After losing a tennis match to 19-year-old Coco Gauff on Saturday, September 9, 25-year-old Aryna Sabalenka was caught on film in the locker room smashing her game racket against the floor and then throwing it away. This led to extreme criticism and backlash from the media. For example, Buzzer T, a reader on nypost.com said, “Hey honey, you lost. That’s all there is to it. No sense in destroying a racket,” Another comment on this story by Billy Kidd, a viewer, said “Whoever sold this video clip to Eurosport France should be in jail,” to which Pavones, another reader; replied, “Don’t agree with jail, but for sure fired!”
Athletes can all agree that anger in competitive games is prevalent. Sports specifically can cause feelings of aggression and anger, often directed towards referees for calls perceived as unfair. The idea is that the sport has to go our way and when that doesn’t happen, athletes lose their temper. This physical display of disappointment comes from the professionals to high school athletes to even toddlers.
So why was Sabalenka made the head of this issue? All for showing disappointment, breaking her own property and then throwing it away? If I spend money on some wrestling shoes and headgear, and someone makes me mad and I throw them to the ground and they rip or tear, what’s the big deal if I didn’t hurt anybody else? I didn’t yell and scream and insult anybody. All I did was damage my own pieces of equipment that I will have to replace.
And if this is the case, what about other types of players’ displays of “poor sportsmanship”? What about Boston Bruins forward Tyler Bertuzzi with his snapped stick? What about Micheal Jordan with tears down his face because he missed the buzzer beater? Why, of all these people, is a single woman in tennis the one picked out?
Because the system is broken. Athletes are expected to have a position of professionalism and aren’t allowed to show emotion, sadness, or frustration. The athletes have to hold themselves to a standard that is so corrupt that even their privacy is violated to obtain their failures and upsets.. The media wants to paint the picture that all our athletic idols have a perfectly amazing life, but when they show any type of emotion, the media will find every way to expose their failures and upsets.
All the young athletes can kiss their dreams of being the best goodbye, because the minute they fumble, miss, drop, or weep, the media says they are done. So my dream of being the greatest wrestler to ever live might as well be a joke. I missed one takedown when it truly counted and left to cry in the locker room, but cameras followed me and now these little kids don’t see me like they used to.
