Why over What

It’s often said that if you do something you love you’ll never work a day in your life. I used to agree but now I’m not so sure. I mean, I LOVE sports and I’m passionate about the different aspects of my job within the sports industry. But there are plenty of days that my job still feels like work, no matter how much I love what I do. In fact, I’ve wondered more than once if my career is actually slowly killing my love for sports. Irrational fans and a work-life balance that almost always borders on unhealthy can make it hard to love what I do all the time.

I thought about this a lot last week while I was vacationing in South Dakota at the NAIA Division II Men’s Basketball National Tournament, a trip where I basically watched basketball all day and caught a Hallmark movie back at my hotel before getting up and doing it all again the next day. You might wonder why someone worried about losing her love for sport because her job forces her to be around it 24/7 would spend her vacation on a 24/7 sports trip (and, no, it’s not just for the cute coaches). For starters, I got to watch somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 games without worrying about crowd control or needy officials or concessions running out of quarters. That in and of itself was refreshing.

On top of that, the university I currently work for and my alma mater were both competing in the tournament. I had two sets of coaches, student-athletes, media personnel, and fans to hang out with. That provided the ultimate refresher for my love of sports and my career. I was reminded of why I put up with parents, and coaches, and officials, and late nights, and full weekends. Why I really love what I do.

The reasons I still work in collegiate athletics are not the same reasons I had for wanting to work in sports initially (except maybe the cute coaches). I first wanted to work in sports because I love all the things the typical sports fan loves – big crowds and close games and the excitement when your team wins. I thought if I was on the inside of the industry I could have some really cool experiences in the world of sport.

Then I got my first job in a collegiate athletic department and started working with coaches and seeing the profound and lasting impact they had on their student-athletes. I wasn’t sure I could ever have that kind of direct impact on players, but I knew I could help coaches out and give them more time to spend with their teams and families. After a year or so on the job, I started building relationships with student-athletes. Seeing how hard they worked and hearing their stories really motivated me to do whatever I could to make their experience as good as possible. I became friends with our broadcast crew and saw how they were putting in the same or longer hours than I was on game days to provide those who couldn’t be there in person the opportunity to watch. Then I had the privilege of connecting with parents of student-athletes and started to see how much they have invested in their child’s journey to be a collegiate athlete and how many of them love every player on the team like their own son or daughter.

I’ve learned over the years that loving WHY I do what I do is way more important than loving WHAT I do. Loving WHAT I do is significant and certainly helps get through the day to day stuff. But loving the WHY of my job is what sustains me season after season, semester after semester, and year after year. WHAT is about me. WHY is about others. That’s how you never work a day in your life – make your job about serving other people and not yourself. When I remember that my job is really about student-athletes and coaches and parents and all the other people that support athletics, I can’t imagine doing anything else. When I remember WHY, it’s easy to love what I do.