I ran track. I ran cross country. But I did not play organized basketball in high school, at least on our team. But I played a lot of sports.
I ran track in high school very competitively, and then ran it D-1 at Boston University. I ran there on an athletic scholarship and chose BU because they had both a good track program and an arts program.
Competing in both track and field and basketball for the Bruins I have a lot of great memories to choose from. But my all-time favorite moment in collegiate sports has to be in 1982 when we won UCLA's first NCAA title in track.
"Competing in both track and field and basketball for the Bruins I have a lot of great memories to choose from. But my all-time favorite moment in collegiate sports has to be in 1982 when we won UCLA's first NCAA title in track."
I played all sports coming up in Texas. I played basketball, football, baseball, ran track. All through high school I did all of that.
I played all sports when I was young. I was into wrestling, basketball, baseball, football, and I ran track. But wrestling was my main sport because there was no criterion height-wise.
I played sports year around: basketball, soccer, softball and I ran track year around, from the time I was, like, six, seven.
It was actually drumming that gave me the stamina to get into sports later. I started playing drums at 13, and when I got to the international touring level... I got interested in cross-country skiing, long-distance swimming, bicycling... things that require stamina, not finesse.
Grit, in a word, is stamina. But it's not just stamina in your effort. It's also stamina in your direction, stamina in your interests. If you are working on different things but all of them very hard, you're not really going to get anywhere. You'll never become an expert.
In track years... track is not like other sports. You do have track athletes that stay in this sport until, like, 35, 36, but I think when you get to 28, it's really difficult.
There was a lot of dancing in '76, '78, in the '80s. A lot of dancing. The burn years. A lot of dancing. And for a while, working fit in with all that. 'Moonlighting' - that wasn't acting. It was people telling me 'Let's create a character who is you, so you can play him the way you are. The guy you are at night.' It was fun.
I was given an opportunity to do sports in college and get a degree because of it. I ran track for the University of Texas and was studying to be a petroleum landman. And I was gifted an opportunity to audition for a film during my last semester in college, which I discovered while jogging around campus.
Chess as a sport requires a lot of mental stamina, and this is what that makes it different from a physical sport. Chess players have a unique ability of taking in a lot of information and remembering relevant bits. So, memory and mental stamina are the key attributes.
We didn't keep track of how many miles we ran back then. We just ran. If you LOVE to run with the kind of passion I have for running, you will understand this. Running was my mode of transportation.
In high school, my two older brothers ran track. They'd come home sweaty and mud-covered, and I could tell they enjoyed it. So I started running - I ran a mile down the road and back again - and I haven't stopped since.
It was actually drumming that gave me the stamina to get into sports later.