my fingertips as the ball leaves my hand, and the joy of running a beautiful play with my friends. I still love the process of becoming a better athlete – days in the weight room and lab days on the court. I still have the biggest smile hitting clean daps after a power play with friends. 

And I still step onto the court as an athlete. But now I step onto the court whole.

My worth is not in my performance or the praise of spectators. I don’t need the game or the world to tell me who I am. Because the One who has won the ultimate victory has already claimed me as His before I could achieve anything in this world.

And because of that, 

I am free to play. 

I am free to train. 

Whole in Him.