Written by AFH Chief Wellbeing Officer, Dr. Mena Mirhom
A Model of Service in Sports
Sports have a way of clarifying something fundamental about human relationships. When you put on a jersey, the boundaries are obvious. Your team competes against another. The scoreboard keeps track. And inside a healthy locker room, there is an unspoken rule that everyone understands: no matter what happened earlier in practice or in the locker room, you protect your teammate.
If your teammate falls, you help him up.
If he’s struggling, you step in.
If he succeeds, you celebrate.
That instinct is not something athletes have to be taught. It is something they live every day.
But one of the most powerful lessons sports can offer the world is that our team is often larger than we realize.
The Team We See
In sports, we tend to think about teammates in narrow ways.
Imagine a football team where a player only thinks of the offense as his teammates. That would make no sense. What about the defense? What about special teams?
Every position experiences the game differently. A quarterback carries the pressure of leadership and decision-making. A lineman absorbs physical punishment play after play. A kicker lives with the reality that one moment can define the outcome of a game.
Different roles. Different pressures.
But one team.
The same principle applies outside of sports.
In our communities, we often only see the “offense,” the people closest to us. Our coworkers. Our friends. Our neighborhoods. Our circles.
But the team is larger than that.
The Team We Don’t Always See
There are teammates in every city we live in who play on parts of the field we rarely visit.
These are the neighborhoods where violence is more common.
Where food insecurity is part of daily life.
Where mental health challenges are compounded by lack of access to care.
For many people, these communities feel distant. Sometimes even intimidating.
But if sports teaches us anything, it is that distance does not determine whether someone is on your team.
They already are.
Service in sports helps athletes recognize that their team extends far beyond the locker room. It includes the communities that support them, the kids who watch them, and the neighborhoods that often feel forgotten.
Meeting Your Extended Team
At Athletes for Hope, this idea is at the center of what we do.
When athletes participate in service initiatives, something powerful happens. They encounter teammates they may never have met otherwise.
A professional athlete might walk into a community center and meet a teenager navigating challenges that look very different from those faced on the court or field. But the deeper truth quickly becomes clear: both are fighting adversity. Both are trying to grow. Both want to win in life.
Sports creates a language of connection that makes this realization immediate.
Every position on the team experiences pressure differently, but everyone is playing the same game.
Camaraderie Beyond the Game
What transforms service from charity into something more meaningful is the mindset behind it.
If service is something we do occasionally because it feels good, it remains an activity.
But when we see someone as a teammate, service becomes something entirely different. It becomes instinct.
Athletes understand this better than most people.
You cannot imagine walking past a teammate who just got knocked down without reaching out your hand. That would violate the code of sports itself.
The same instinct can guide how we engage with our communities.
My teammate may not look like me.
They may not come from the same background.
They may not live in the same neighborhood.
But they are still on my team.
Why Sports Are Uniquely Positioned to Lead
There is growing evidence that sports-based service initiatives can produce meaningful social impact. Programs that connect athletes with community engagement opportunities have been shown to increase youth resilience, strengthen community identity, and improve mental wellbeing among participants.
Athletes also possess something rare in our culture: credibility with young people. When an athlete shows up in a community and demonstrates that service matters, it carries a message that resonates far beyond the event itself.
Sports has always been about more than competition. It has always been about belonging.
An Invitation to Meet Your Team
Today, we invite you to think about your team differently.
Your team includes people whose experiences may be very different from yours.
People who are navigating challenges you may never have faced.
People whose hopes and dreams may look different but whose desire to succeed is just as real.
Winning is sweeter when you do it together.
And sometimes the most important victories do not happen on the field at all.
They happen when we recognize that the person standing across from us was always our teammate.
References
- Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. (2020). The Impact of Sports-Based Youth Development Programs on Community Wellbeing.
- Stanford University Center on Adolescence. (2019). Sports Participation, Purpose, and Youth Development.
Journal of Sport and Social Issues. (Coakley, J., 2017). Sport and Social Capital: The Role of Athletes in Community Engagement.