The reason why athletes have been such powerful advocates for social justice and change is because sports is universal. It cuts across racial, economic, and religious strata in society. It is one of the reasons athletes have traditionally been successful when they decide to take a stand or use their platform. Most people enjoy sports, in one form or another. Sports is something that people get, and enjoy on a deeply intrinsic level. They follow their favorite athlete in the media, or have hours-long discussions and debates about stats and the game or their beloved team. Super Bowl Sunday has become a weekend-long event, and at times it feels like a month-long event. Fans rally around athletes because they understand the hard work and determination it took them to condition themselves for the rigors of their sport. They realize that being a top athlete requires a great deal of diligence, patience, and endurance, and the ability to overcome adversity, and the fans appreciate that and can relate to it.
The world saw the awesome unifying power of sports at Wimbledon in 2002 when Aisam-Ul-Haq Qureshi, a Pakistani Muslim, and Amir Hadad, an Israeli Jew, overcame the differences that have divided their people for decades when they decided to play on the same side in the men’s doubles draw. Given their nations’ shared history, for them there could be so much more than loss of money, endorsements, or fans at stake. It was to me a very brave and powerful gesture, considering the history of their warring peoples.
Wimbledon is the oldest tennis tournament in the world and is considered by many to be the most prestigious. It is held at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club in Wimbledon, England, where the first game was played in 1877 on grass courts. For participants in the tournament, the physical and emotional training and buildup to playing some of the best players in the world is almost indescribable. Add to that the slippery grass courts, the huge crowds, and the mob of media, and it is clear that playing at Wimbledon under any circumstances is stressful. I could not imagine how Qureshi and Hadad felt the first day they stepped out onto the court to play on the same team, or what made them decide to play together. I knew there had been considerable fallout already for Qureshi. After the announcement of his doubles partner, Qureshi’s country’s sports board made headlines when it threatened to ban him if he played with Hadad. A July 2002 headline in the Daily Telegraph proclaimed: “Muslim Who Plays with Jew Faces Tennis Ban.”
To fully understand how important a gesture it was for Qureshi and Hadad to take the same side in their doubles match, we have to understand the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. In an article written in The Higher Learning in June 2014, Mbiyimoh Ghogomu explains it this way:
It all started after World War II.
With millions of Jews displaced because of the Holocaust, the United Nations was looking for a good place to establish a Jewish state.
At the time Palestine was actually a British colony, and the UN figured that Palestine (which included Jerusalem, the center of the Jewish faith) was the best place to establish the new Jewish state of Israel.
So, in late November, 1947, the UN passed Resolution 181, which divided the Palestinian territory into Jewish and Arab states.
The Palestinian Arabs who were living there at the time refused to recognize the agreement. They had been told (by the United States) that no decisions would be made without consulting them. They also felt the agreement was too favorable to the Jews, at the expense of the local Palestinians.
So, as soon as the resolution was passed, fighting began, with Arab forces attacking Israeli territories that had formerly been part of Palestine before UN Resolution 181.
The fighting intensified when Israel declared independence a year later.1
According to This Day in History:
On May 14, 1948, in Tel Aviv, Jewish Agency Chairman David Ben-Gurion proclaims the State of Israel, establishing the first Jewish state in 2,000 years. In an afternoon ceremony at the Tel Aviv Art Museum, Ben-Gurion pronounced the words “We hereby proclaim the establishment of the Jewish state in Palestine, to be called Israel,” prompting applause and tears from the crowd gathered at the museum. Ben-Gurion became Israel’s first premier.
In the distance, the rumble of guns could be heard from fighting that broke out between Jews and Arabs immediately following the British army withdrawal earlier that day. Egypt launched an air assault against Israel that evening. Despite a blackout in Tel Aviv—and the expected Arab invasion—Jews joyously celebrated the birth of their new nation, especially after word was received that the United States had recognized the Jewish state. At midnight, the State of Israel officially came into being upon termination of the British mandate in Palestine.2
The conflict has continued since then, as Israel and Palestine both feel a claim to the land. Since 1946, Palestinian land has shrunk monumentally and hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs have been displaced. The ensuing territorial dispute between the Palestinians and Israelis has had a long and tumultuous history, one that continues to this day. The separation of key cities within the country has decimated many of those areas, and security checkpoints and strict control of borders create divisions and discord.
Today, the Palestinian territory is split into two parts, each area controlled by a different faction. Gaza is governed by the militant Islamic organization Hamas, while the Palestinian areas of the West Bank are controlled by the secular Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). While Gaza is entirely Palestinian, the West Bank is split into three zones, under different control: strictly Palestinian, joint Palestinian and Israeli, and strictly Israeli.
Ramallah is the de facto capital of the West Bank. To get there you have to cross a wall built by Israel that encircles the entire West Bank. Construction of the thick, high four-hundred-mile concrete wall began in 2002 with the purpose of putting a barrier between the territories. Though there is a coil of barbed wire above it, every year, one way or another, forty thousand Palestinians make it over the wall. Palestinian movement is monitored by Israeli checkpoints to control the flow of people. The first is the Qalandia Checkpoint. Palestinians hold different ID cards depending on whether they are from the West Bank, Gaza, or East Jerusalem, which dictates where and when they can travel in the region.
Checkpoints are inevitable on even short journeys, and curfews can be implemented at any time. There are arbitrary controls regardless of what your documents say as to whether or not you will be allowed past a given checkpoint. Theoretically the only people allowed to travel freely across the regions are foreigners, but access can still be denied at any time for any reason by Israeli checkpoint controls. When you cross the first checkpoint you arrive in Ramallah, West Bank, which is one of Palestine’s most liberal cities. However, many women still cover up in traditional Islamic dress.
Shuhada Street was once the center of commerce and the hub of Palestinian tailoring until 1994, but the Israeli army closed down hundreds of businesses as Israeli settlers moved into the area. All trade stopped. Now the street is mostly deserted, and the shops are not only closed but their doors are welded shut. Today about five hundred Israeli settlers live there and are guarded by a patrol of Israeli soldiers.
Erez Crossing is the checkpoint at the border to the Israeli Gaza Strip. For all its notoriety, Gaza is a strip of land only twenty-five miles long and six miles wide infamous for its sustained periods of violent conflict. Gaza is governed by the militant Islamic group Hamas, which is listed as a foreign terrorist organization by the US government. Since Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip in 2007, both Israel and Egypt have held Gaza under a blockade, shutting down its borders and allowing Gazans to leave only under exceptional circumstances. In 2008 and 2014 full-scale wars broke out with Israel, the latter of which killed thousands of people, the majority of them Palestinian.
Entering Gaza is heavily restricted. Palestinians living in the West Bank are not allowed access to Gaza and vice versa. Crossing its borders is difficult because you must pass a series of heavy Israeli security checks, then walk through a two-mile-long fully enclosed caged tunnel, which is topped by barbed wire. This tunnel leads you to a final hurdle, the Hamas checkpoint. Despite a years-long conflict and war-torn towns, Gaza is quite beautiful. Its beach on the Mediterranean Sea shares the same waters as the South of France. The waters off Gaza after a certain point are controlled by the Israeli navy. There is a limited area Gazans are allowed out to sea of about three miles; beyond that they cannot cross without risking being shot.
