It takes more than good writing skills to write a great college essay. Students must be able to think comprehensively, analyse situations deeply, and articulate ideas. It may seem unlikely, but sports can help develop these critical thinking skills and thus writing an influential and persuasive college essay. Let’s take a look at why participating in sports can help students develop the most important qualities of good writers. Academized online essay services offer professional guidance for students looking to improve their writing. Academized provides expert help in essay crafting, which can assist students in honing their skills and presenting their ideas effectively.

Problem-Solving in Real Time

In sports, you’re constantly making decisions, both for yourself and your teammates, often very quickly, whether it’s when to take a shot, or where to be on the field, or when to switch up your coverage, or which player to double-team.’ All of these experiences translate easily to the composition of college essays as well. When you see an essay prompt, you have to assess it, think through what it wants from you, and decide how to address it. In sports and in writing essays, you learn to think fast and on your feet.

Analysing Complex Situations

Many sports require you to weigh up lots of different elements simultaneously, for instance, the plan of the opposition, the position of your teammates, and the overall rhythm of the game. The same tactic applies in essay-writing. In the realm of sport, you consider a plethora of different playing scenarios and ways to tackle them; similarly, in essay-writing, you need to deconstruct your chosen topic into key points, analyse different approaches to these points, and find a structure that allows you to explain your argument in a clear and understandable way. Sports teach you how to break down different scenarios and apply the same method to essay-writing.

Learning from Mistakes

Sports are replete with mistakes and, along with repeatedly making them, athletes develop the skill of recovering from them. After a missed shot or a botched play, athletes are taught not to simply move on but to think critically about what went wrong and how it could be done differently. This is an indispensable skill that students need to hone when working on college essays. The first draft of your college essay will probably contain dozens of errors. But like an athlete replaying the game footage, the student should review her work and think deeply about the mistakes contained within it and how it can be made better. The process of constantly thinking about how to improve a piece of writing will further develop the student’s critical thinking skills. Online research paper services are also available to assist students in improving their writing through expert feedback and analysis.

Developing a Growth Mindset

Second, sports help students cultivate a growth mindset – they help you focus on the process, rather than the outcome. Growth mindset is the ability to not fear mistakes or setbacks but rather to see them as opportunities to improve. Students who write essays can benefit from a growth mindset. I’ve certainly written essays that aren’t quite where I want them to be, and it can sometimes be discouraging. But if I approach that essay with a growth mindset – that is, I review, revise and edit it until I get the grade I want – then I’ve benefited from the lessons I’ve learned in sports. When I’m done, then the essay is good.

Teamwork Enhances Critical Thinking

Many sporting events also involve teamwork, so that athletes learn to speak to each other, listen to each other, and understand how each person sees things. They learn to think critically in the context of teamwork. For an essay they might be writing for college, a high-school student might talk things over with a friend, the class teacher, or a counsellor. In all these instances, working with others – as in sport – means that they must listen to criticism, reflect on alternative viewpoints, and integrate them into the piece they are writing. The act of thinking can be sharpened as students learn to hold their own ideas back a little to accommodate others’ feedback.

Applying Strategies to Writing

In every sport, there are strategies – a game plan or set of plays, like in football or basketball – that allow players to think smart and make strategic decisions to help them succeed. The same type of strategic planning goes into college essays. Instead of developing and executing a game plan on the field, students need to plan what they’re going to write about – select a topic – and how they’re going to write about it – outline their ideas and structure their arguments. Taking the skill of planning and executing smart strategies – or plays – from the sport and applying it to writing essays can help student athletes better structure an essay.

Building Resilience Through Repetition

To perfect a pitch or three-point shot, an athlete might have to score, say, 30 or 40 unbroken baskets in a row – all the while, every time, perfecting a plant and follow-through. The same is true for a play in a sport or for a piece of writing: you start out awkwardly, but as soon as your mind gets a feel for the patterns, you become halfway decent at it. Want to score? Keep on keeping on until you do, and then some more. Until it’s as right as you’re going to get. Trying and failing again and again not only builds the ego but it becomes a part of your training. And it transfers to your critical thinking. On one level, this attitude towards learning is welcomed by college instructors. After three years of being pumped up to be achievers, we’re now being asked to take our egos down a notch.

Time Management and Focus

In sport, athletes can manage their time, attending to practise and games, while also maintaining their academics. This very same time-management skill can be applied toward essay writing (eg, how will you plan your research, your draft?). To be an effective athlete, one must decide what to focus on – and so too with essays. This process is a reflection of critical thinking: how to evaluate (eg, I’ve accomplished x but I should have done y by now), and how your time management will enable you to succeed (eg, I need to work x more hours). This last point also speaks to self-efficacy. In my study, I found many athletes demonstrating key elements of self-efficacy, such as planning, persistence and organisation. This is directly related to the acts of essay-writing.

Prioritising Tasks

When playing a sports game, certain plays or actions must be prioritised over others based on the situation. Similarly, in the context of an essay, students need to prioritise certain points and arguments over others depending on the focus of the essay. When students learn to prioritise certain plays in the game, they are better able to write the essays based on the same principle – to focus on what is most important.

Conclusion

Aside from the obvious physical benefits of sports, the process of playing a sport develops skills that are useful for writing college essays. Problem-solving skills, for example, are tremendously helpful for athletic teams, and this same ability transfers well to essay writing; athletes are better prepared than others to solve more tricky writing problems and to constructively read ample feedback to improve their writing. Similarly, the mental discipline, rigour and focus that sport requires can be effective in essay writing – the process of sports can teach athletes the very skills that they need as writers.

Recognising the parallels between the two helps students to draw on their athletic experiences to hone their writing and fashion stronger college essays.