The Lack of Tamils in Professional Sports

By: Athithan Kurukulasingam

As a child, I can fondly remember watching Hockey Night in Canada on Saturday nights. This was a ritualistic behaviour stemming from years and years of loyal support to my favourite blue and white. Within my household there wasn’t a single person who wasn’t into sports. From my dad, who raised me watching sports, to my mother who could reel off name after name of players on the Toronto Blue Jays to the Toronto Raptors. To me this was just a normal household and many of my friends shared the same insight. It isn’t an understatement to conclude that Tamils love their sports. As I grew older and my knowledge of sports grew deeper, I started to have fantasies of playing on a professional sports team. In my predominately Caucasian neighbourhood in East York, Hockey was not just a past time, it was a way of life. I played Hockey morning, noon and night. The more I played it, the better I got. These dreams started to fester in a way where there was a blurred line between dream and reality and that’s when the hammer came down. My kind and loving parents, who raised me to love sports, indicated that I had to leave sports behind to further my education and that was the end of the line for me. This got me thinking, was I just an oddity or was there some connection behind the lack of Tamils in professional sports.

Physically and mentally there are Tamils ranging from teenagers to young adults suitable to play in any sport. So the lack of skill level is not a problem. If you delve even further and look at the major sports leagues in the world, you can see that there are basically no Tamils in professional sports. For the purposes of this piece I will stick to North American major sports which consists of Hockey, Basketball, Baseball, Soccer and Football. Within these sports there is not one if I’m not mistaken, Eelam Tamil that is part of a team. Why then are there a lack of Tamils in professional sports? I believe it is the way of life that we are brought up with. One won’t ever forget the hardships endured by our parents and families back home in Tamil Eelam during the war. Many escaped to foreign lands in hopes of a better life for them and most importantly their children. To reap in the rewards of their parents sacrifice, we saw an influx of Tamil Doctors, Engineers, Lawyers and many other reputable professions. Not to downplay the significance of this monumental achievement I would like to point out that we sometimes forced ourselves to commit to a profession we weren’t whole heartedly satisfied with. The Tamil community almost has a negative stigma when it comes to sports. The simple utterance of becoming a professional athlete drew jeers and laughter from my family and many of my friends shared the same sentiment. This I believe is the number one reason for the lack of Tamils in professional sports.

Tamil parents want the best for their children and in their minds the best consists of becoming rich and successful. When I point out to my parents that athletes make a ridiculous amount of money, more than any Doctor or Lawyer can dream of, they quickly dismiss the notion with a wave of their hand. What needs to be clarified is that more likely than not, Tamil parents will enrol their kids in a range of sports during their childhood; however, once they become teenagers they start stressing the importance of education and this crucially is the period where the dream to play in a sport goes away. The problem is our parents tease us with the scintillating notion of playing sports and then suddenly take it away from us. Instead, if our parents led us live out that childhood obsession to become an athlete. There would be without a shred of doubt in my mind, more Eelam Tamils in professional sports. The negative conations that accompany sports within our community needs to be erased and that will further increase the chances of one day seeing a Tamil on one of your favourite teams.

Since we have been looking primarily at the past I think we should look at the future and this is where things become exciting. The future generations of Tamils abroad will have parents who are more open to the concept of sports as a profession. Within your close group of friends it’s safe to say that you will have one friend that’s a sports head. If I look at myself for instance, my future kids will be if they are interested playing sports till they desire. I will not only promote sports but will encourage them to partake in as many sports as they please. The benefits of a physically active child is endless especially with the steep rise in obesity rates. The younger you get a child involved in a sport of his or her choosing the more likely they are to excel at it. The focus should shift from sports as solely an early childhood activity to one that lasts until the child pleases. Only then will we see Tamils in professional sports and the dreams of many Tamil men and women can be fulfilled.