The love of sports to learn Math

Ever since I can remember I was always fond of sports and had a love with the statistics and numbers used in them. One could endlessly review facts and figures of players and teams, wins losses, points talleyed, player stats, dimensions of playing fields one could go on and on. Just look at this site www.atpworldtour.com/ numbers, numbers and more numbers you just have to love it. I can't say how this influenced my ability to understand mathematical concepts but I'm sure it provided great practice in core abilities such as adding, subtracting, multiplying, dividing, percents, fractions, units, decimals, charts, tables, graphs to name a few. Knowing this I watch my eldest son, now in grade 5, his most proficient subject is math, and he like me enjoys sports and all the statistical information that goes along with them. He enjoys spending time reviewing the statistical information and I'm sure doing what I did. So is there a connection between sports and math, absolutely, is there opportunity to use students passion for what fascinates them and tie it to mathematics absolutely. Do we have the opportunities to guide each student to see the connections of math in the real world, absolutley, but will each student use this information to naturally expand their understanding of math it's hard to say. Perhaps knowing some of the students interests and providing more personalized real world connections would provide opportunties to get more students to naturally expand their mathematical abilities and in turn love math.