Practice Makes Perfect: How Sport Teaches Life

Unknown LSU photographer., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

“Ball is life!” boldly declared one of my then high school students—much to the approval of several of his teammates. The football team had won an important game and locked up the season. However, a teaching opportunity is never to be missed, and sports provide endless opportunities for learning. Indeed, later that same week, an older Jesuit priest addressed the student body and wryly responded that “Life,” rather, “is ball.” 

There is much that a sporting culture can teach—especially here in Louisiana, where we measure the year as much by sports seasons as by seafood seasons. Indeed, if the old Jesuit is right then sport can help teach what a good (and presumably bad) life entails. For instance, I often hear people saying that the ‘definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over and expect different results.’ Yet, any good coach worth their salt will make their players run drills, often yelling out ‘Again!,’ expecting to eventually get different results. No one thinks this coach insane; rather, we would not consider him a ‘good coach’ if there were not some amount of this exact ‘repetition’ in his practices! Repetition and rules are the two things that any good coach has a healthy amount of, not because a coach wants to limit his players or because he is insane. Precisely the opposite. Good coaches give rules because they want their players to play well. The goal of any coach is not merely to squeak out a win. Rather, the goal of the coach should be to get the most out of his players so that they not only play to the best of their abilities but do so without hesitation, responding appropriately to every game situation with a certain characteristic ease, promptness, and joy. Thus, coaches will repeatedly drill rules and fundamentals at the outset that teach their players that they must ‘dribble the ball with their heads up,’ ‘bend at the knees when protecting the quarterback,’ or ‘watch the ball out of the pitcher’s hand,’ etc. These rules—properly practiced—should not limit players. Quite the opposite. Not following the rules limits players. The truly excellent ballplayer has so internalized these rules that he is able to do them at need without a moment’s hesitation.

Here, then, good coaches and good ballplayers teach us about the good life in what at first blush might sound like ‘insanity.’ In our modern American lifestyle, we often think of rules as the opposite of freedom. Where rules increase, freedom decreases—as my students often assert at the outset of my courses. For instance, a ‘truly free market’ is sometimes thought to coincide with a minimum of rules and regulations. But is this understanding of the relationship of rules and freedom true? If one gets rid of the rules around balls and strikes, do pitchers become more ‘free’? If one gets rid of the rules around what counts as a first down, do running backs increase in freedom? Sport teaches us something that might be radical in modern society: freedom and rules are not always in an antagonistic and inverse relationship. There are times when rules can increase simultaneously with freedom. For instance, no one responds (hopefully) to the Commandment against murder as if it were a ‘limitation on freedom.’ Similarly too, we should experience the Commandment to not work on the sabbath and to worship as a guarantor of our freedom. Good rules aim at human goods and excellent actions and therefore aim at the increase of human freedom. Bad rules hinder such excellence. Furthermore, it is precisely on this common-sense line of analysis that we judge ‘good’ and ‘bad’ coaches: do the rules and habits they set for their team actually help the team to play at its best (even when that does not entail winning every game)? Does the coaching both in its rules and its drills enable the players to respond appropriately and freely—i.e., without hesitation and with a characteristic and cultivated ease, readiness, and love of the game? Indeed—like the good musician who has internalized through practice the proper fundamentals of musical keys, scales, and chord progressions—the hallmark of the truly excellent and free players is that they are able to improvise beautifully when a play has broken down and still accomplish well what they need to so as to put their team in a position to succeed. Ironically, it is the player with no understanding of the rules who has no freedom to actually play the game. For this reason, cheating is precisely not playing the sport (and to sin is to be in-human.) 

Playing sports and internalizing rules by the slow and intentional cultivation of habits through repeated action reveals a fuller conception of freedom than is normally thought of by society. Normally, our society seems to think of freedom as what the theologian Servais Pinckaers, O.P. calls ‘freedom of indifference.’ This type of freedom is so-called because it views freedom as the ability to choose indifferently between contraries, between yes and no. Either one can choose between options by their own power or they are compelled. Thus, on this view of freedom, any rule or external force, even be it God and his grace, is a threat and competitor to human freedom.

By contrast, sports embodies a fuller or broader view of freedom: ‘the freedom for excellence.’ This second view, freedom for excellence, sees in human freedom a moral power, in which one can grow or diminish, for doing good and avoiding evil. Rules and external aids can foster growth in freedom and the overcoming of obstacles, especially when one is weak or tempted. Good coaches give rules and do drills precisely to make their players free within the confines of the game in this latter way. Indeed, it is the player who develops good habits, following the good coach’s instructions and fundamental rules, who grows more and more free to play well with characteristic ease, readiness, and joy.

