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By Todd Norris
Todd is The Children’s Museum’s Assoc. Vice President of Interpretation and Family Programs who's been working hard over the past two years to help bring the Riley Children's Health Sports Legends Experience® to life, training his team to take on the roles of sports legends through time and across a variety of sports—whether this quintessential actor felt he was quite ready for it or not!
Three new indoor galleries, plus seven and a half acres, divided by 16 Indiana sports legends, equal DOZENS of new interpretive programs. Bringing these numbers to life has been our primary focus for the last several months. As with most new experiences here at the Children's Museum of Indianapolis, the managers, coordinators, leads, and actors in the Department of Interpretation have immersed themselves in researching the various sports and activities that our Exhibits Development team has created. We had never had to develop so many new programs so quickly, so we took a “divide and conquer” approach. We split up the research and writing assignments among a much larger number of staff than in the past, and each of us started to get down and dirty with our assigned sports and their respective legends. Including me.
Interpretation staff prepare during an open gym session.
I knew, before I started to develop my programs, that I had quite a challenge to overcome. I’m not exactly what you would call, “sporty.” I’ve always been a books-and-arts kind of guy. If you’ve ever heard the advice given to playwrights and authors, “Write about what you know,” you can see my dilemma. How could I possibly create dynamic, engaging programs when I saw no personal connection to the subject matter? I could digress here into an analysis of the common origins of sports and theater in the ancient world, but maybe that’s a topic for another blog post. Here, though, the answer was that I needed to FIND the connection.
What makes a sports legend, and why do we care so much about them? As I looked into the research, I started to make some discoveries. Many sports legends share one or two traits—they have trained and refined their skills with a dedication and focus that allows them to achieve new heights, or, they have overcome substantial obstacles that could have prevented them from making their mark in their sport. More than a few did both. The stories that resonated with me the most were the ones of future legends who overcame incredible obstacles, including childhood illness and deformity, abandonment, poverty, racism, and sexism, among others. Through learning their stories, I gained a new appreciation of their skill, focus, and most of all, their perseverance. I could see those same assets in the outstanding achievers of my own fields of interest. Even if I didn’t know the career stats of these stars, I recognized how easily those same qualities exist in the worlds of business, the arts, science – in fact every possible field. These are the stories that leave us spellbound. These are people who made a choice not to let anything stand in their way of reaching their goals. These are the types of people that inspire others. This is why we cheer their successes, and take their losses so personally.
This is what makes a legend.
I invite you to meet these legends and learn their skills this spring at the Riley Children’s Health Sports Legends Experience®!
