When Sports and Culture Collide

Growing up in Texas, we all know where everyone in town is going to be on a Friday night. If the local high school is playing football, the town is ready to go and cheer their hearts out for their beloved mascot. Sitting down to truly think about it, we invest so much time, effort, and money into our school system specifically for sports. Is this a good thing? Maybe, maybe not. Depends on who you are speaking to. But for me, I love sports and sports culture. And we are headed to the starting point of the biggest sporting competition in the world: the Olympics.

One thing that I am especially excited for within this trip is the immersion into another culture’s sports. Every time I have traveled to another country and spoken to the locals about sports, it's like you're speaking the same language all of the sudden. In fact, in the summer of 2015, I traveled to Tegucigalpa, Honduras on a mission trip to build houses. In between the hammering and drilling, I would hang out with the local kids. Very few of them spoke English, but we all had one thing in common. We loved soccer. I would play soccer with the kids in the streets and all of the sudden we all spoke the same language. Every time a kid would score he would beat his chest and scream “Soy Messi!” And I would scream “I know him!” And then we would argue about what team is better by using few words other than soccer teams and players. It was amazing to see our cultures come together just by knowing the things that each one loves. And this is what gets me excited about Greece.

I think that sports culture creates a true connection within each and every culture. This summer marks the end of the four-year absence that we have had from the Olympics. This means that once again the whole world will come together to watch their countries represented by athletes compete to win a gold and the pride of the land. Although it is a competition, it is also a uniting of every culture. And this all started in Greece 2500 years ago.

The first Olympic games can be traced back to 776 B.C. But, the ties go back in Greek mythology even further. The games started, according to mythology, as a celebration of the Greek gods when they defeated the Titans to gain control. Through the games, they would worship their gods and compete to please those above them in Olympia. Little did those athletes know that what they were doing then would be a tradition held for the next two millennia

Now the Olympic games are something that the whole world competes in, and we get to experience the country where it all started. It’s going to be amazing getting to see the history that has unfolded since then. And we even get to taste this sports culture the second day we are in Athens; their soccer team, AEK Athens F.C., will be playing Olympiakos in the Greek Finals. We get to experience the Greek “Super Bowl” first hand!

Go Athens, go USA, and GO BUFFS.