Individualism vs. collectivism in sport

Bill Price | 26 December 2016 Share

In 1988 I spent a few months in the former USSR studying the Soviet sport system. Instead of looking at training methods or techniques, which are fairly standard throughout the world, I went there with the idea that something else was at work within the USSR sport system that produced top athletes from a very small base and with very limited facilities. What I found eventually became the central theme of my thesis i.e. individualism vs. collectivism.

In graduate school we had phrases that were half a mile long describing this, but what it all came down to is that the Soviets understood what a team was all about; they understood the importance and power of groups. Loosely translated the word soviet means group. The Soviet Union was a country, a government, and indeed, a nation made of groups.

As a foreigner I was able to see things that were invisible to most of the Soviet people because I looked with a different set of values. The force of collectivism was one of the things I saw. It was so pervasive in Soviet society that it was invisible to those who lived there. The same way individualism is invisible to those in the United States.

We tend to think that individualism is what keeps us free. We never suspect that individualism is simply a form of social control that effectively prevents us from forming groups that could change the status quo; groups that could otherwise perform remarkable feats. Nowhere is this more evident than in sport. The signature of an effective team is a collective mentality: we are part of something bigger than ourselves. Without the collective mind set what should be an effective unit becomes a mere showcase for individual talent.

But even in sport individualism has its place. Athletes are both teammates and free agents at the same time. Athletes that buy into just the collective mindset will rarely perform outside what they think is their role. And while individualism alone is inappropriate in most sport situations (at least in team sports) sometimes an individual evaluation, and the resulting action, of what is going on frames the difference between winning and losing.

The Soviet political system failed partly because they did not recognize the value of letting an individual be an individual. With almost the same uncompromising attitude we resist working collectively lest it threaten our individuality. Both positions are wrong and ultimately self-destructive. In sport we must realize that when the tide rises all boats are lifted.

--------
Bill Price is the Chief Information Officer at USSA Malaysia in Kuala Lumpur.