Racism in Athletics

Racism in Athletics is no new issue. First off there has always been people who are afraid of what's different. In class, we discussed how racism is in sports, examples, and what should be done about it. Needless to say this is a controversial topic, and the class was divided. It's tough to talk about such a touchy subject. I'm glad we did. I can usually tell a lot about people and what they believe in. I saw that in our class, we have a variety of people. The variety includes sex, age, weight, color, height, intellectual level, athletic knowledge, and so on. When racism came into the subject, people we hesitant to talk about it. I have experienced racism first hand my junior year of High School, while playing soccer. We were at Rossford, which is a suburb of Toledo. On our soccer team we had white, Hispanic, Asian, Spanish, and Indian people. The whole game Rossford was saying racist things and doing dirty play toward my non white teammates. I got a yellow card earlier because I was protecting to people on my team by throwing a punch to shut up these racist comments. It was totally worth it to me, but the comments didn't stop. We won seven to zero, and as we were going through the whole "good game thing" to the one I punched I said no hard feelings. He then said fu** you and your (racists name) teammates, that's when my goalie and I got really pissed and pushed these two guys. A huge brawl broke out and was eventually stopped. My parents were proud of me for standing up for my teammates. My mom was not mad at all that I got in a fight. There is one thing that bothered me throughout this whole situation, and that is: Rossford had black, Asian, and Mexican players on their team. What could they have felt like when their own teammates were making racists comments toward their own nationality? To this day, I have no regret for fighting to protect my teammates and more importantly my friends!