Most young soccer players have coaches and parents who emphasize that at the end of the day, "it's just a game." For senior tennis player Darcy Robertson, however, the lessons she has learned from sports last long after the game is over.
Robertson, a veteran member of the Princeton varsity squad who began her tournament tennis career at the tender age of nine, has had a racquet at her side "from the moment I can remember." The lessons which Robertson has taken from tennis extend far beyond the athletic arena and have helped her in her academic career as a Wilson School major.
"[Tennis has] taught me so many lessons; it's given me so much strength throughout my life. I can't imagine what my life would be without it ... the things that I learned on the court transferred into my personal life, into my academic life, especially my life as a citizen," Robertson said.
Inspired by the far-reaching positive effects of sports on her own life, especially during her Princeton career, Robertson found it fitting to design a thesis reflecting her own belief and passion about the power of sports. She is working on this topic under the guidance of Harold Feiveson, a senior research policy analyst and lecturer in the Wilson School.
In writing her independent work on "change agents in Pakistan" during the fall of her junior year, Robertson first investigated the potential of youth sports programs as a change agent. For many people in the Middle East, including those in the conflict-stricken border region of Pakistan, the situation is grim. Each day, citizens face fear, hunger, despicable conditions, illicit drug trading and violent feuding between rival ethnicities. Robertson recognized that the region is also experiencing a "youth bulge" concurrently with this burgeoning ethnic conflict. This "youth bulge" means that much of the population is young and impressionable, a situation which Robertson seeks to capitalize on in her investigation.
In her thesis, Robertson underscores the numerous constructive impacts that the youth sports movement in America has brought to children like herself. She highlights youth sports NGOs, including Playing for Peace, created by young American men to bring youths of feuding populations together through athletic competition in South Africa, Northern Ireland, and Israel-Palestine. In light of the Middle East's "youth bulge" and other problems like the drug and terrorist organizations plaguing the area, Robertson argues that the Middle East would be an ideal place to institute NGO activity.
Robertson proposes developing a sports NGO project in Karachi and Peshawar, Pakistan, in order to unite Sunnis and Shiites and Pashtuns and Pakistanis. This NGO — which Robertson has named "Goals for Hope" — would use soccer competition between youths, both through practice during the week and weekend competition, as a vehicle for interaction between young people of different ethnicities to learn from one another.
"I used soccer because it was a neutral sport in the area," Robertson said. "Basketball and baseball I felt had Western connotations to [them]."
This athletic play, coupled with life skills activities, like health and community service activities, aims to instill in the children a belief in a better future and the motivation and drive to succeed.
"From my experience, politicians tried so hard to cure the problems of the Middle East from the top-down through policy," Robertson said. "[Goals for Hope] is an actual, tangible grassroots way that you can reach these kids' lives, give them some hope, give them some happiness in their world, which is often marred by so much conflict and war and hurt."
What is most striking and inspiring about Robertson's research is the firm belief she fixes in its potential realization. While Robertson hopes to attend law school, preferably in the Boston area, she still keeps the dream of one day seeing Goals for Hope come to fruition.
"I think personally starting the NGO that I've laid out is a possibility — something I would want to do down the line," Robertson said. "It really inspired me because so many of the things that I guess I took for granted in my childhood, these kids don't have."
On top of her in-depth research, Robertson still has a few more short weeks of her own sports career left to finish. As a senior, she finds herself in a leadership role for the No. 64 women's tennis team (7-5).
"I'm very comfortable taking that role. I really care a lot about how we do this year; I feel like it reflects a lot on the seniors and on me," Robertson said.
If Robertson's personal testimony of tennis' effects on her own life serve as any proof, the positive effect of sports on Middle Eastern youths should not be overlooked.
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