By Mitch Lyons

There is more to sports than just winning. It is a great chance for athletes to learn valuable life lessons. Today, programs are changing the model of teams from verbal messages (which aren’t consistent between teams) to written communication (this is geared towards improving mental skills in a structured, educationally sound way).

Coaches get to spend a great deal of time with their players. If practices and games are held for two hours each day, five or six days each week for 12 weeks, then a coach will get about 144 hours with the athletes during a season. Parents hopefully spend even more time with their children. Both coaches and parents have an obligation to take advantage and turn this into quality time where they can pass along life lessons and skills. This message, with any luck, will help players realize that the idea of playing sports and being part of a team goes beyond who wins, loses or played best.

Knowing what to teach and how to convey this message is difficult. Right now, most coaches focus on team in terms of working together to win and achieve great success, improve athletic ability, and beat your personal best each day. This will be a change from what is currently taught. Teammates learn different lessons and skills depending on their role and position on the team. The general skills that are taught aren’t made an important part of the training.

New sports programs want to institute a writing component that is clear and structured. This applied sport psychology program offers exercises for coaching, practicing and playing – lessons that apply to the athlete no matter what sport you play or what role you have on the team.

Why Sport Psychology?
The skills acquired in sport psychology mirror our community values

• Hard work
• Helping others
• Positive attitude
• Detail-oriented
• Good sportsmanship
• Teamwork
• Leadership

Written Goal-Setting
Increase your chances of improving details of the sport by setting goals. You can work on one skill at a time until you’ve mastered it, and then move on to the next. Keeping a journal or notebook is a good way to remember what you need to work on. You will think about these skills even when you aren’t practicing. This is also a good way to keep track of progress – when you perfect a skill it will boost your confidence so you can tackle the next. You will notice the difference in your performance and sense of self-worth as you make progress. Just remember you want to set short-term, realistic goals; these will also help with life skills.

Example:
On the soccer team you score the most goals. Lately, it seems that you are the only person scoring. Still your coach expresses that she’d like you to work on passing. Sometimes you pass the ball and it goes out of bounds or to a player on the other team. What should you do? Well, promise yourself that you will work on passing an extra 20 minutes each practice. While your teammates are shooting, work with someone who needs to improve their looking up and getting open for passes.

Set goals that you can easily accomplish, like strength of the pass. Once you get that down, you can work on the next goal. Maybe you need to work on keeping your head up so you can find the open person. Next – hitting your target – accuracy is very important. Get the picture?

In life we need to set goals, visualize ourselves reaching those goals, and make all the effort to do so. This will teach you to pay attention to detail, relax, and have faith in your abilities (think positively) which increases self-esteem. You will notice that just by doing these things, you will perform better in all aspects of life.