Sport is an activity involving physical exertion and skill in which an individual or team competes against another or others for entertainment. It is all forms of usually competitive physical activity which, through casual or organised participation, aim to use, maintain or improve physical ability and skills while providing entertainment to participants, and in some cases, spectators.
Engaging in sport activities as a youth has a lot of benefits. The benefits of sports are numerous and can impact lives in profound ways. Sports participation promotes health and wellbeing, builds confidence, and can help maintain mental health. But often youths don’t engage in sport, probably because most youth think they are not good enough for the sport that they engage themselves in. Nevertheless, sports can provide many benefits for youths, because positive experiences that sports bring play an important role in a young person’s life.
Sports are a fun way to increase a youth’s physical activity level and develop lifelong habits for good health, to develop self-control, persistence, and accountability. It helps the youth reach his or her fitness goals and maintain a healthy weight. However, they also encourage healthy decision making such as not smoking and not drinking. It also has health benefits such as lowering the chance of osteoporosis or breast cancer later in life.
Participation in sports requires the youths to learn vital time management skills, and offers them a range of appealing challenges. Physical activities provide young people healthy opportunities to learn skills, take risks, and achieve goals.
Where a youth refuse to engage in sport, it will go a long way to affect their physical health, and restrict their access to people who they may be able to form relationships with, thus stunting their social growth, and it enables them learn an enormous amount about what it means to be a part of a team, which are skills that can be transferred into the workplace in a number of ways. These skills may be harder to learn if they don’t play sports.
Knowledge is power, when youths don’t have the knowledge of the benefits of sports, will continue to refuse being part of sport activities. It’s our mandate as individuals who understand the value of sports to ensure the youths naturally incorporates exercise into their life. It will also require us to provide knowledge by being examples, doing sports together, keeping it fun and encouraging instead of forcing sports.
Saminu Yakubu Bitrus,
epartment of Mass Communication,
University of Maiduguri
