Sports bring hope

I once turned down one of the only dates I have ever been asked out on, because there was a really important college football game I couldn't miss.

And I don't regret that decision.

I don't remember exactly when my love for sports began, but it was probably around the time I started following my older brother around everywhere and trying to be just like him. It was just a natural thing growing up in the Merrill household to play sports, so I followed suit.

But it wasn't just playing sports that intrigued me so much—I fell in love with watching them.

I remember my mom telling me more than once that, when she was growing up, having sports on the television always made her feel safe. So, whenever I was home alone as a kid, I always turned on sports so that I could have the security my mom had spoken about so often. And, while I understood what she meant, I also found something so much stronger in the various games before my eyes: hope.

And I think it's that same hope that keeps my passion for sports alive every day.

Hope talk before a big race

There's something so exciting about not knowing what's going to happen—with each play, with each pass, with each shot attempt, with each pitch, with each swing, with each putt. And, through it all, you're able to have these brief moments of immense hope that something miraculous is going to happen. There's anxiety and an unexplainable faith wrapped together at once, and you sometimes even have to hold your breath for a second or two until your hopes are either fulfilled with an epic memory that might never escape you or until they are dashed and leave you with a hurting heart that you also won't forget anytime soon.

And it's comparable to so many aspects of life.

Sports require athletes to be bold—if you hold anything back, you're risking missing out on the opportunities that could bring greatness. If Eli Manning hadn't escaped more than one tackle and launched the ball into the air, letting hope out the wazoo fly with it that David Tyree would catch it back in 2008, his team likely wouldn't have beaten the Patriots in the Super Bowl that day. You could almost feel the air being sucked out of the room as people held their breaths in anticipation of what would happen next.

And the result was unforgettable.

But if you don't have enough hope to take those chances, then those amazing moments don't exist. One place we're able to see these happen consistently is during the NCAA Tournament. On Saturday night, when Kentucky and Wisconsin squared off in the Final Four, hope came in the form of a shot beyond the arc that you almost knew was going to fall as soon as it left Aaron Harrison's hands. With 5.7 seconds left on the clock, he launched a 3-pointer to put the Wildcats ahead by a point and ultimately gave them the one-point win. Icing on the cake? The assist for the shot came from his twin brother. Oh, and it was also Harrison's third game-winner of the tourney.

It couldn't have been more of a storybook moment.

Now, obviously when there's a moment of hope fulfilled for one team, there's also the memory of hopes shattered for the other. Just look at images of the faces of the Wisconsin players and fans for proof. But, just as keeping hope alive is a great lesson for life, so is learning to deal with disappointment and loss. Those are the memories that often drive individuals to come back even stronger the next year with passion that pushes them to overcome the past. The Dallas Mavericks blew a 2-0 series lead over the Miami Heat in the NBA Finals in 2006 and ended up losing 4-2—an atrocity I will certainly never forget. You know what else I won't forget? Running through a parking lot and yelling in celebration in 2011 when the Mavs finally won the championship for which we'd been hoping for so long. And, even better, it was against the Heat. With LeBron.

I'm still waiting for the Rangers to overcome the 2011 World Series when we were one pitch away from winning. Twice.

Life doesn't always go the way we want it to. There will be times when the shot rips through the net at just the right moment, and there will be others when we swing and strike out with a full count and bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth. But, regardless of which outcome we face, we have to keep the hope alive that the next time we will hit that ball so far out of the park that people are still searching for it days later.

Because it's hope that keeps us going.

It's Christian Laettner hitting that last-second shot to give Duke the win over Kentucky in the 1992 tourney; it's Doug Flutie firing off a Hail Mary pass that gave BC victory over Miami in 1984; it's the Boston Red Sox coming back from a 3-0 deficit to beat the Yankees 4-3 in the 2004 AL Championship Series;  it's the Aggies scoring 35 points in the second half of the 2013 Chick-fil-A Bowl to defeat Duke; it's every time an unbelievable pass is released from a quarterback's hands; it's every game when your team is down, but you remain in your seat with the belief that there's still a chance; it's every coach who uses all timeouts possible with one more strategy that might keep his team alive; it's every player giving every single ounce of energy left until the time on the clock runs out.

It's the beauty of hope.