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Deportes aquí y allá
As I mentioned previously, at the high school where I teach, we have a soccer team, and we will go cheer them on while my sister is here. We also have football, basketball, wrestling, and baseball. Marta believes that American high schools put too much emphasis on sports, causing academics to suffer. She argues that student athletes are regularly allowed to miss class so they can travel to sporting events, for example. It might be true that our student athletes miss some classes, but I don’t think their grades suffer. Student athletes are required to maintain good grades, and our sports teams cultivate a sense of community. The whole neighborhood attends the games and cheers for our teams and our school.
In Chile, where Marta lives, sports are organized by leagues rather than by schools. Competition between schools does still happen, but the games are organized by regional and municipal sport clubs. The most popular sport in the leagues is fútbol, as is the case in most of the Spanish-speaking world.
Fútbol may be king in most of Latin America, but in the Caribbean countries béisbol is even more popular. Many children don’t even have the proper equipment, but they all dream of becoming professional baseball stars. La República Dominicana is considered the best baseball country, outside Los Estados Unidos, because of all the talented professional players who have come from there, such as Sammy Sosa (retired) and Alfonso Soriano (Chicago Cubs).