There are daily power outages, with power on for several hours, then off for several hours. The Erez border is the way out of Gaza City back to the West Bank and Ramallah. Palestinians are not allowed into Jerusalem without a permit, but Americans can easily come and go with their passports. However, if you have an American passport and a Palestinian ID card there are restrictions. In that case, you can travel to Jerusalem only within certain times of the day and there is a curfew of 9:00 p.m. Americans can drive through the checkpoint; however, Palestinians must walk through the security gate into East Jerusalem. There is often tear gas and rubber bullets fired at the Palestinians at the checkpoint, during protests and demonstrations.
The Beit-El Checkpoint and the Qalandia Checkpoint take you back into East Jerusalem.
There is no easy way to fully explain the differences between Palestine and Ramallah in the West Bank, and Jerusalem and Gaza in the east, for the people living there under the conditions dictated by religion, and their shared history, and location. Their life is defined by borders more so than any other place I can think of.
It was with this shared history as a politically charged and divided people that Aisam-Ul-Haq Qureshi, a Pakistani Muslim, and Amir Hadad, an Israeli Jew, made the decision to team up. Qureshi faced immediate pushback from his government and hate mail from Islamic radicals. His national tennis association threatened him with expulsion if he played on the same team with Hadad. Saulat Abbas, the director of the Pakistan Sports Board, issued an “official condemnation” of Qureshi for playing with an Israeli, adding, “An explanation has been sought from him. Since Pakistan has no links with Israel, Qureshi may face a ban.”3 In contrast, the Israeli Tennis Association gave Hadad its full support. In the face of the backlash against Qureshi, Hadad said, “Aisam and I are friends first, and Arabs or Jews second.”
In spite of the threat of a ban, Qureshi stood firm. He knew he had a good chance of winning for his country if he played with Hadad, who was excellent on grass courts. Asked how he would respond to the ban, Qureshi replied, “That would be their own loss. If they [the federation] want to stay in the lower levels, that’s fine. I’m going to stay and play for them, but if I believe I could do well with Amir in the big events, the Grand Slams, I’ll stay and play with him. Why not?”4
When I spoke to Qureshi about his experiences and what made him and Hadad decide to play together, I was struck that neither he nor Hadad considered it a political statement. It made sense to them from a tennis perspective. They were simply a strong team together because of their unique talents. As we discussed the events leading up to the tournament it became clear that Qureshi was first and foremost playing for his nation, while also representing all tennis players in a show of unity and sportsmanship.
“Amir and I happened to be at the tournament office during the Wimbledon qualifying deadline,” Qureshi told me while training in Doha. “Both of us had no partners, so we decided to sign in and give it a shot. I have known him for a while and knew he was good on grass courts and had a good sense of doubles—not once did it ever cross my mind that he was a Jew or from Israel. Amir is a great guy, and I got along well with him and other players from Israel. I did not know him that well off the court, but we would greet each other, as we did all the other players.
“Our doubles partnership raised a lot of questions back home in Pakistan, and my sports board and federation even announced that they would ban me from playing for my country if I continued to play at Wimbledon or at any other tournament with Hadad. But I stood my ground and kept playing with him, and the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) even gave us both an Arthur Ashe humanitarian award. After the match we stayed in touch for a while but then he retired. I still ask other Israeli players on the tour about him.
“Our doubles partnership made a huge impact in my life and surely in a positive way.
“In 2010 when I made the finals with Rohan Bopanna, who is a Hindu and an Indian, there were only praises from both sides, and my people and federation and sports board realized from my partnership with Amir in Wimbledon as well as with Rohan that all I was trying to do was to get acclaim for my country and my family. Playing with Amir and Rohan both helped me in achieving that, and I was honored with another Arthur Ashe award from the ATP.
“Would I do it again? I would surely do it again because I truly believe that we should not mix politics, religion, color, or race with sports. Sport teaches us to be equal and to judge and treat a person as a human being and not because of their race, their religion, or what country they come from.”
Despite the backlash and just qualifying for Wimbledon, Hadad and Qureshi made it to the round of sixteen of the men’s doubles and became fan favorites. Although they did not win the match, they won an even greater victory when they put their nations’ decades of animosity aside, ignored the potential backlash, and presented a unified front on the tennis court. Hadad and Qureshi’s decision was not only courageous, it was historic because it united their two nations for the first time in nearly sixty years, on the tennis court.
The recent escalation of the refugee crisis resulted in a controversial executive order on immigration, signed by US president Donald Trump in January 2017, that barred refugees and citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries—Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen—from entering the United States. The backlash was immediate and fierce as images of handcuffed families and even children, detained for hours at airports, swept international news and social media. Protestors across the country and the world marched against the ban. Many state representatives across party lines called the ban unconstitutional. Federal courts in New York and California immediately blocked parts of the ban from being implemented. The US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 3–0 to uphold a lower federal court’s ruling that put the nationwide immigration ban on hold. It was argued that the ban sought to classify refugees as terrorists. According to Human Rights Watch, the number of Americans killed annually by jihadist immigrant extremists is two. The number of Americans killed by being shot by another American is 11,737.
America is a young country made up almost entirely of immigrants. The only natives to this country are Native Americans. So many of the people who made America the innovative country it is today are either immigrants or refugees, and this is particularly true in sports. Often athletes came to America seeking asylum from war, or fleeing famine, persecution, and restrictive policies. Many of these athletes then became American citizens and went on to represent the country in the Olympics and brought home medals. Among them are the tennis player Martina Navratilova from Czechoslovakia, and the Eritrean American distance runner Meb Keflezighi, whose family fled war, famine, and persecution in Eritrea, East Africa, and eventually settled in the United States.
Keflezighi was born during the deadly three-decade war for liberation from Ethiopia. Because his father, Russom, was a liberation supporter, he had to flee his family home in Adi Beyani to escape Ethiopian soldiers. Keflezighi’s mother, Awetash, who feared that her husband would be killed, convinced him to leave Ethiopia. He ended up in Milan, Italy, for five years, sending money back to his family until he could afford to bring them to Italy in 1986. The family then immigrated to the United States in 1987.
Keflezighi started running in school and began winning distance races. In 2009 he won the New York City Marathon (and in 2014 the Boston Marathon, becoming the first American man to win both races since 1982 and 1983). He went on to become the 2004 Olympic marathon silver medalist. He finished fourth in the 2012 Summer Olympics. He came in fourth in the 2014 New York City Marathon, eighth in the 2015 Boston Marathon, and second in the 2016 US Olympic team trials to qualify for the 2016 Summer Olympics.
Keflezighi is an inspiration, and despite his tumultuous childhood, he has kept a positive outlook and filtered that positivity into activism and philanthropy. His MEB (“Maintaining Excellent Balance”) Foundation supports programs that empower youth, their families, and their communities. It also funds programs that engage children in academics, and encourages health and fitness through sports.
Keflezighi was a refugee, along with the other members of his large family, and his take on the refugee situation now and when he first arrived in the 1980s is illuminating and insightful. I met with Keflezighi in San Diego to talk to him about his unique and amazing journey from Eritrea to the United States, and if that journey helped him to persevere as an athlete.
“My family came to the US because we wanted to get away from the war,” Keflezighi said during our conversation. His accent is still apparent even after so many years in the United States. “Growing up in Eritrea during the war, you didn’t know what tomorrow would bring, you didn’t know what the future held for you. You had very few opportunities. I grew up in a village that didn’t have electricity or running water. If I had stayed I would probably have been a farmer.
