Morgan Toal

Dr. Monsour

SLA 400 75

21 February 2022

What is my Vocational Calling?

I have been obsessed with stats in any sport ever since I was a little girl. When I started playing

travel softball, I always wanted to know what the other teams were doing and who were the best players

on the team, so I knew what to expect when we played them. Every tournament I would check the

brackets to see who we had the chance of playing and made sure I knew everything about that team. This

obsession has continued into my college career. Before every game, I will go onto the opponent’s website

and check their team stats to see who specifically to watch out for. I do the same thing with high school

basketball teams for my little sister. Stats have always been interesting to me. My vocational calling is to

be a sports analyst because I want to dig even deeper into stats than what I have been doing. Instead of

working with just my team and my opponents, I want to be able to investigate the statistics of multiple

sports. Like working for ESPN, the MLB, or even the NBA.

With many people leaving the workforce recently in 2022, I truly do not think it is affecting my

vocation much. Sports analysts are hard to come by in certain places because a lot of people are afraid of

taking that risk. You never know if the team you’re working for will always need you, or if what you’re

doing is even worth it for individual teams. Having this lack of workers does not hurt my future at all

because it will actually help me find a job better because there will be many companies looking for sports

analysts if they want them.

The excerpt from Laborem Exercens, that I think addresses the current status of work is number

eighteen, which talks about the employment issue. “The role of the agents included under the title of

indirect employer is to act against unemployment, which in all cases is an evil, and which, when it
reaches a certain level, can become a real social disaster (Paul, 1981). This quote I think fits perfectly

with the current status, because there are so many people in the world right now who are unemployed.

Working as a sports analyst there is not a lot of social justice or common good that goes into it. The only

‘common good’ that would cross my mind is just working for each individual person or player and not for

myself. Here and there you can find people who are biased with statistics even though it’s a math-based

subject. It is very factual and not opinionated, but some people will lie and fix the stats. As I become a

sports analyst and begin working with teams, I will be fair and work for the common good and accurately

record and write about the statistics of each individual player. This goes along with my rights and

responsibilities as well. I have the opportunity to work for so many different companies, and with each

company will come my rights. But the more important part is my responsibilities. I am responsible for

keeping track of players stats and making sure they are accurate. I have the responsibility to find different

tracking equipment and building programs that are right for each team that I work for. “Historically

speaking, this, taken as a whole, has caused great changes in civilization, from the beginning of the

“industrial era” to the successive phases of development through new technologies, such as the

electronics and the microprocessor technology in recent years” (Paul, 1981). The industrial era is a huge

part of my profession, so I feel that this is a great quote for me to use from Pope John Paul. Yes, stats can

be taken on paper, but from all of the technology in the world there is so much I can do with the statistics

that I will find.

To me, human dignity is having something that you are so good at that you deserve to have it or

do it. For my vocation, I have always been into statistics like I’ve said before, so I feel that working in the

sports analyst vocation is the perfect thing to endorse my own personal dignity. Another part of my own

dignity is sports. Sports have been a part of my life ever since I was little because I have always been

playing them. When I graduate from college, I won’t be playing a sport anymore, so if I become a sports

analyst, sports will always hold a part in my life even if I am not the one playing them. John Lewis’
mother once said to him, “Boy, hard work never killed anybody” (Lewis, 2013). This quote really speaks

to me, and I feel that I will think about this a lot in my profession because math is a hard subject and you

have to work hard, but so are sports. I have been working hard my whole life in one sport, and physically

working hard has made me mentally stronger as well. I understand so much more of the game and I can

use that hard work and knowledge in my profession to help me in the long run.

I think if John Lewis were here right now, he would definitely be proud of how far we have come,

especially with all that has happened during the pandemic. In his interview he said, “’Pace yourself, pace

yourself.’ I would tell my wife and say, “Every fight is not your fight. Pace yourself.” And I would say it

to the young people and others sometime, “Don’t get in a hurry. Our struggle is not a struggle that lasts

for one day, one week, one month or one year or one lifetime. It is an ongoing struggle” (Lewis, 2013).

This quote originally was talking about the fight for equality, desegregation, and social justice back in

Lewis’ day, but I feel that this is something that could be said now if Lewis were still alive, especially the

ongoing struggle part. Many people have been leaving the workforce by choice or being fired during this

pandemic, which causes more people to work longer and harder days. I feel that if Lewis were here, he

would continue to tell those people, the ones working and the ones being fire, to pace themselves. This

pandemic is not something we can solve in one day or over one night, but it is an ongoing struggle that

will continue to go through, so everyone needs to relax and keep pacing themselves and keep trying to

move forward.

When it comes to social justice, inequality, and the rights of workers, I don’t think my profession

addresses it too much. If I were to dig super deep and really think about it, I think the one thing I could

say is that there are not a lot of women who work in the profession that I want to work in. If you were to

take a look into the people who work for ESPN, NBA, MLB, etc. you see more men then you see women.

Even in high schools and colleges, most people who work in with the stats for the sports are men.
Recently I have been seeing more women get involved in sports, but they will surely always be a

minority.

John Lewis lived a fairly long and interesting life in my opinion. The one thing though that I

found the most interesting from his life that he talked about in the interview was how they studied

nonviolence and practiced social drama. Lewis said, “We studied what Gandhi attempted to do in South

Africa, what he accomplished in India… And before we even discussed a possibility of a sit-in, we had

role-playing. We had what we called social drama” (Lewis, 2013). Lewis talked about how they would

role play someone of a different color harassing them and how they would react without violence. I just

found it very interesting how they had prepared so long for something that they finally got to do. But the

most amazing part of it is how much they cared about something that they would practice and study it

every week.

I hope that myself and anyone coming of age in the 21 st century can take into account what John

Lewis and his friends did to take action of something they truly cared about. This is something that can

easily be put into work. If I work hard, practice, and study, what I want to do will come and sooner or

later I will continue to succeed.

 Works Cited

“John Lewis - Love in Action.” The On Being Project, 8 Nov. 2021,

https://onbeing.org/programs/john-lewis-love-in-action/#audio.
“Laborem Exercens (14 September 1981): John Paul II.” Laborem Exercens (14 September 1981) |

John Paul II, 14 Sept. 1981,

https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-

ii_enc_14091981_laborem-exercens.html.