Welding. Football. Auto. Basketball. They are all sports according to a definition But should they be?
The Cambridge definition for a sport is “a game, competition, or activity needing physical effort and skill that is played or done according to rules, for enjoyment and/or as a job.” According to this definition, working a blue collar job means that you are a sports player. If that is a sport then that means that the skills USA competitions are sports. But just because they fit the definition of a sport does not mean that they get treated the same as football or basketball.
There are a few reasons for why they are not treated equally. One reason is that Skills USA is not a traditional sport/spectator sport; though, Andrew Robertson -a USA Luge team member- says “it would be fun to watch the spectators burn their eyes out as people are welding.” it could be a spectator spectator sport. A different reason why it’s not a traditional sport is when you say “We have the best welding fab team in the state.” It is not as impressive as saying the same thing about football, Though, they require similar amounts of work. Because they are not a spectator sport, it makes it more difficult for people to care about what happens and who wins. Though it can work because forged in fire would normally be considered not a spectator sport but they are going on 11 seasons. There is also the reason that nobody is really trying to take the Skills USA auto or welding competitions and make them like sports because it is nearly impossible to find videos or information about the competitions. There is also not much benefit of considering and treating them as sports other than a chance at higher funding.
However, a good reason to treat Welding competitions as a sport is that the competitors would learn very valuable skills with a trade attached, -like how to weld or counteract warping- but when you have traditional sports like football or basketball they spend all of their time working on their skills in that sport where it will not be used in a specific job or field. Though, Traditional sports don’t have fields of work attached to them; they do develop good soft skills like reliability and teamwork, however; Skills competitions can develop the same things. Though, when a donator looks at a school they see sports not trades: “Football gets Millions donated not skills.” – Andrew Robertson
Traditional sports could lead to better teamwork because many of the Skills competitions are one man teams, but sports have many people working for one cause. The fact that sports teams have more people allows for blame of a loss to go on the team, not just the one contestant. The amount of people that can get on a team is greater in Traditional sports and will lead for more benefits in the side of working with people and also would make more people get these experiences. . Many people would also help push people to be active for fun rather than just exercise which will keep them healthier. Though, the people who have spent all of their time working on developing their skill in the sport will get very little back in whatever job they do compared to working for a Skills competition.