“The war was for independence, and my father was an independence supporter. We knew we had to escape or we could end up in prison or we could be killed. So there was not much choice. We decided to take a chance and go to Sudan, which was 225 miles away. The journey was across wilderness. There were hyenas and snakes. In Sudan, we were separated from our father for five years while he was in Italy. He sent us clothes and whatever he could afford. We didn’t have much. We shared our shirts, our jeans, all of it. The clothes he sent didn’t always fit, but luckily I had siblings, so what didn’t fit me would fit one of my brothers. Sometimes it was difficult; it was like the makeshift soccer games we would play. We had the long socks, but no shoes. So we just played with whatever we found in ditches. It was hard, but I have good memories of playing soccer without shoes or even a plastic ball that bounced.
Eventually my father was able to send for us and we went to Italy. Then we came to the United States. It was a blessing for us to come to the United States. I’m telling you this just so you have appreciation for everything that you had as a child. Food to eat, to be able to play sports or you know, make pictures with your pencil. We didn’t take any of this for granted.”
Given that Keflezighi came here as a refugee, I wanted his perspective on both the 2017 executive order to limit refugees and today’s political climate. Some Americans have argued that the refugee-vetting process is extreme enough, while others don’t think it is. Some people argue that it’s a matter of safety; others feel it might be about something else, whether that is discrimination, bias, or even xenophobia. I wanted to know his thoughts, given that Keflezighi and his family have been through that refugee program.
“Like my family, ninety to ninety-five percent of the people that come here, come with the best intentions,” Keflezighi answered. “Why not help them? I don’t think the ban is fair to women and their children. Five-year-olds, eight-year-olds. I can understand if there are eighteen-year-olds or twenty-two-year-olds. Sure, do more background checks, do a thorough background check. But not when it is a wife, mother, or widow coming with three children . . .
“We came here looking for refuge, to eat and feel safe from war. We were willing to work. Nothing is guaranteed when you come here. Nothing is handed to you. I was lucky to have a god-given talent as a runner but I was willing to work at it. It was never by accident that I got a good grade in a class. I worked hard and was studious. It is the same for the refugees coming to the States now. What we achieve here is not by accident, and we give back because this is now our country too. We become runners, athletes, engineers, doctors, poets or writers or filmmakers. We contribute. As an athlete who achieved some sort of success, I’ve made it my goal to help someone else achieve success. I think some of the fear is that we are not as social as in the past and I don’t mean social media. We need to be more interactive people. We are always on the Internet, which makes us solitary and internal. We lose a feeling of community when we don’t even know who our neighbors are.”
I agree with Keflezighi’s perspective. Today, more than ever, our country feels divided and divisive. We are operating more on fear and a need to isolate ourselves. But that is never the answer. We should instead make an effort to get to know our neighbors, especially if they are different, ethnically, culturally, or religiously from us. So much of our communication today isn’t personal, it is digital, especially via social media such as Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram. We don’t have as much of a personal interaction with one another anymore. That has its positive side, such as giving athletes the ability to easily reach their fans, but the downside is that less of our interaction is on a personal level. This doesn’t allow us as citizens to really get to know our neighbors or our community. And if they are different from us, all we know is what we see in the media or read about, which could contribute to fear. That makes it so much easier to fall victim to divisive rhetoric. As a refugee seeking asylum and now as an American citizen, Keflezighi has experienced both aspects of exclusion and inclusion in American society. Does he think that there is a better way to approach the vetting system, a way that is more inclusive and less divisive yet still keeps the country safe?
“I can only speak from my own experiences when I first came here, but you have to think, as a country, how you are perceived when you are welcoming. When you make kind gestures, sweet gestures, they are never forgotten. I still remember the people who helped me when I first came here thirty years ago. We were in the welfare system. My father supplemented that by driving a taxi, and he helped out at restaurants. He did whatever he could. We came here to the US, and I started ninth grade. We didn’t have much. A memory that has stayed with me is when the teachers at my school put together money to buy me a letterman jacket because my parents couldn’t afford one. I remember things like that, acts of kindness. My foundation is my way of giving back for what was given to me. The opportunities I had by being in this country, to have the opportunity to run and to win races in New York and Boston, has put me in the position to use my voice and position to help others.”
Keflezighi’s background, what he experienced, the way he grew up, and the atrocities he saw in Eritrea made him want to make a better life here and also for others, and influenced him to start his foundation. Keflezighi wanted to give back for what he received here and for the kindness shown to him in this country. That is lost in today’s discussion about refugees and immigrants. They are seeking asylum, but they give back tremendously to the country and in so many ways. The list of immigrants who have contributed to American culture and society is too long to list, but they are in every industry—sports, commerce, technology, media, manufacturing—and have changed the way America communicates or operates. We would not be the country we are today without their contributions. I think they make these contributions for a few reasons. One, they were welcomed here when they sought refuge, and two, they feel an affinity for and a sense of belonging to America after living here for so many years. And note that many immigrants become naturalized citizens. Considering the divisiveness the immigration ban is creating in our country and in the world I wanted to know if Keflezighi thought he would feel welcome in the US today, the way he was welcomed when he first arrived. His response was immediate and emphatic.
“I was welcome here in 1987. But now, no.” Keflezighi shook his head. “There’s been so many attacks that happened all over the country and world. Now people have to think twice before becoming a refugee or immigrating. In my experience and from my own perspective I think that’s unfair, obviously, because when you’re kind there’s going to be kindness returned. There are so many people who are coming here to do positive things. When we come here and feel welcomed, a seed blossoms. You want to give back to repay that kindness, to show appreciation, to help the country that welcomed you and gave you refuge.”
Keflezighi won the Boston Marathon the year after the bombing attack at the race killed three people and injured more than 260. I could only imagine that for him, winning was particularly special after the horrible tragedy there the year before. What was the crowd like and the feeling that year?
Keflezighi’s eyes lit up as he answered. “I was the first person CNN interviewed who was an African American with an accent so it was very special. Especially after the bombing the year before. Many people, refugees, immigrants, visa holders, wanting to come here stopped going to that airport in Boston right after it happened. You feel singled out, like more eyes are on you. It’s always unfortunate when something like that happens, but that it was caused by immigrants. The bombing. The year I won the Boston Marathon I wanted to do something positive. Whether it was winning, whether it was doing something for the families that it affected. That was my goal, to try to bring us all together.”
Meb Keflezighi wanted to do something positive during the 2014 Boston Marathon. He wanted to bring people together after the tragic bombing the year before. And he did. When he crossed the finish line, as a former refugee who is now an American citizen, he showed the world that the divisive acts of a few do not represent the majority of refugees and immigrants who live in the United States and want to do good and be a positive influence here. As a former refugee and an immigrant, Keflezighi showed that we cannot and should not be divided by ethnicity, religion, race, or sex. It does more harm than good and engenders resentment and a lack of unity. He was so determined to replace the negative act of the year before with a positive one that he not only won the marathon, but did it in record time and set a personal best.
The idea that sports changes lives and perceptions is more than a slogan on a T-shirt or a way to sell merchandise. Anyone who has become more assured or developed a competitive edge by mastering a sport, or felt the camaraderie of being a part of a team, understands how sports can make you more confident, more focused, more determined, and more driven. Playing a sport, training your mind and your body to excel, can change not only your perception of yourself but also how others perceive you.
