Gritty on the Gridiron

 Many sports have one common denominator... They are made for kids to build camaraderie and teach them how to work in teams. Many peewee football players and recreational baseball players parents are not using the sport as a workout, rather a socialization tool to help their kid make friends. It is not until the high school or college level that these kids get significant workout benefits from these sports. But what about adulthood? Are there recreational baseball leagues and pickup football leagues as adults? The answer is yes, but less adults participate in adult sports leagues than should. I would argue if you're not a gym rat or iron man runner then you should be participating in these extracurricular activities in order to keep yourself fit. I myself participate in many USTA Tennis Leagues, and golf with friends once and sometimes twice a week during the summer. This keeps my mind sharp for my day to day working activities I must complete during my engineering grad school curr...

When you think of top athletic universities you may think of Alabama University , Florida University, University of Texas, USC, or any other school in the power 5 division 1 conferences. But many people don't know that top academic universities also have high level sports, maybe not as high level as a power 5 school, but high level, nevertheless. Boston University has a renowned Hockey program that produces many NHL players; Columbia has the top-rated tennis player in all the NCAA, and Lehigh has had a top tier Wrestling program for most of the 21st century. Schools that are very academically inclined do have sports, contrary to popular belief. My first two years of college I participated in one of these school's football programs when I walked onto Lafayette Colleges D1AA Football program . Coming out of high school I was recruited for mainly division 3 football schools with a few division 1 looks. Some of these schools were Ithaca College, Tufts, Union College, Cornell, Co...

Yesterday morning, the USA Hockey Team defeated the Canadian Hockey Team in overtime at the gold medal match in the 2026 Winter Olympics. Fans across the United States woke up early (8 am EST) to watch in their homes, bars and watch parties around the country. The Olympics is a global phenomenon that happens every 2 years (Summer every 4 years and winter every 4 years, staggered by 2 years). So why do sports watchers and non-sports watchers alike go crazy for the Olympics? I would argue it's because of two main reasons; national identity is tapped into, and the general population (sports watchers and non-sports watchers alike) love a good comeback story. Doesn't matter your politics, conservative, liberal, or moderate, if you were born and raised somewhere, there is a shared national pride over the country you reside. Take the USA for example, politically we are as divided as we've ever been, but when a team USA athlete takes home the gold in an event, there is a shared fee...

It is often thought that what makes an athlete great is his or her physical toolkit to adapt to any situation on the field or court. I would argue that a physical toolkit is the baseline to make an athlete decent, but what differentiates an athlete from good and great is their cognitive ability to be aware what is going on in his or her domain, as well as their strategy and planning on how to make their next move after their opponent strikes. This is most prevalent in "country club sports" (I say country club because these are the predominant sports played at a country club) such as golf and tennis or any racquet sport. In golf you have to analyze the entire hole and strategize how you will attack it. Not only that, after you strategize, then you have to make different variations of "golf swings" in order to drive, approach, chip and putt the ball into the hole. This is not even counting if you get into trouble in a bunker or by trees and have to hit a "bunker ...

The idea of high performance in an arena is no novel endeavor. Whether it be in a classroom, athletic field, music studio or at work, there are usually individuals who are high performers and those who may be seen as more average. Being average is not a bad thing and a lot of times average individuals are seen as more average because of other responsibilities they may have in life, pulling their attention away from high performance. High performers on the other hand usually sacrifice other aspects of their life (health, money, family) in order to perform at their highest level. Whether it be a professional athlete, PHD Student, professional musician or just a person in a cognitively demanding career these people may seem to have it all figured out, but more times than not, a lot of these people are still going through identity crises and imposter syndrome. I have gone through many of these shifts as well; when I was in high school, I played three sports and juggled school on top of tha...

 From a young age, most academically inclined students have a goal; get into an Ivy League school. For those not familiar, the Ivy League is a conglomerate of schools in a division 1 athletic conference who are considered the strongest academic colleges in the United States. They are Harvard , Yale, Brown, Dartmouth, UPenn, Princeton, Columbia and Cornell. From a young age, if you are an excellent student, societal pressure and maybe internal burden tell these kids that if they do not get into one of these schools then they are a failure. This is a very narrow-minded view that a 17–18-year-old may see but there are some great schools in the United States that are not in the Ivy League.  Some of these schools congeal in other NCAA athletic conferences. There is the Division 3 NESCAC Conference that consists of Tufts, Wesleyan, Williams, Trinity, Middlebury, Hamilton, Connecticut College, Bowdoin, Bates and Amherst. There is also Division 3 UAA Conference consisting of Emory...