What is a Team Sport?

A team sport is any sport in which players interact with one another directly to accomplish a goal, usually involving teammates facilitating the movement of a ball or similar object according to a set of rules in order to score points. A wide variety of sports can be classified as team sports, from the more commonly known football, basketball and soccer to less mainstream events such as rowing or dragon boat racing.

In a professional setting, team athletes are grouped into teams that are organized into leagues with a centralized governance structure. The league stipulates the number of athletic scholarships that each club can award and dictates how many games a team is permitted to play. It also regulates other external processes such as determining when a team can begin practicing and the minimum academic requirements that members must meet in order to be a part of the organization.

While there are many benefits to playing team sports, such as improving cardiovascular health and developing social skills, the main advantage is that they help individuals stay physically active. In addition, they encourage cooperation among teammates and teach individuals to work together to achieve a common goal.

Despite the fact that individual athletes must compete with their support teams during practice in order to improve performance, cooperative behavior is not as prominent in the context of competition as it is for team athletes. In studies investigating the cognitive representation of competition, it was found that team athletes perceive competing and cooperating simultaneously to a larger degree than individual competitors.