We find evidence of this in the most unlikely of places: a refugee camp in the middle of the desert. It was there that a group of girls, living in one of the most traditional and conservative countries in the Middle East, came together as a team. These young women who had never played sports before changed not only their families’ and community’s perception of them, but also their perception of themselves and of what they could do and be. Displaced by the war in Syria and living in Za’atari refugee camp in Jordan, these sheltered young women excelled in a game that was forbidden, but ultimately helped to spread a message of female empowerment, hope, and inspiration. It also strengthened their community and their families, and allowed them to escape from the daily life as refugees in war-torn Syria.
Women’s soccer has become one of the most exciting and popular sports, one in which standouts like Mia Hamm and Megan Rapinoe have electrified the field, without their gender downplaying their prowess and athleticism. Thousands of miles away in a harsh Middle Eastern desert a group of young girls also changed the perception of soccer and a girl’s role in sports, yet none of them had kicked a soccer ball until a few months earlier. In the blinding, arid desert, two Syrian girls’ teams played the biggest game of their lives. Soccer was a sport that until then they were not allowed to play because of their religion. That day, they changed perceptions of what girls are capable of and challenged traditional beliefs.
Sarah Leah Whitson, the Middle East executive director of Human Rights Watch, has called the war in Syria “one of the greatest humanitarian and political catastrophes we are facing.” Bashar al-Assad, the president of Syria since 2000, has used Scud missiles, military planes, and other weapons to quash the uprising against what a large part of the population considers dictatorial rule.5 According to BBC News:
When protests against his government began in March 2011 he gave orders to crush the dissent, rather than tolerate it, and he refused to meet protesters’ demands.
The brutal crackdown by the security forces did not, however, stop the protests and eventually triggered an armed conflict that the UN says has so far left more than 250,000 people dead.
More than 11 million others have been forced from their homes as forces loyal to Mr Assad and those opposed to his rule battle each other—as well as jihadist militants from Islamic State (IS).6
The brutal ongoing war in Syria has displaced and separated families, moved them from their homes to refugee camps miles away in the middle of the desert, and left them shell-shocked from the daily onslaught of gunfire and mortar fire. It was one of those mortar shells that killed twenty-nine students and a teacher when it slammed into their school outside Damascus. The death tolls rose on a daily basis as dead bodies pummeled by rocket fire piled up in the streets, and the cloying odor of burning cars filled the air. These are the memories that thirteen-year-old Rama Khalid Jwaba and her six sisters and brother took with them when they left Syria and headed west to Jordan, to a refugee camp eight miles from the Syrian border.
“It was a miserable experience. It was terrifying. You could expect to be bombed or have a rocket fired at you,” Rama’s sister Roweda recalled. Rama and her family were driven from their home in Daraa, a city in the southwest corner of Syria. Daraa was the catalyst for the Syrian civil war in 2011 when a dozen teenagers were arrested and tortured for painting antigovernment graffiti. Rather than hear out the protesters’ demands for a more democratic government in Syria, Assad instead responded by commanding his soldiers to fire into a crowd of protestors. They then went house to house and arrested people they thought were involved in the protest, capturing and torturing thousands of people.
Afraid that the army would arrest her brother, Rama’s family joined the millions fleeing Syria and headed west to Jordan in January 2013 as violence escalated. On the day they left, a neighborhood village was being bombed by jets. They had made it out in just the nick of time. Rama remembers being terrified. After an exhausting journey across the desert, they arrived in Za’atari, a massive makeshift refugee camp in Jordan less than eight miles from the Syrian border. Three years ago, the spot on which the camp sits was just a desert in Jordan. Today, it is home to 82,000 residents and is Jordan’s fourth-largest city.
Life in Za’atari is hard. Jobs are scarce and resources are few. Electricity is unreliable, shutting off for hours at a time. Food and water are strictly rationed, and the camp eventually had to close its gates and not allow any more refugees because of limited resources. Rama’s only brother has returned to Syria to look for work to help the family. Rama goes to school for three hours in the morning. The remainder of her time is spent keeping the house, cooking and cleaning, and going to the mosque. In her spare time she wonders if her brother is okay and if he will return. As with most women in conservative Muslim families, Rama’s traditional role is in the home. Traditional girls in Za’atari start getting married when they are sixteen. Their childhood is cut short alternately by war, displacement, and marriage. The general belief is that girls should stay home and not go outside.
But that did not stop Prince Ali bin al-Hussein, the third son of King Hussein, the king of Jordan, from starting an unprecedented sports program that introduced many girls to a forbidden sport. Prince Hussein is FIFA’s top lieutenant. The Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) is an association governed by Swiss law founded in 1904 and based in Zurich. It has 211 member associations, with delegates from Belgium, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland. Its goal is the constant improvement of football. In America we call it soccer.
As FIFA notes, “the founders [of the organization] created the first FIFA statutes, unifying the laws of the game to make it fair and clear to all players setting the foundation for all future soccer development. . . . Football has the power to bring people together and to break down barriers. It gives FIFA a platform to improve standards of education, health and sustainability, and to raise living standards and quality of life across the world.”7
FIFA’s website goes on to describe the history of organized soccer as follows: “Known as the world’s favorite game, football began in 1863 in England, when rugby football and association football branched off on their different courses and the Football Association in England was formed, becoming the sport’s first governing body. The rules and the structure of soccer provide a common, simple language to support unity through fair play and peaceful interactions.”8
In one of the most conservative countries in the world, many believe that sports are not for women and that girls should not play sports at all, especially not soccer. Their doing so went against traditional beliefs. That was one of the challenges Prince Hussein faced. The second was to try to have them play but within the rules of the community. Girls cannot play in front of people, and definitely not in front of males. To abide by those rules, the soccer team enclosed one of the boys’ sports fields, trained all female coaches, and then recruited girls. One day, Rama was sitting outside her house watching the girls play. The coach saw her and invited her into the game. The first time Rama asked her father if she could play, he said no. The second time she asked him, he said no, but she went anyway.
The sports program, which started with very little interest and only a few girls, has since grown to forty coaches and over four hundred participants. Since the girls have been playing, it is clear that it has changed them. They are happier and more relaxed. They laugh more and cry less. They thrive under the camaraderie of their teammates and the competition of the sport. Although having played for only three months, Rama has excelled at soccer and is one of her team’s best players. When the boys see Rama practicing in front of her house, their mouths drop open in amazement because they thought girls could not play soccer—and certainly not the way Rama plays.
Rama’s team did remarkably well and qualified for the summer tournament, and although they would play without an audience, they didn’t seem to mind. They were happy to be together, playing as a team, proudly wearing their blue team shirts. The girls shouted, skipped, threw their hands in the air, and clapped when their teammates scored, the memories of their war-torn homeland and its horrors momentarily forgotten. The difference from the shy girls they were a few months earlier to the confident, athletic young women playing that day was astounding.
After four wins, Rama’s team easily beat its next competitor. They would play the championship game the next morning. This time they would play in front of the community, and their friends and family. Rama’s family had never seen her or her team play soccer in a game. On the morning of the final, Rama and her teammates were incredibly nervous. As she walked with her family to the field, her father said, “Don’t be nervous. It’s only a game. Just do your best.” But Rama was worried that she would lose. “No you won’t,” he told her. “Just stay focused.” His reluctance for her playing was forgotten and in its place there was a pride that his daughter was the best player on the team.
When they arrived at the field, friends and family packed the sidelines. The girls from the other soccer programs were there, to cheer them on. And the boys were also there, excited to see their first girls’ soccer game. The support from the community was overwhelming. As the teams lined up and prepared to start the game, you could see the nervousness on Rama’s and her teammates’ faces. They were anxious to be playing in front of such a large crowd. As the teams took their places on a makeshift soccer field in the middle of the desert, under the bright sun, a hush settled over the crowd. This was for them a moment like no other. Girls were playing other girls in soccer, and the whole community was there to cheer them on.
