Something I have noticed more and more over the years, especially in business is the severe lack of interpersonal communications skills among people anymore.  Email, text messaging and other online forms of communication has replaced the courtesy of a phone call or a personal meeting, online services create a world where people can hide and really don't have to deal with things as they would in years past.  In fact not too long ago I was at a trade show and noticed some of the reps from different companies really didn't seem to know how to interact effectively with their accounts face to face.

Growing up playing sports, we were always taught that one of the benefits is the value of learning to work with others, teamwork.  This is still true today, but to add to that I think more than ever sports brings a new element in that it teaches valuable social skills.  It always did, but I think the value of this has gone up given how we are such a tech world now and ultimately we can do our jobs and live our lives and never really have that much human interaction if we choose not to. 

To quote Kip from Napoleon Dynamite "I love technology...." and I do.  We can be more productive than ever and in less time.....but are we being just as effective.  We have a customer that comes into our store and his job is centered around the internet and email.  The reason he runs and participates in local 5k's is because it gets him out and around others that he can get to know and talk to.  In my book, that human value that sports brings far outweighs technology.