“Captain” - A Title for An Unneeded Call for Action?

The term “captain” has been a subject of debate since I’ve started high school athletics. It all started with my Track & Field coach, Matthew Carr. His belief with the term “captain” was that it should never exist with sports teams. Being a captain means nothing. You just have this title. It’s something that goes with your name as you’re competing with your team. Sure, it does look good in a college application, but to the coach, someone doesn’t need to be named a captain to lead a team.

We’ll go back start how my whole perspective of this term really came about. I started my freshman year with Cross Country and Track & Field. Through those sports, I learned how to work extremely hard for self-improvement and personal achievement. As little freshmen who dream about things in the future, people would say they’d be awesome as captain or they’re going to be captain by their junior years. At that point, no one knew what leading a team really meant. All they wanted was that title. It was title that would make them seem big or to have some kind of power. That’s all they tried to work for.

As I moved on in my timeline, I met Matt Carr, who had a whole different view on the captain situation. As the beginning paragraph already introduced his whole story, he also refused to name captains for the sake of the sports booklet we had for the high school. It was simply because he doesn’t like the term “captain”. His whole story made me do a lot of thinking about captainship in sports teams. As miserable as Matt Carr was, his whole belief I thought actually fit all together.

The whole thing just kind of came into reality. Why do you need to be named a captain just to lead a team? I understand it’s the culture of athletics, but why can’t you just be a person who has the ability to lead the team without being handed the baton? To everyone out there who’s asking the same question to themselves, go out and be the leader. No matter what a coach or a teammate says to you, you always have the ability to lead a team. You don’t need the name “captain” or a captain pin or logo to help lead your team to success. You call yourself to action.