Max is a long time volunteer turned employee for mindyourmind as a Youth Outreach Assistant. He enjoys blogging, cats, and the state of Utah. Check him out on Twitter: @maxamilli

On my morning blog patrol I came across a particular post that caught my attention. An article entitled “The Fiberglass Backboard” by Bryan Curtis, which profiled his childhood growing up after his father had committed suicide. His way of coping with it took shape in a rare form, by spending his days taking out his aggression by throwing the basketball into the net as hard as he could. The backboard, and the radio he would listen to, became a support system that he had created to cope with the loss of his father.

We don’t often think about it this way, but sports are often the most therapeutic mediums around. It’s roughly 2 to 3 hours of uninterrupted action, an event where someone can sit down and be completely engaged.

This isn’t just in reference to overcoming any sort of issues in your life, but also just acting as a time where you can be completely alone with your thoughts and get lost in the passion of the moment when your team wins (or loses).

This story is as touching as it is reflective, it’ll make you think about how any kind of sport of activity affects you. If it makes you feel better about a situation, if it’s a way to escape for a period of time, or if it allows you to feel as though there is support in your life. And while the image of a kid hurling a basketball against a fiberglass backboard is simple at first, often times there is a lot more meaning behind it.

To read “The Fiberglass Backboard” click here: http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/6687456/the-fiberglass-backboard

Max