At first, the girls were clearly nervous. But they soon forgot the screaming crowd and focused on the game and became lost in it. Rama’s team played well. Fighting for the ball, the opposite team took the lead and fought to keep it. Rama’s team lost 1–0, and it was heartbreaking. The girls cried and tried to comfort each other. But in the end they knew that day ultimately was not about winning. Rama and the other girls proved to their community: girls can play sports, and they can play well.
Rama’s father struggled to describe his feelings on that day as he watched his daughter on the field. “I was surprised. I never thought she was that good. I had a feeling I can’t describe. I can’t really express it.” That day Rama and her teammates earned the right to call themselves soccer players. Although still surrounded by the upheaval of war, the lessons learned on the soccer field, from the coaches and teammates, have left an indelible mark on Rama and her teammates, and on all the girls on the teams. Their experiences have changed them, transformed perceptions, and inspired them and others. But mostly it has shown them that they can do and be anything, even athletes. It has shown them not only the power of sports, but also their own power and resilience, and gave them hope in an unlikely place. That day, those girls on the field quietly created change by changing perceptions of what girls are capable of.
Martina Navratilova is the epitome of a natural activist. She stood up for what she believed in at a huge personal risk. She was and still is outspoken, and was an activist simply by being herself, at a time when most professional athletes were still closeted. Navratilova didn’t know if she would see her family again when she defected from Czechoslovakia. When she became a naturalized US citizen, she felt that she was finally free to speak out. She knew she could lose sponsorships or fans, or that public opinion might turn against her, but she didn’t have to fear for her life or her family’s life the way she might have back in Czechoslovakia. She has never shied away from any issue. She freely spoke about what was on her mind in interviews, and when the questions started veering away from strictly tennis to topics with wide-ranging effects on society, she spoke out about those with her usual honesty and straightforwardness.
Born in Czechoslovakia in 1956, Martina Navratilova began playing tennis at a young age, and was one of the most dominant female tennis players in the world in the late seventies and early eighties. Later in life, she became active in the gay rights movement. Tennis was a part of Navratilova’s DNA. Her grandmother Agnes Semenska had been an international player who had upset the mother of Vera Sukova, a 1962 Wimbledon finalist, in a national tournament.
Navratilova started at a very young age, then very quickly refined her game and rose up through the ranks. At four she was hitting tennis balls off of a cement wall. By age seven, Navratilova was playing regularly, spending hours on a court each day, working on her strokes and footwork. Navratilova began taking lessons at nine from the Czech champion George Parma, and she blossomed under his coaching. At age fifteen, she won the Czech national championship. In 1973, at sixteen, she turned pro and began competing in the United States. Navratilova defected to the United States when Czechoslovakia was under Communist control when she was eighteen. Leaving Czechoslovakia cut her off from her family, but it was also the start of her phenomenal tennis career. In 1978 she beat Chris Evert and won her first Grand Slam tournament at Wimbledon. Her second Wimbledon win came a year later with another victory over Evert. Navratilova’s third Grand Slam title came at the Australian Open in 1981. By the early eighties she was the most dominant women’s player in tennis.
During Navratilova’s on-court success she was open about her sexual orientation. “I never thought there was anything strange about being gay,” she wrote in her 1985 autobiography, Martina. Along the way, her public perception “advanced from animosity to acceptance to adulation.” Her left-handed playing style, intimidating physicality, and power on the court set her aside from all the other female athletes. Navratilova was a poster girl for tomboys and girls who were not girly-girls but who were powerful and athletic and were proud of it.
Navratilova was one of the first tennis players who went against the mainstream perception of what female players should look like, or how they should play. Chris Evert, the darling of the tennis world at that time, was ultrafeminine and lithe. Meanwhile, Navratilova, European, almost 5’8”, and at her heaviest 167 pounds, once caused tennis authority Bud Collins to describe her as “the Great Wide Hope.” Almost polar opposites, Evert and Navratilova were often pitted against each other professionally and physically. But despite the media backlash and negative attention, Navratilova simply played her best and silenced her critics on the court.
Robert Lipsyte and Peter Levine wrote in Idols of the Game, “As a lesbian, Navratilova expanded the dialogue on issues of gender and sexuality in sports. In the years that she and Chris Evert were locked in their fierce rivalry to be Number One, sports fans saw it was possible for two very different women, physically and emotionally, different in lifestyle and playing style, to both be great champions—and friends.”
Though she learned tennis playing on the slow clay courts of Czechoslovakia, Navratilova was not interested in the slow-moving, baseline-anchored woman’s game of the time. Instead, her game was one of a ferocious serve, powerful volley, then lightning speed as she rushed the net. Her emotional outbursts were stunning and may have been the precursor to Serena Williams’s. Navratilova won three major singles titles before she was twenty-five, an age when many women players are ready to retire. She finished with eighteen titles, including four US Opens, three French, and two Australian. Adding in her thirty-eight doubles titles, Navratilova won fifty-six Grand Slam championships. Only the Australian Margaret Court has won more majors. And she is seventy-four.
Navratilova’s influence, however, went far beyond the court.
In July 1981, soon after being granted US citizenship, she took the bold step of telling the truth when asked about her sexual preferences and said she was bisexual. Navratilova was also vocal about her affair with the author Rita Mae Brown.
“Martina was the first legitimate superstar who literally came out while she was a superstar,” said Donna Lopiano, the executive director of the Women’s Sports Foundation. “She exploded the barrier by putting it on the table. She basically said, this part of my life doesn’t have anything to do with me as a tennis player. Judge me for who I am.”
Although Navratilova’s honesty cost her millions in endorsement opportunities because of corporate homophobia, she never backtracked or tried to fade into the background. On the contrary, even today, Navratilova speaks out for what she believes in. When US Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg called Colin Kaepernick’s national anthem protest “dumb and disrespectful” in an interview with Katie Couric for Yahoo News, Navratilova spoke out against Ginsburg’s comment. The New York Times reported that “while [Navratilova] also thinks Kaepernick’s decision to kneel during the national anthem to protest police brutality and racial inequality ‘may be somewhat disrespectful,’” she believed that athletes like him should be praised for speaking out on social issues—not shamed for it—especially when they do so in a peaceful way, as Kaepernick did. “So many athletes are afraid to use their platform to do the right thing and speak what they feel, and that’s very depressing. . . . Sure, they are afraid of insulting people and losing money because of it, and everyone wants to make the maximum amount of money in their lifetime. But at the expense of who you are? I don’t know. That just wasn’t in my DNA.”9 A few days later, Ginsburg issued a statement apologizing for her comment. “I should have held my tongue,” the statement read. “Barely aware of the incident or its purpose, my comments were inappropriately dismissive and harsh. I should have declined to respond.”
Navratilova was never afraid to speak openly about what she felt needed to be changed in society. She publicly criticized George W. Bush for his conservative policies when he was president. She was also vocally critical of Bill Clinton for his “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on gays in the military, which she felt neither addressed nor solved the issue. Navratilova also advocated for children’s rights, animal rights, and gay rights and marriage equality.
Navratilova continues to speak up for human rights. In October 2016 at an event at the US State Department to discuss how to improve human rights at large international sports events, Navratilova called on entities like the International Olympic Committee and FIFA to ensure that their events are safe and open to everyone, without discrimination, and said doing so was a responsibility such organizations couldn’t continue to shirk.
