Disappointments a test of character
RECENTLY in the Bulletin, I wrote about sportsmanship.
Sportsmanship is about how you participate in your chosen activity – how an athlete reacts to winning, injury and defeat.
In looking back on my career, in 1978, at my first Commonwealth Games as a 17year-old, I was carried from the field with a stress fracture and heard rumours that people associated in the sport thought my career was over at just 17.
This just made me want to go out and prove them wrong.
Four years later at the 1982 Commonwealth Games as a 21-year-old, I demonstrated that I was in the sport to stay by winning the gold in the heptathlon.
My message to Tara and other young athletes is “What doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger!”
You need to prove everyone wrong by working hard and performing strongly.
From reading a reference written by one of Tara’s coaches, it seems she invests just as much time in her education as her sport.
As a teacher, it was evident that many athletes who achieved on the sporting field also achieved academically.
In 2018, she was also awarded Emmanuel College’s “Compass award”. The award recognises students who consistently demonstrate character traits that embody the college’s morals of justice, compassion and integrity.
Sport is a great leveller and teaches us many lessons.
I was a runner who jumped and threw things, but having a daughter who rides horses, I am well aware that equipment or another “being” can affect performance and it is generally out of your hands what eventuates. Having a horse jump on my foot on the weekend, I am aware first-hand how quickly something can happen.