March 3, 2025 by Ava Tatum (‘25)
Sports Rhetoric is a semester-long course taught at Saratoga Springs High School by Ms. Cox , where students learn about sports writing as a genre. In other words, it’s the only English class the jocks at Toga willingly take and pass. I’m joking, obviously, it’s genuinely a fun class if you’re into sports or guys that play sports, like me. The only issue is, I don’t know anything about sports and maybe you don’t either, but don’t worry I’ve come up with a few (slightly satirical) tricks to help you converse with the athletes in your life.When I first joined the course one of my friends asked me to name three professional football teams, so I made them up: The Cyclones, The Stormbreakers and The Chiefs-only one of which ended up being a real team. That brings me to my first piece of advice, make stuff up. If you’re going to do this you need to really ham it up, buy jerseys and posters, make up players, games, statistics, become your fantasy team’s #1 fan. This may be going above and beyond, but I personally like to pay a person to support the opposing team so that we can get into fights in the hallway about whose team is better.
A fun fact about me is that my uncle is Mark Tatum, Deputy Commissioner of the NBA. But with the last name Tatum I always get asked if I’m related to the more famous (no offense Uncle Mark), Jayson Tatum, a basketball player for the Boston Celtics. At this point when people ask me if I’m related to him, I just say yes. Sorry to all the people reading who thought he was my cousbrothuncle. But maybe you aren’t as lucky as me, don’t worry, just find an athlete with your last name (there’s at least one, I PROMISE) and you’re related. If you’re worried about having family photos with your athlete of choice, well dear reader, have you ever heard of this magical thing called photoshop? Below is a picture of me and my dad, Jayson Tatum:
Original Image Source: bleacherreport.com
If all else fails, just do what I tend to do in every conversation I find myself in: start speaking gibberish. To people who don’t speak athletics, athletes and sports fanatics sound like they’re talking gibberish anyways. It only feels fair that we give them a taste of their own medicine. Now I know everyone is going to be cheering my name after this very helpful article, but if you really want to support me, you can email Ms. Cox and tell her how awe-inspiring this was and beg her to give me extra credit. If you want to thank me in person, I’ll probably be in A217 womansplaining something to my Sports Rhetoric class.