Martina Navratilova has never shied away from any issue. She spoke openly about what was on her mind in interviews. I was excited to speak with Navratilova about sports activism for many reasons. During such a highly political time in America, a time filled with so many polarizing issues, Navratilova’s perspective—as both an immigrant who is now an American citizen, and also a longtime advocate and activist—would be enlightening, to say the least.
Navratilova made time to speak with me when she returned from vacation, right after the immigration ban was making headlines. I was not surprised that she had as much to say about the ban as about the importance of athletes speaking out about social justice. I wanted to begin by finding out what started Navratilova on the road to activism and if she ever felt that perhaps she had been too outspoken.
As usual she began with her trademark directness. “I became an activist just by being out, but I didn’t actively look for it; it was by virtue of being who I was, where I was from. When I came here to the US as a political asylum seeker, it was an act of activism already. Being outspoken didn’t happen until the nineties, when I really got behind the LGBT movement and became more involved in it. But I’ve been speaking out on various issues for as long as I can remember, whether it’s the environment, animal rights, or kids. I had a children’s foundation, Martina’s Kids Foundation, back in the early eighties in Texas and I’ve always been outspoken.
“I remember getting into hot water speaking out about Magic Johnson. It’s terrible that Magic has HIV. He’s like a hero. I’ve met him and thought he was an amazing guy but what I said publicly at the time was, if a female athlete had contracted AIDS by sleeping with hundreds of men she’d be labeled a whore rather than a hero. I got such crap for that. And this is pre-Twitter. I would have had to get off Twitter if it existed back then. But that’s how I was. I never skirted anything. It’s not that I was so much of an activist as that I answered questions or even brought up subjects in press conferences, about tennis or whatever I was going through at the time. Journalists would then ask me more questions outside of the tennis realm or the sports realm. So I just always spoke what I thought, and I guess that in itself was an act of activism because so often during press conferences athletes don’t talk about things outside of the game they just played.”
When Navratilova commented on Magic Johnson, she was using her platform to call out a double standard that people in the public eye don’t often do. She was pointing out that half of the population would have been treated differently had they been in the same position or circumstance—had it been a woman and not a man. In being as outspoken as Navratilova was, would she have had the same kind of ideas without her platform as a professional athlete? Her answer didn’t surprise me.
“Yes. I would have found a way on a different level, but I would still be doing the same thing, or maybe something else, but I would be actively involved in something as I have been. I spoke out about issues, but I have also done a lot of charitable work. Because of the platform we professional athletes have we can do more good, we can reach more people. I’ll play tennis for charity and make $50,000 for an hour of my work, so it’s almost cheating. I was just reading about these women who ran from New York to Washington in protest in January. They hoped to raise $5,000 and they raised $100,000. But they ran two hundred or something miles, which is phenomenal. So we athletes with our kind of platform are kind of cheating.”
Navratilova was referring to Alison Mariella Désir and Talisa Hayes, two women runners from Harlem. They ran the 240 miles from New York City to Washington, DC, right before the 2017 presidential inauguration to raise funds for Planned Parenthood. I was curious as to why Navratilova felt that being able to do good by doing something she loves like playing tennis felt a little like cheating. This was not a perspective I’d encountered during my talks with activist athletes.
“In a way, yes, it is a little like cheating,” she answered. “Because it is so easy for us to reach our audience. As athletes I feel that yes, we do more, and get involved more than just the everyday Joe Blow or celebrities, actors, actresses, and other high-income, high-profile people. I think athletes do more than their fair share as far as giving their time and raising money for charity. For instance, James, you interact so closely with your fans and see a greater cross section of society as an athlete than a movie star. Actors make a movie then see their fans only during a premiere, or at an event, as opposed to the constant and instant interaction with fans that athletes have when they play tournaments and matches. Also sports, particularly tennis and golf, are so democratic. Those sports are just about how good you are and have nothing to do with anything else. It’s purely based on your merit, and maybe because of that we feel that it is fair and we want to be fair-minded people.”
Because I retired from professional tennis in 2013, before my incident with the NYPD, I am in many ways lucky. Any advocacy or activism I do now does not affect my play during a professional tour. Did Navratilova’s activism or her speaking out or even being out ever affect her play, particularly while she was at the top of her game?
“Being out made me free. It freed me up,” Navratilova answered, then paused, as though thinking back all those years to when she first immigrated to the United States. “When I left my country, that was the biggest pressure cooker ever, being out. Leaving Czechoslovakia and my family, not knowing if I would ever go back and see them, was pressure because when I left it was a one-way ticket. After that, everything was kind of a piece of cake. Being gay was not anything I was ever worried about. When I realized I was gay, it was literally like, oh that’s what that was. I thought my life will never be as easy as I wanted it to be, but that’s what it is and that was literally the amount of thought I gave it.
“I never felt I had to justify myself and I never felt ashamed or anything, but it was a freeing thing to not have to not talk about it. Or have to say, ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’ I had never really said that about anything, whether it was politics or causes. I had always spoken out. So not to speak out about who I am was hard. And I didn’t say anything because I was covering for other people who I was with who were in the closet. Initially I couldn’t come out because I might not get my citizenship; that could have disqualified me back then. But the irony was I left my country so I could be free, but I wasn’t really free until I was completely out. Now I don’t have to hide anything at all, so it was really freeing.
“I think it made me a better tennis player because I didn’t have any extra energy going anywhere except to my tennis. But at the same time it did make people cheer against me after I came out. There was no doubt about that. Now I would have a bigger fan base or it would be a wash. Then, maybe five percent of people approved of homosexuality. Everybody else was very negative. It did affect me when I was playing, especially when I was winning. I was never the home team. I get jealous to this day of Nadal and Federer, you know, Jesus, the crowd is always cheering for them. [Laughs.] They’re the home team everywhere they go. I never had that until the very end of my career. But by then I wasn’t winning as much anymore and people were more accepting of gays. So, it was a plus on one side but a minus because I really wanted to have that support or fifty-fifty.
“Looking back now, I don’t think I realized what a positive effect it had on me to be out. Not that I ever really hid it, but I didn’t have to even think about it anymore or watch what I said or didn’t say. It was really since 1984 that it became much easier for me all the way around.”
If anyone has advice on advocacy and speaking out for what you believe in, it would be this longtime activist and outspoken champion. Did Navratilova have any advice for athletes today who have something they are passionate about, who have a cause that is dear to them, or who feel the need to speak out about social justice or inequality? Also, did she think today’s activist culture is different than it was in the seventies and eighties, when she was playing professionally?
“It’s almost a selfish thing because it makes you feel good to help people,” Navratilova responded in her usual straightforward way. “You can affect people in a positive way and it takes so little of your time or effort to speak up for them. It helps them not feel so alone. Whether it’s people of color, or of certain religions, or sexuality, whatever. Just to know that someone who is important, who has done well, has your back is extremely empowering for people. We athletes have such an opportunity to do that, especially now when you can connect so much easier with your fans with Twitter and social media. But I still get disappointed in some athletes who have a chance to speak out but don’t because they don’t want to upset somebody who might buy their sneakers or rackets. Let’s put it all in perspective about what’s really important. Is it for you to have another deal or make more money or to actually uplift thousands of people by what you do and what you say?
