Are competitive sports an effective way to change my Spartiates' life perspective?

I am creating a world in which a society exists that is heavily inspired that ancient Sparta, specifically with a focus on Spartiates and their military education, the agoge. A character in the story is trying to change the life perspective of a group of male Spartiates, who were trained from a very young age to fight in military battles, through competitive sports, specifically Basketball.

Therefore I am looking for information about the effect of competitive sports on the psychology of teenagers with extreme levels of aggression potential with the goal of reducing said aggression potential.

Can I integrate these teenagers into today's society after working with them and introducing them to Basketball?

There are a few differences between the agoge and the training these teenagers went through:

• Kids are trained in all sorts of martial arts.
• Military training started at the age of 3.
• They were trained 16 hours a day, 7 days a week.
• Each Spartiate has killed at least 5 kids - some of which have been close friends.
• All Spartiates have average intelligence.
• All Spartiates are able to read and write.

The teenagers in this specific group are between 15 and 19 years old.

I would like to paint these teenagers as veteran warriors who did not learn how to smile, born in a world where love did not exist and their sole purpose is to kill or die.

Why Basketball? The protagonist is the coach of a Basketball team, which means that he knows a lot about the sport. The teenagers will listen to the coach as if he was any other instructor they have had over the course of their military education.

Would introducing these teenagers to Basketball be a suitable way to reduce their aggression potential in the long run to an acceptable level for today's society?

posted over 6 years ago

Mr.J‭

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