Sports sociological imagination When I was a child, I was determined to play as many sports as I could. As soon as I could sign up for a sport, I was sure I would play it. It all started with T-ball when I was five years old. I was so excited to finally be part of a team and pursue a sport. The only thing I found strange was that on my T-ball team I was one of two girls. As a five-year-old I was confused as to why more and more girls didn't want to play, but most girls were involved in cheerleading rather than baseball. I came to accept the fact that I was one of two girls and continued to play. The next year I switched from T-ball to coach pitch and after a few years I got hooked on softball. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay The next sport I tried to conquer was basketball in second grade. It was a sport I looked forward to playing, so before I made the team I made sure to practice in my driveway every day. There has always been a sport in my life, even if they kept changing there was always one that was with me. In high school I played volleyball and threw javelin. It was different from other sports I had always played, but I was happy to take on the challenge of learning new sports in high school. These new sports I took up became my saving grace because as soon as it was time to play them it felt like the stress of school was finally disappearing at least for a little while. Sports have always been a part of my life, but I now realize that there are bigger things that played a role in my decision to start playing sports and continue playing them in college. Using sociological imagination, I can identify the larger parts such as family and culture that played a role in the decisions I had to involve in sports. The sociological imagination was described by C. Wright Mills. His description explained the sociological imagination as the ability to understand how society has affected us to see how we can influence and change society (Korgen). A person who uses their sociological imagination takes something they are dealing with personally and sees how society has led them to feel that way. We can take our personal problems and connect them to bigger things like public issues that many people within society are dealing with. Using sociological imagination, I realized that there are many things around us that influence what we do as individuals even without us knowing that they are. Playing a sport is not a problem, but it is still something I choose to do based on society's external influences on me. Family and culture had a big influence on why I started playing sports and why I continue to do so. As a child, it seemed like sports were a normal part of every family. I've noticed that everyone in my family has played a sport at some point in their life or watched a sport ceremoniously. From an early age I immediately immersed myself in this world of sport. I grew up going to Reading Phillies games since my grandparents had season tickets, and going to nearly every game became part of my summer schedule. I was there so often that the people who worked there knew my name and knew exactly who I was. This continued to reinforce the feeling in my head that everyone loved sports and that it was a normal part of everyone's day. The family.