Our Viewpoint: Be humble and kind

You see a lot of instances in professional sports of athletes putting on a show of arrogance and entitlement. Flashy touchdown dances, photos of epic reactions to a dunk, or comments attacking an opponent (kind of like politics). It makes for good television and water cooler gossip.

In that last week, though, I witnessed two instances of athletes being humble and grateful for everything they achieved.

The first was Iowa's Caitlin Clark scoring her 3,685th point and breaking the all-time Division I basketball scoring record set by Pete Maravich, something no man or woman has done since 1970. Clark is an amazing athlete. Wikipedia reports that she got her first letter of interest from a college when she was in seventh grade. It was impressive to watch her break the scoring record, but her interview after was more memorable. “A record is a record," she said. “I don’t want it to be the reason people remember me. I hope people remember me for the way I played with a smile on my face, my competitive fire. They can remember the wins but also the fun me and my teammates had together.” We should all aspire to be so humble.

The second instance was Monday's retirement speech by the NFL's Jason Kelce. His brother gets a lot of attention, and Jason Kelce likes to have fun, as you can see in the media, but his 40-minute retirement speech was all about others who helped him reach his success. He thanked all his coaches, teammates, family, and even the cafeteria staff. He cried through the entire 40-minute speech, and I felt pretty emotional watching it.

Success is a wonderful thing, but so is demonstrating humility and being grateful for each moment.

— Annie Wooden