Music & Youth Sports

KSNN wants to know what song best represents you as individual athlete, and, what tune celebrates your team’s identity?  

Music creates a universe of feelings and emotions which can be displayed in a mere three minutes. While you are listening, your imagination can run riot. Your heart swells so big that you think it will explode… Everything is magic when music is in the air!

For these reasons, music is a driving force in sports. When training or preparing for competitions, it keeps you focused on: “Yes, I can do this! Don’t get discouraged!”

Music is a source of motivation for athletes. Players achieve their peak performance when a stadium or arena resonates with the chants of their fans to the team’s favorite theme song.  New studies suggest that if you want to alleviate anxiety, enhance your mood or increase your cognitive functioning while training, you should listen to music.

<<Why Does This Happen? >>

Scientifically speaking, music is the name given to a specific group of sound waves. These sound waves travel through whatever they encounter, the body included. When you play music, your complete body is “listening”. The sound waves, place you in the mood to dance if you are listening to a pop song, or to sing if the song is happy.

The result, music is synonymous with emotion, emotion is energy, and therefore music is energy!

This energy, translated through music, brings athletes together. There are thousands of songs used by sports organizations to accomplish this. Take, for example, the catchy dance song “Waka Waka”, by Shakira. This was the official song of the 2010 FIFA World Cup, selected as the song that best represented the feeling of unity for that event.

And of course, there was the anthem of the 2012 Summer Olympics, “Survival” by Muse.

What is really interesting though is that a particular song has been all the rage amongst athletes: “Call me maybe”, by Carly Rae Jepsen. Both the 2012 U.S. Olympic Swim team and Harvard’s Baseball team loved it so much that they shot a video parody, having reached millions of viewers.

You can see in the eyes of athletes how happy they are, feeling a sense of freedom from the many pressures of everyday living. This is true because of music. Its music that helps them celebrate, gain respect and ultimately find their identity.

KSNN wants to know what song best represents you as individual athlete, and, what tune celebrates your team’s identity?  Look for updates on the official contest.