Roger Crawford once said: “Being challenged in life is inevitable, being defeated is optional.” Walking through life, everybody has to come across many difficulties, but they make different choices: some give up and stop while others fight and move on. Sam, the protagonist in the short story “Sam The Athlete” written by Stuart McLean, encountered an obstacle in the path of finding a sport which he’s good at. Despite being knocked down repeatedly, he still got back up and pursuing his heart. In the end, he managed to find out the sport he had been looking for: field hockey. Had it not been for the energy, the optimism, and the determination, Sam wouldn’t have been able to conquer his quest.

Sam is a zestful 11-year-old boy, who prepared to go to middle school. When he was looking for a new pair of sneakers with his mother, he was completely fond of a red runner with white wings on the sides, which symbolized speed. He tried them on, got excited to hear that “a lot of people find them too fast,”(61)and thought about never walking again. “He would dash and dart; he would bound and leap; he would sprint and spring.”(62) No sooner had Sam left the store than he “cut along the sidewalk like a terrier, zigging in front of a man talking on a cellphone, zagging past a lady carrying a fancy leather briefcase.”(62) When he was younger, he took an interest in being an athlete as soon as he was first introduced to sports. “All Sam wanted in the world…was to be an athlete.”(63). If Sam wasn’t so sprightly, he wouldn’t have wanted to become an athlete, wouldn’t have preferred running to walking.

Not only is Sam full of energy but he’s also optimistic. In spite of the miserable failures, he had never had a thought of giving up. From soccer to baseball, from bowling to curling, from hockey to field hockey, he had never missed an opportunity to participate in a new sport. Additionally, he always believed in himself whenever he was playing sports. When playing baseball, “Sam would automatically, involuntarily… (scream) ‘I got it. I got it!’”(64) Although he perceived the wrong place where the ball was coming, the conditionally yell “I got it!” shows the positivity in Sam. Another time was the field hockey final. Without hesitation, “he launched himself at the ball, flying through the air, his blocker hand stretched out.”(71) Normally, if it had been someone else, not Sam, they would have stood hopelessly as the ball “came low and hard and fast.”(71) Moreover, Sam can see the bright side of the worst situation. When learning how to skate, he had never succeeded in stopping on skates. However, he didn’t leave things unaccomplished. He created a technique that enabled him to slow down and stop. When he received a skirt as the field hockey team’s uniform, instead of “disappearing quietly,…ghosting away”(68), he accepted it and saw it as a chance to be part of a team. Without the sanguineness, he could have quit halfway.

Besides these characteristics, the perseverance plays the most vital role in developing the main character, Sam. Everything that he did aim at fitting in and being an athlete. In contemplation of getting on with other kids, he took part in soccer first because he “loved the idea of… having teammates.”(63-64); he bought sneakers with a hope that these will help him fitting in; he remained in the field hockey team before finding out that was a co-ed team and kept wearing skirt after that. He did his best to get a chance of being welcome, being accepted. In the pursuance of becoming a sportsperson, he endured all the failure and stepped forward. Trying to look engaged in a football match, he “ran and ran and ran until he was so exhausted that he lost sense of everything around him.”(64) As he learnt to play ice hockey, he “developed a method of turning in circles” to make up for his inability to stop properly. Undergoing such experience, he had never looked back. His passion for sports and the desire to fit in picked him up whenever he was knocked down, forming an unbeatable willpower in Sam.

Regardless of his young age, Sam is a figure for children to take as their model for his strong-mindedness, optimism, and dynamicity. The author, Stuart McLean, successfully celebrated the decency of ordinary people through Sam, sending an encouragement to readers of all ages: “The seeds of victory are planted with every defeat and that the path of the heart is the only path worth following.”(59)