When you get together with family and friends, a great test of the experience is how you respond when someone asks, “How was it?”

If you can answer in five words or less (“great”, “ok”, “I had a good time”), you may have indeed had fun, but it was neither remarkable nor likely to have any kind of lasting impact on you. After asking people variations of “How was it?” in our sports research, we discovered that they could only describe meaningful engagement by telling a story about the event. From over 100,000 fan stories we analyzed in recent years, nearly every story focused on bonding with family and friends. We’ve also found that shared sports experiences do more to produce engaging stories than any other social experiences. The personal sports story is the best place to get to the heart of the value of sports. The heart is almost always social. This is why fans say they root for “our team” and “we won” after the game. The best experiences are shared with others, whether that is playing, following, watching, attending, or rooting with others who are fans of the same team or athlete. You can test this for yourself. The next time you get together with friends or family, ask yourself “How was it?” Not all engagements will produce a story. But were you able to come up with more than five words WITHOUT a story? Can you see the power, the center, the heart of the connection and belonging in the story? In five words or less? What’s your sports story? Here are some of ours…