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While emotions can help you overcome that bump in the road or motivate you to do better, athletes shouldn’t let their emotions overpower their concentration which can be recognized as deviance because it strays from the rules, law, ethics, or normative behaviors. Negative emotions can hurt your performance both physically and mentally. Your emotions are letting you know deep down, you aren’t confident in your ability to perform well and it is not intellectually stimulating. A rare case of deviance in sports includes “the whack hear around the world”. In January 1994, during training before the U.S., Women’s Championships in Detroit, figure skater Nancy Kerrigan was clubbed in the shin.
This is a prime example of cheating in a sport and intentional violent acts within sports. During the 1992 World Championships, Tonya Harding and Nacy Kerrigan shared the podium, Harding with silver, and Kerrigan with bronze. Kristi Yamaguchi took the gold but, later retried after this event. Harding was an exceptional, athletic skater with unmatched athleticism, being the first female to attempt and land a triple axel. Yet, Kerrigan was the ice skating face during this time, racking up endorsements as the face of brands such as Campbell Soup and Revlon. Whereas, after the 92 championships, Harding had no endorsements or sponsorships.
She had everything in place, what else could she need? With the retirement of Yamaguchi, she was in line to become the next best athlete but, that wasn’t enough. This is where her emotions played a bigger role and led her to perform an act of formal deviance of assault. Sports can bring out a wide scope of feelings, from motivation, pride, invigoration, and fulfillment, to fear, disappointment, outrage, and frenzy, frequently in a brief timeframe length during preparing for rivalry. In this case, negative deviance was brought upon Tonya Harding.
Although Harding claims she didn’t know the specific act her ex-husband was going to perform, she knew some form of deviance was going to occur. This would be a form of deviant actions under conformity meaning deviance based on unquestioned acceptance of norms. Both Harding and his ex-husband knew an act of assault or cheating would help Tonya win but, also an act against the rules. Most emotions have the power to motivate and regulate behaviors in sports. In this case, emotions get the best of a supporter as well, with Harding’s ex-husband hiring her bodyguard to purposefully injure Kerrigan.
There is a wide range of reasons why athletes would engage in deviance over conformity. It is clear Harding’s reasoning was low self-esteem and eagerness to be accepted by her peers on the rink. Some athletes view sports achievements as their only way to get ahead and make a name for themselves to become important in the world. This is why athletes should never express their emotions in the public eye, therefore it was perfect to hire a hitman once Kerrigan was off the ice air. This indicates that this is a form of off-field deviance and can be defined as an act of violence inflicted by the participants and rage that injured or physically damaged someone.
Athletes can’t let their emotions get the best of them, especially ones that have more eyes on them than others. However, every athlete no matter their level needs to learn to balance their emotions. Don’t take it out on others or it can lead you to perform deviant acts. If anything jealousy should motivate you even more to work harder to achieve that goal. This will help give you more motivation and stay focused on the outcome. The outcome of winning or doing your very best is not to demonize other opponents' careers and avoid getting your title stripped from you.
Both male and female athletes put a lot of emphasis and focus on maintaining their identities as athletes and get so caught up in the emotion and physicality of sport that they fail to consider the consequences of unquestioned normative conformity. For example, a serious injury like a strike to Kerrigan’s knee shortened careers not only for Kate but Tonya as well for different reasons. In some sports deviance or violence has long been associated with sport. This is particularly alarming when excessive violence is used as part of competition and for the most part, we see deviance in sports with violence in contact sports. In some cases, coaches and players overlook borderline valance and applaud brutal body contact. This is why the rate of violence is found to be higher in combative sports.
As a professional athlete, there are certain norms and rules one is expected to follow. These norms can be defined as shared expectations that people use to identify what is acceptable and unacceptable in a social world. All of which can be identified as a formal norm or informal norm. Although Tonya Harding didn’t commit the crime herself she was still involved, which means her idea of “winning” had fallen outside the normative range of acceptance in society. After Harding pleaded guilty to hindering the prosecution, she was later banned for life from the U.S. Figure Skating Association. This proves that deviance in sports is never the answer.
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