Team sport is a type of sports activity that relies on the contribution and interaction of multiple individuals working together as part of a group. This contrasts with individual sport, such as swimming or tennis, which are inherently impossible or impractical to execute as a single-player endeavor.
Team sports teach athletes to value each teammates’ abilities and understand how their individual strengths contribute to the shared goal of the team. These lessons can help students become more supportive, understanding, patient and kind people both on and off the field.
A great team has guidance and direction from a coach who keeps the team on task, challenges the team to become better, and aligns with their mission. In addition to a quality coach, great teams also have supportive teammates who encourage and inspire each other to reach new levels of performance.
One of the reasons that many kids choose to participate in team track is because it offers them a chance to be part of a team, even if their talent won’t allow them to be a star. Even if they’re not fast enough to make it into the open 400m hurdles final, they can still run a leg of a relay.
Increasingly, sports scientists are looking at how team-based activities can improve the effectiveness of their training methods. The ecological dynamics approach, which focuses on the narrowly localized spatial and temporal characteristics of coordination processes, provides strong support for this, but is less well-equipped to account for the wider contextual characteristics that shape the nature of team coordination.