The Power of Sports

Last night’s dramatic shootout victory for the Sabres reminded me, not only of everything I love about sports, but also of its amazing power to lift spirits and heal a wounded community’s conscience, if only for a short while. Most of the area woke up to the terrible news of Flight 3407’s crash in Clarence Center the night before, 50 souls perishing in the tragedy. While we know the family members are linked to the crash, it’s striking how few degrees of separation there were between everyone else in the area and those lost.

Just about everyone I talked to on Friday either knew someone on the plane, or had a friend that was related to someone on the plane, or knew the daughter of someone’s fiancée on the plane, etc., etc. Everyone’s linked, and in a region that’s struggled economically in the past decades, those still living here have suffered innumerable blows to its collective spirit over the years.

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