Dear Sage,
Why can’t I write about sports for my common app essay? I’ve seen ‘sports stories’ on almost every list of Topics to Avoid. I’m a varsity athlete and my sport is a huge part of my life. I feel like I don’t have anything else to write about! What should I do?
Practice Doesn’t Make the Perfect Topic
Dear Practice,
You absolutely can write about sports. In fact, anything can make a great essay topic – sock collecting, your love of spicy food, explaining tiktok to your grandfather – providing that you use it to a) show who you are as an individual and b) highlight personal qualities that will enable you to thrive in college.
Remember, there’s only one unbreakable rule for college app essays: Don’t Be Boring.
From that perspective, writing about sports can be a bad idea. In our society at least, sports lend themselves to Lesson Learning – “Just Do It,” “No Guts, No Glory,” “I am what I am” – which seems like a natural fit for college applications. “How I learned to work hard/embrace my fears/become a team player, by playing sports.” Because it’s easy and straightforward, many, many – did I mention many? – students do it. College admissions officers read thousands of essays centered on sports’ experiences every year.
Trust me on this. After reading 100 essays about how playing basketball proved that practice makes perfect, I’m going to be way more excited by an essay about knitting needles than one about jump shots, no matter how beautifully the latter is written.
That said – even the most familiar topic can be fascinating if the author brings something fresh to it. If you want to write about sports, here’s my sage advice:
- Make sure that you, and not the sport, are the focus of the essay
- Ask yourself: Why do I play this sport? What do I really love about it? Passion is a great place to start any common app essay!
- Go beyond the obvious, and think of concrete details that, even if small, can be expanded to say something larger about you.
For example of the last, maybe you love getting new sneakers at the start of every season – you could open the essay with a brief scene where you’re shopping for sneakers, and then you could talk about how you love beginnings in general, the feeling of excitement at something new, the idea of a new day/semester/year with infinite possibilities.
If you indicate early on that that your essay isn’t going to be ‘just another sports essay’ but something interesting, surprising and revelatory, you can catch and hold the reader’s attention. (The ‘interesting, surprising and revelatory’ part goes for any topic, not just sports!)
Sage
Strike the Write Note 