“It seems to me like the more things change the more they stay the same.” She sighed deeply, as though she had seen what we’re going through today as a country, all before. “We’re still dealing with the same sexism, racism, phobias, or isms that we were then,” she continued. “Now they’re coming out more because of the current political climate. My eleven-year-old goes to private school. She came home the other day and told me that a boy in school said that if I’m not careful Trump will deport me. She replied to him, But aren’t you from Mexico? I think you’re going back to Mexico first. So she went right back at him, but seriously, kids think this is okay. Eleven-year-old kids, and by the way, his family voted for Hillary Clinton, but it’s in his head that it’s okay to say things like that because he’s hearing it.
“It’s pretty scary nowadays. All these phobias are coming out, so it’s even more important to speak out now because we seem to be going backwards. The possibilities are endless today with social media. You can definitely be heard and connect with your fans and make a difference in a much faster and easier way. At the same time you subject yourself to a lot of negativity, so it takes a strong person to speak out still. Especially with the immigration ban. As if they haven’t suffered enough and they’ve already been vetted for two years.
“‘Extreme vetting,’ what does that even mean? It’s all so subliminal and nonspecific that you can’t really attack it, and it’s done on purpose that way. But to make these blanket statements and have blanket bans, blanket anything is just horrible. To put everybody in the same basket seems self-defeating. To me, everything should be done on a case-by-case basis. That executive order was just horrible. People are either the best or the worst today, there is no in between. [Mike] Pence is terrible but he won’t blow up the world. With him it will be the fight for human rights and gay rights all over again, but at least, he won’t blow up the world.”
We have to wonder why historically, professional athletes, almost more than any other group, have been the catalysts for social change. To answer that question we should look at the journey athletes often take to excel in their sport, and to train their mind and body to persevere. For athletes to be the best they can be in their sport, they must often overcome not only their competition but also their self-doubt, their backgrounds, or their own physical or financial circumstances. The sports world is built on inspirational stories of phenomenal achievements of athletes prevailing over unimaginable obstacles. It is often these very trials and tribulations that not only make them the fierce competitors they are but also inform their worldview, and inspire—no, compel—them to reach back to help others in the same situations.
In war-torn Serbia, two aspiring young tennis players fought against all odds to find a place where they could practice in safety from early-morning air raids. That place happened to be an empty swimming pool in an often bombed city. Novak Djokovic and Ana Ivanovic grew up amidst the hum of low-flying bombs during the Balkan conflict. The swimming pool in which they practiced had been drained and outfitted with makeshift tennis nets and green carpeting. That they both rose to be number one in their tennis careers is a testament to their strength of will and is inspirational not only to promising athletes and anyone facing seemingly overwhelming obstacles, but also to all the people of their homeland.
Serbia is a country known for war crimes perpetrated at the hands of Slobodan Milosevic, its former president. Under his rule, the Serbian people faced atrocities including genocide and crimes against humanity in connection with wars in Bosnia, Croatia, and Kosovo.
Imagine being twelve years old in the midst of the bloody conflict ravaging your city. Imagine the drone of low-flying bombers during daily air raids, the horrors of brutal ethnic cleansing, food and water shortages, and buildings and windows shaking from bombs dropped nearby. These things were part of Ivanovic’s childhood, yet she was no different from any child. She grew up with her younger brother Milos, whom she liked to play basketball with. Her mother, Dragana, a lawyer, and her father, Miroslava, a self-employed businessman, tried to shield their children from the horrors outside their door.
Ivanovic developed a passion for tennis at five years old after watching her fellow Yugoslav Monica Seles on television. She begged her parents to buy her a racket and then memorized the telephone number of a local tennis clinic from an advertisement. With the local tennis courts destroyed or too expensive for the family to afford, Ivanovic spent freezing winters practicing her strokes in an abandoned Olympic-size swimming pool not far from her home. The aspiring tennis player rose before the sun to practice at six o’clock during lulls in the regular morning raids. Ivanovic, along with her fellow teen players Jelena Jankovic and Novak Djokovic, had ninety-minute practices in the makeshift tennis court and often played against each other. They would sometimes have to hide in a bomb shelter during surprise air raids.
Finding tennis facilities to practice in was only the start of her difficulties. Her parents were living on just a few hundred euros a month, barely able to meet the costs of lessons, equipment, or travel to games. During the conflict, flights in and out of Belgrade were suspended. Ivanovic had to travel seven hours by bus to neighboring Hungary because it was impossible to get a visa out of Serbia for international tournaments.
Ivanovic’s future was transformed by a fateful meeting with Dan Holzmann, a Swiss businessman with a passion for tennis. Holzmann was taking tennis lessons when his Serbian coach mentioned a girl in Belgrade who had an exceptional talent but no financial resources to improve. That girl was Ana Ivanovic, who at fourteen was the twenty-second-ranked junior player in the world, despite how difficult it was for her to get to tournaments, and her lack of money for good equipment, suitable training facilities, or professional coaches. Intrigued, Holzmann wanted to meet Ivanovic, and in 2002 Ana and her mother flew to Switzerland after he helped them secure visas.
When Holzmann asked Ivanovic what she wanted from life, she answered, “I want to be number one in the world.” He decided then and there to offer her financial assistance. Holzmann would make monthly payments to her family. The money would be an interest-free loan, not a donation. The loan, which eventually reached around $305,000, enabled Ivanovic to hire a good coach and allowed her to play in mainstream junior tournaments.
Ivanovic left Serbia to train in Basel, Switzerland, because of better training facilities and coaching. Holzmann, who was now her manager, was also from Basel. Ivanovic and her mother stayed with him until they could afford an apartment. Holzmann flew to her next junior tournament in Rome, which she lost in the first round. Devastated, Ivanovic started to cry as she left the court. Afraid that Holzmann would abandon her because of her loss, she locked herself in the locker room for four hours. After Ivanovic was finally convinced that he believed in her, she improved. The same fighting spirit that got her through the freezing 6:00 a.m. practices in the converted pool while planes dropped bombs overhead gave her the drive she needed to focus on and improve her game.
Driven to succeed, Ivanovic reached the final of the 2004 Junior Wimbledon tournament at seventeen. That year she also held her own and came close to beating Serena Williams. The next year she won her first career singles title. By the end of 2006, Ivanovic was ranked fourteenth in the world, then the next year she climbed up to number four. She started 2008 strong, by reaching the final of the Australian Open. Her biggest victory to date came at the 2008 French Open, where she won her first Grand Slam singles title.
Ivanovic has to date won fifteen WTA Tour singles titles, and five International Tennis Federation (ITF) women’s circuit singles titles. Ivanovic was the first Serbian woman to reach a Grand Slam final at Roland Garros since Monica Seles became at sixteen the youngest person to win the tournament in 1991. Eventually winning over $15 million in prize money, she was able to repay every penny to Holzmann, whose belief in her gave her the opportunity to reach her full potential.
Ivanovic’s journey has been a testament to persevering and overcoming emotional obstacles not only for yourself but also for those who believe in you. She was lucky to have had early support, and she in turn gives back. As a UNICEF national ambassador for Serbia and ambassador of the Quercus Foundation, which helps children in underprivileged areas of the world, Ivanovic is a staunch advocate for children’s rights, education, and health. In 2016 Ivanovic was honored by the Quercus Foundation as its female icon for International Women’s Day. In accepting this honor and for her work as a Quercus ambassador, Ivanovic said, “The Serbian mentality is very determined; we are aware that you have to work hard to achieve something. That’s the mind-set that has shaped me as a player more than anything else. I never gave up and was lucky enough to have met people who helped me. I worked hard and kept pushing myself.”