Sport not only teaches us about freedom (and good rules), but also about virtues and habits. Moreover, this is not only the case for ‘natural virtue’ but also the ‘supernatural virtue’ of life in Christ. Sport, taught Pius XII, is a school of all natural virtue that also provides a firm foundation for the cultivation of the supernatural life of faith, hope, and charity. Like the pagans of old, sport helps Christians—albeit in a new way—to cultivate the capacity to bear life’s most important responsibilities with joy and without weakness. Sport teaches virtue. Playing sports naturally provides the occasion for building, among other qualities, discipline when faced with hardship, endurance and courage when faced with the possibility of failure, and loyalty to one’s teammates. Indeed, fans are naturally scandalized when players have so painstakingly developed such qualities on the field but have not allowed these qualities to permeate the rest of their lives. In fact, for the Greeks, arete—which is often translated simply as virtue—would best be translated as any habitual or dispositional ‘excellence’ and can be said as much of athletics as the moral life. For them as for Pope Pius XII, sports taught the moral life. So then, having discussed rules and freedom, I turn to discuss ‘virtue’ explicitly. 

Sports exemplify the cultivation of habits through which we embody certain rules or fundamentals of the game so as to respond appropriately and rationally to any situation with a certain ease, promptness, and joy. In fact, it is in this way that virtue is said to be a good habit. But let’s examine how athletes display this and are called ‘good’ basketball or baseball players etc. A good habit can sometimes be called ‘automatic.’ However, good habits for any sports player are not automatic or thoughtless. Precisely the opposite. If you were to ask the player why he or she boxed out the nearest opponent the very moment the ball was shot or bent at the knees to field the grounder, you would be given a reason. “I was trying to do ‘x’.” Virtues and habits are always cultivated dispositions of a rational acting subject to respond appropriately. They are precisely cultivated thought-full action won through repeated practice and characterized by a certain ease, readiness, and joy—which in sports is sometimes simply called ‘the love of the game.’

As any good coach will say, ‘practice makes perfect.’ The good player freely and easily responds appropriately and rationally at a moment’s notice with a fluidity and facility that comes from sustained practice. So too in the moral life, and indeed, this is what is meant by virtues as a ‘good habit.’ Anyone who has gained some excellence in a sport knows the joy and reward of this type of action: the fluid swing of the bat that smoothly makes contact with the ball without rattle, shake, or bump; the instantaneous pass to the player who arrives at the right time exactly where they need to be for the shot; the perfect throw the quarterback can feel in his finger-tips the moment the ball leaves his hand. Similarly, in the moral sphere, virtuous action, when it has been cultivated, has a joy to it and, notes Aristotle, is its own reward: the bringing of food to the family struggling, the invitation to the outcast and awkward to enter the conversation and friendship, the tending of the forgotten cemetery of the poor, visiting the imprisoned, patiently listening to and counseling the doubtful. While it can be difficult to form our desires and passions through practice, the joy of a virtuous action is what Aristotle calls flourishing, human excellence, or just simply happiness. In this way, virtue or excellence is not only its own reward but is sought for itself, as an end in itself.

Indeed, sportsmen and athletes know this instinctively. The teammate who cares only for winning is no teammate at all. They give up on their team when winning seems out of reach. They do not play their best for the love of the game (as an end in itself) or for love and loyalty to their teammates, but only for external goods of the game: the reputation or honor of winning (or sometimes for money). Most do not care for such a teammate, as opposed to the teammates who unceasingly bring their best to the game and for each other no matter the score. Indeed, a true goal of sport, as such, is properly understood to be character—to become the person and teammate who does not grow cold, half-hearted, and passionless when the game becomes difficult or one is clearly overmatched. Indeed, there is no growth without risking failure and error. Failure and learning to deal with it well is no less a part of sports than it is in the moral life. 

In so much, sport teaches human life in ways that the dominant culture often misses or obscures. It is perhaps one of the reasons that Louisianans cling so much to a sporting culture, especially as part of any kind of educational formation. Indeed, sports teach an expansive view of freedom, how excellence and play are kinds of ends in themselves, and how excellence is a happiness, joy, and reward of its own. Simply put, ball teaches life and life is practiced until we develop the perfections to act properly with joy, readiness, and promptness. Indeed, it is as the old Jesuit said: it is not so much that ‘ball is life’ but rather that “Life is ball.”

[This essay originally appeared in the Fall 2024 issue of Joie de Vivre. To purchase this issue or an annual subscription, click the “Subscribe” tab above.]

Christopher Ragusa, Ph.D., is a Professor of Theology at Franciscan University in Baton Rouge, LA.