Sports aren't all we do

“Stick to sports.”

It’s a phrase thrown around all to often recently regarding social and political issues in this country.

Athletes are told not to use their platform as a national figure to push a personal agenda, especially when it comes to equal treatment based on race or gender.

The most notable instance is NFL players taking a knee during the Star-Spangled Banner. But decades before, 29-year-old Billie Jean King defeated 55-year-old Bobby Riggs in a nationally televised tennis match dubbed “Battle of the Sexes” in 1973. Riggs had taunted women tennis players, so King accepted a challenge from Riggs and beat him in three sets.

The professional football players who took a knee were tormented with the statement that begins this column. The same was true as black athletes voiced their disapproval of President Donald Trump.

They need to do what they do best; stick to sports.

The sports journalist writing this column has also been a recipient of such statement.

But there are times when those whose lives are literally the sports in which they play or the sports they cover are miniscule.

Take two weeks ago, for example.

A tornado ripped through Jay County, destroying nearly a dozen homes and damaging scores of others.

Carl and Laurie Muhlenkamp have two daughters — senior Briana and junior Kendra — who are three-sport athletes at JCHS. Another daughter, Emily, graduated this spring and also played three sports.

Emilie Walter is a 2016 Jay County graduate, and her sister Sarah is a junior. They play, or played, volleyball for the Patriots.

Both families had their homes demolished in the rare November tornado.

For the three girls still in school, what if their teammates, past and present, did what countless other athletes have been told to do?

What if they stuck to sports?

The following day, as the Muhlenkamps and Walters were left with a massive mess to sort through trying to salvage anything possible from the destruction, they had plenty of help.

It included family and friends. They also had nearly three dozen Jay County athletes — the entire varsity boys basketball team and most of the junior varsity squad as well as the Patriot girls soccer team — who chose not to practice that day and instead lend a hand to those in need.

“Makes you feel like a good person because you’re going out and helping the community,” said Max Moser, a senior basketball player. “You’re making a difference in some lives.

“That’s the reason people live in small towns so they get the help from the community.”

Giles Laux, who coached Kendra and Briana in soccer during the fall, stopped at the Muhlenkamp’s house on that fateful day before checking on his home in Portland. He and his senior daughter Lucy picked up the Muhlenkamp’s dog, Addi, to provide shelter from the truck bed where it was temporarily kept that morning.

“It goes back to the team and what they think of each other,” Giles Laux said of his team that also helped out that day. “They generally love each other and will do anything for each other. That is proof of it.

“We’re always there to pick each other up no matter what is getting us down.”

As Moser approached the home that was lifted off its foundation, he was at a loss for words.

“When I walked up to it I almost cried,” he said. “I couldn’t imagine that happening. It really put things in perspective.”

While Moser watched as his friends tried to save what they could and piece their lives back together, not once did he — or anyone else lending a hand or two — think twice about not assisting because as athletes they should “stick to sports.”

“I think (helping is) an automatic reaction that this community doesn’t have to think about it,” Laux said. “They just do it. I think everyone in Jay County was doing something. May not have been picking up debris but they were helping in some sort of way.

“That’s what makes Jay County so great.”

What if they did what their professional counterparts are told to do more often than they should be?

Why is it that athletes are directed to silence their opinion when it involves a controversial national issue?

Houston Texans defensive lineman J.J. Watt raised more than $37 million to help with Hurricane Harvey relief, yet no one told him what some of his black brethren have been instructed to do regarding the national anthem.

Those who knelt for the anthem, Watt and the JCHS student-athletes are no different than anyone else. They have sympathy, empathy and compassion for others.

They are humans first, like you and me.

They just happen to be athletes too.