Novak Djokovic was Ivanovic’s practice partner in the pool. Born in 1987 in Belgrade, Djokovic is the eldest of three sons whose younger brothers are Marko and Djordje. His friends and family call him “Nole.” Djokovic became interested in playing tennis at age four and went on to become the first Serbian player to be ranked number one by the ATP and the first male player representing Serbia to win a Grand Slam singles title. He became the number one tennis player in the world in 2011 and as of 2017 was ranked number two in men’s singles tennis. He has also won three Australian Open titles, a US Open title, and he won Wimbledon at twenty-four. After Djokovic won Wimbledon in 2011, a hundred thousand people gathered to celebrate in front of Belgrade’s Parliament.
Djokovic wasn’t driven to tennis the way Ivanovic was, but they share a Monica Seles connection. It was a fluke that Djokovic started playing tennis. His family was athletic. His father, Srdjan, and his mother, Dijana, were skiing instructors, and Srdjan had been a competitive downhill skier. But no one in the family was a tennis player. Although Serbia has produced its share of talented players, such as Janko Tipsarevic, Nenad Zimonjic, Viktor Troicki, Ana Ivanovic, Jelena Jankovic, and Djokovic among them, as a nation, Serbia was traditionally more noted in team sports, like basketball, water polo, and volleyball, in which many Serbian teams have won Olympic medals and world and European championships. Serbian athletes have often trained in more-than-poor conditions, and they have frequently lacked the necessary financial resources, but despite everything, many of them have become worldwide champions.
Novak started playing on the tennis courts in Kopaonik, a resort town where his family lived and owned a restaurant, where he sometimes would work as a waiter. Kopaonik is a popular tourist and skiing area between Serbia and Kosovo. Improbably, that was where the Serbian government decided to build a tennis facility, and that was where Jelena Gencic, Djokovic’s first trainer and coach, who had once coached Monica Seles, first noticed him. After working with Djokovic, Gencic proclaimed him as the biggest talent she had seen since Monica Seles.
“When Djokovic was six, he told his parents that it was his mission to become the No. 1 tennis player in the world,” wrote a profile of the athlete in The New Yorker. “When he was eleven, NATO began bombing Belgrade. Each night at eight o’clock, as the air-raid siren sounded, the family would run to an aunt’s apartment building, which had a bomb shelter. For seventy-eight nights, they crouched in darkness, praying amid the screams of F-117s. Djokovic kept up his tennis throughout the bombardment, playing on cracked courts bereft of nets. He writes, in Serve to Win . . . ‘We’d go to the site of the most recent attacks, figuring that if they bombed one place yesterday, they probably wouldn’t bomb it today.’”10
For almost three months Djokovic and his family and the rest of Belgrade lived in fear for their lives, uncertain what the next day would bring. “On 22 May 1999, I was celebrating my 12th birthday,” Djokovic told the UK Spectator in 2013. “I don’t like to remember this, but it is one of my strongest memories. That birthday celebration in the Serbian tennis club Partisan, when everyone was singing ‘Happy Birthday’ while the aeroplanes were flying over the sky dropping bombs on Belgrade. I think that at that time I was too young to conceptualise what was happening. Instead, I learned to refocus and to not listen to the sirens. I learned to focus on pleasure in having so much ‘free time’ to play tennis. I thought if I focus on the talent I believed I had, I can be the No. 1, I can win Wimbledon one day. That determination was crucial in my development as a professional athlete. Even today I draw on those foundations.”11
This early adversity taught Djokovic how to manage and overcome fear at a young age, and ultimately these experiences would help him persevere as a tennis player who could focus during stressful, high-stakes matches. During the war, the economy collapsed and his family struggled to survive. The country was under embargo, and families faced extreme poverty and hardship. Under those conditions, life is a struggle just to survive, and the development of children in any sport, let alone in tennis, seemed impossible. Knowing they had a talent with Novak, his father, Srdjan, sold the family’s gold and borrowed money from a loan shark. They sent Novak to a tennis academy in Munich, while the family stayed in Serbia. Novak left his family at the age of twelve, with the weight of their expectations on his young shoulders. This was one of the two turning points in his life. He had to grow up overnight and adjust to living on his own, not depending on his parents.
Djokovic considers leaving home one of the major markers in his life, which would define him as an athlete and a man. He trained hard and entered the top 100 in 2005, at the age of eighteen. In 2007, he became the third-ranked player in the world. In 2008, he won the Australian Open, his first Grand Slam. Despite the hardship of his early life, Djokovic has a goofy sense of humor. His other nickname is “the Djoker.” His spot-on imitations of other tennis players like Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer have endeared him to the crowds.
Djokovic’s troubled childhood and the tough times his country faced deeply informed his worldview. He is the most famous person in Serbia; he is also the world’s most famous Serbian. Never forgetting his roots or the struggles of the people in Serbia, Djokovic gives back through the Novak Djokovic Foundation, which he founded in 2001. The foundation gives grants to educational initiatives and encourages childhood sports and education in Serbia. Understanding the struggles of growing up in the midst of a war, Djokovic has geared his foundation to helping children from disadvantaged communities or areas of conflict to grow up, play, and develop in stimulating, creative, and safe settings. The foundation’s motto is “Believe in Their Dreams,” because although Djokovic is from a country that was in conflict, he was able to achieve his dream of becoming the number one tennis player in the world, with the help of his family, who believed in him and supported him. But first he had to not only dare to dream but also believe he could achieve it.
In Serbia, and in many other countries afflicted with famine, war, or poverty, Djokovic believes that children don’t dare to dream big. They lack the access or means to an education, they are plagued by illness, or they have suffered the loss of their parents. He saw a lot of this in his home country, and he decided to focus most of his efforts on helping children in Serbia. He believes that through education, children can be part of the collective effort to decrease poverty and social exclusion. They can learn by his example that if you work hard and believe in yourself, anything is possible. Now that he is in a position to give back and create a legacy, Djokovic wants to focus on helping young people fulfill their dreams.
In 2015, Djokovic was appointed a UNICEF goodwill ambassador. His foundation partnered with the World Bank in August 2015 to promote early childhood education in Serbia. Following his historic 2016 Australian Open victory, in which he became the first player in the Open era to win the tournament six times, Djokovic donated $20,000 to Melbourne City Mission’s early childhood education program to help disadvantaged children.
And as a UNICEF ambassador for Serbia, he helps raise the awareness of low enrollment rates in preschool education in his native country, which are among the lowest in the world.
Through the accomplishments of Ivanovic and Djokovic—talented athletes, advocates, and philanthropists—their countrymen and -women see that even the impossible is possible. Their success, driven by their focus and spirit, inspires others to believe that they can also overcome seemingly insurmountable circumstances. It allows them not only to have hopes and dreams, but to aspire to them. Ivanovic and Djokovic have also made great strides to help redeem their country in the eyes of the world after it was tainted by atrocities and war crimes.
The swimming pool alumni Ivanovic and Djokovic were cheered by a crowd of 15,000 when they returned to Belgrade from the French Open in 2007. They both made the semifinals at the Grand Slam. They had earned every one of those cheers. Their journey has been a testament to the strength of will and purpose of fierce competitors who did not let circumstances define them, who instead defined themselves, and in so doing, redefined their country. They showed the tenacity of their people, who have survived years of conflict and stigma, and will not be defined by them.