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With physical education part of the school curriculum and various sports courses available to students here in town, competitive sports, ranging from swimming, running to even dodgeball have been making their presence felt. Fierce rivalry is involved in every match, and there must always be winners. But when it comes to their benefits and drawbacks, there has been a fiery debate on whether competitive sports can help with students' education. As such, it occurs to me that competitive sports do benefit students in terms of education.
Confronting rivals, competitive sports allow players to identify their rivals' weaknesses and learn from them -- unique to competitive sports. With the Olympic fever having swept the city last year, Hong Kong has been all abuzz with fencing news, and indeed fencing is where students can learn from others' slip-ups. As our triumphant gold-medallist fencer Edgar Cheung Ka-long stressed, fencers need to pinpoint the weaknesses of their competitors in order to vie for the first place. Such weaknesses include whether their opponents are agile enough to dodge a strike, their temperament amid intimidating setbacks etc. For example, when a fencer discovers his/her opponent lacks that agility to swerve quickly from one side to the other, it is often time for one to find out if that issue also happens to him/her and remind himself/herself to avoid such a mistake. Only until one faces an invincible opponent will he/she realise the flaws and try to rectify them. How can one possibly know, for instance, he/she cannot avoid his/her rival's strike when one only practises by himself/herself? It is likely that players of individual sports always pride themselves on their invincibility, but only to realise the harsh truth in competitions. The same holds true for learning in school: When students learn of how their classmates made careless mistakes, like in calculation, they would try to grapple with and learn from them instead of having them lasting scars again next time. It takes rivals to let students learn of their hidden mistakes and flaws and rectify them, and competitive sports work like a charm in this case.
Competitive sports can also boost students' endurance. A pertinent research carried out by the Chinese University of Hong Kong in early August that involved two groups of students -- the first group was comprised of competitive sports players and the other, those who never play competitive sports -- hinted competitive sports players tend to be more resolved and undeterred in the face of setbacks. One may wonder, what about those playing individiual sports? They do face setbacks as well, but not as many as competitive sports players do. In individual sports people only compete against themselves, but in competitive sports, contenders play against various opponents. Imagine losing to a strong rival in long-distance running even after practising for months -- would one feel dispirited? That ominous feeling is inevitable for first-time players, but as time wears on, they would begin to realise one thing: "Death by a 1,000 cuts" holds the key to success, because there must be trials and tribulations lying in front of success. How can one emerge victorious even without any failure? Failure is where people learn to rectify their mistakes, and mistakes beckon perfection. So it is crucial that players endure and transcend the hurdles in order for success. With competitive sports featuring more setbacks before success, it goes without saying that competitive sports can transform students into perseverant souls that can never be rattled by setbacks.
Critics have long argued in competitive sports, failure often foments animosity between two parties -- jeering, booing, and so on. Unarguably, competitive sports do at times, lead to conflicts between opponents. But of paramount importance is how students tangled in such conflicts resolve the issue, which brings us to the next point of problem-solving skills. Just like the relentless rivalry between the United States and China, letting trouble linger will only fester more evil and hate, eventually paralysing both parties. As the adage goes, "Cooler heads prevail." Conflicts deriving from competitive sports on such fronts as scores and elimination can hone students' problem-solving skills, such as how to placate infuriated opponents and the kind of conciliatory tone needed. For example, when sporty footballers are eliminated from a match against much weaker opponents, supporters may be disgruntled and shame the victorious team. Then it is time for the sporty students to tame the firestorm and explain why the most powerful do not always prevail, and that winning all the time without any failure makes for no incentives whatsoever to continue striving for the better. Do conflicts ever arise in individual sports where people only exercise by themselves without any opposing teams? Competitive sports do sometimes culminate in conflicts, and it is the stinging firestorms that train students' problem-solving skills, which could turn out to be indispensable concerning group projects, when group members split in two over issues like division of labour and even the topic to focus on.
Competitive sports do provide countless opportunities for students to learn from others' mistakes, become more determined and even untangle themselves from conflicts. With these upsides, competitive sports do undeniably assist in educating our future pillars to become better souls.
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