Spirit of the Game

I try to keep this more of a fitness blog than an Ultimate blog, even if it is my sport of choice. While the post, Ultimate, Refs, and the Fallacy of Objectivity is ostensibly about refs in Ultimate, I thought it was an excellent meditation on sportsmanship in general, and would have some appeal outside my little niche sport. An excerpt:

Like all sports, even team sports, Ultimate fundamentally comes down to a competition with the self. Opposing teams provide a foil against which to test oneself, and maybe the memory of being beaten by other players contributes to your motivation while training, but really, sports are about struggling to facilitate the emergence of your best, at the right time. The level of one's play comes from within; while the presence of the other team challenges a player in new ways, the idea of beating the other team and the externality of that goal is secondary to the ascendancy of your own strength. When teams win championships, they're celebrating their own victories, not the other teams' defeats. It's an important distinction.