Muggsy Bogues broke height barriers as an all-star on the basketball court. Courtesy of NBA.com

Throughout my entire life, sports have been a big part of who I am, and what I do.

They have shaped me into the person I am today, and have given me skills that I will use for the rest of my life.

I’ve learned skills like leadership, teamwork, selflessness and many others.

I’m sure that I am not the only one who has played sports that feels this way.

With all the camaraderie that sports has taught me, I have learned to accept people for who they are and as long as they put in the effort they will always share something important with me.

However, something that I have always noticed, whether it be at the college, high school or even the professional level there have been incidents of stereotypes for most sports.

These stereotypes usually start off in the movies or television shows and spread out to reality and are continued by normal people.

One stereotype that I have always noticed or heard people talk about is that all tall people can play basketball.

While it is true, that there are teams that consist of athletes who are  above average height, it’s not true that because someone is six feet or taller they can  be a star on the court.

Another body stereotype people seem to have, is that large people can play football as a lineman.

Yes, there are rather large people that play football, but those athletes have been training for years, and are in good shape for their size.

Normally, large people, have trouble running or doing athletic activities because they have not been exercising regularly like the athletes that play football.

Often more than not, college athletes are portrayed as people that only care about their sport and will make some nerd do their homework or pay that teacher off, or just be excused from doing the homework because they’re the star athlete.

Of course, this also isn’t true with every single athlete in the NCAA.

Those incidents are really only seen in the movies as being true, and how NCAA is these days, it would be pretty difficult for an athlete not to do  his work or paying someone to do it.

Also, athletes may be seen as dumb and need help on every assignment that they have to do and barely pass each of their classes.

Here at Hartford, there are have been numerous amounts of times when our athletes have been given awards for doing really well in academics.

For the past few years, Hartford athletes have had a combined grade point average of a 3.0 or higher.

With those grades, it’s proven that at Hartford we’re good not just on the field, but off it as well.

Unfortunately, there are also hurtful stereotypes that people like to make up about athletes who play certain sports, whether it’s here at Hartford or some other school.

Personally, I have been a part of a team that is always stereotyped here on campus.

The men’s rugby team.

Even from the beginning as a freshman, I always heard that they were a dangerous group of guys, all they do is party and the list goes on and on.

Even after hearing all these warnings, I still wanted to be a part of something that was a team, and at that point, the only option was rugby.

As I’m sure with other sporteams that have been stereotyped, you shouldn’t say anything until you have tried it.

With the amount of hard work that I put in each week, I could see that these so-called “stereotypes” were far from true.

Still, even though  I have been on this team for four years, there are still always people talking behind my back about how bad of a team we are and all the bad things we do.

To those people talking bad about not just rugby, but other teams as well, have you ever tried talking to those people and getting to know them, or do you just go on something someone told you, at a party sometime?

Stereotypes will forever be a part of our lives, and will most likely never go away, but instead of believing everything you hear, go and find out for yourself first hand if these “stereotypes” are even true.