Sports have become a major part of our culture. Sports now serve as entertainment, recreation, and even religion for some die-hard fans. All levels of sport have become relevant and elite leagues, year round competition, and travel associations have become the norm. The importance of winning, getting scholarships, and competing at the highest level has tremendously increased the pressure from parents and coaches for athletes to succeed. The rise in sports participants has seen the significant increase in sports related injuries. In 2006 the CDC reported that high school students accounted for an estimated 2 million injuries, 500,000 doctors visits, and 30,000 hospitalizations. This number has surely risen from three years ago. Injured athletes not only have to worry about recovery and rehabilitation from their injuries, but the emotional and mental impact injuries can have. I believe that social support from teammates and coaches will eliminate the self-doubt, self-worth, and any other mental concerns athletes may worry about during injury rehabilitation.
This issue is very important to me as former high school athlete. I have been playing soccer since I was seven years old and continued playing soccer all the way into my high school years. The first year of my high school season was cut short after I tore my anterior crucial ligament (ACL) in my knee, which required surgery and nine months of physical therapy. During those months of rehabilitation, my coach contacted me one time to see when I would be ready to play and I did not see any of my teammates until I came back the next season. During many of my physical therapy sessions I began to question my importance and role on the team. I had the best freshman season in school hi...
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... are away from their team long enough for self-worth and self-doubt to set in. These athletes are at a higher risk to have prolonged recovery times and to return to their teams unhappy and concerned. Coaches and teammates can eliminate these feelings and speed up the recovery process by just encouraging the injured athlete and making sure the athlete knows that they are a vital part of the team. My personal experience allows me to identify with all the feelings injured athletes go through and the lack of social support from my coaches and teammates reinforces opinion that they have a major impact on injury rehabilitation. Providing social support to injured players should be a top priority for coaches because they not only owe it to that player who has trained and played hard for the team but to build and maintain positive, trusting relationships with their players.
The two male athletes played Australian football at a national level, one female played volleyball at a regional level, and one female played basketball recreationally (Ford & Gordon, 1999). Ford and Gordon (1999) conducted semi-structured interviews with open- and closed-ended questions that prompted athletes to discuss the influence of social support during his or her injury. Both females were interviewed prior to surgery and at intervals of 10-13 days, 43-50 days, 75-92 days, and 120-125 days post- surgery (Ford & Gordon, 1999). The males were not interviewed prior to surgery; however, they were interviewed at the same intervals as the females post-surgery (Ford & Gordon,
For many years the wining averages were used to dictate the achievements on how the two interacted. It was believed that if a team has more wins than loses that the coach and athlete combination was superb. The win – loss record has been established as a longstanding instrument measuring the success of athletic players and coaches. However, this is not really a direct correlation to the coach’s effectiveness in a particular sport, being that there are many other factors in coaching a team other than game records. The coach’s job is to enhance to the athlete physically, socially, and psychologically, winning is only considered a by-product of that job (Gillham, Burton, & Gillham, 2013). Gillham, Burton, and Gillham (2013) focused on developing a Coaching Success Questionnaire-2 to allow a means of evaluating other aspects of a coach’s interaction with their athletes as both a research and coach devel...
Many kids dream of being collegiate athletes, though one must wonder if all the work is worth the risk. Student athletes all around the world are having fun doing what they love and receiving a free education in exchange for their God-given talent, however many don't realize that they’re all at the same risk to be injured and forced to pay for their medical expenses on their own. Not only would they be forced to pay for their medical expense, but also there is a great chance that they would lose their scholarship and all that they have worked for their whole entire life. Countless athletes lose their scholarships due to injuries. These “Students” are required to miss nearly 4 days of school to prepare for a game in one week. These athletes
Youth sports can cause multiple problems for young athletes, but the solutions are simple. I have never played sports but I have many classmates who have, I can’t talk from experience but I can talk from hearing their painful stories. One of my friends had to stop playing sports because if she got hurt one more time it would be really really hard to even walk again. According to Scope magazine articles, “Playing with Pain” and “Travel Team Heartbreak” youth sports have become less fun and more dangerous. In “Playing with Pain” (12-15) Michelle Crouch reports that “Playing through pain is considered heroic, and winning is everything.” (14) She says that most teens live by that saying. They ignore the pain and it gets worse. The solution is
Due to the nature of sport, athletes will always be faced with the possibility of becoming injured. Empirical research has demonstrated that injury has a psychological impact on athletes (Quinn & Fallon, 1999). Indeed, sports practitioners often witness negative psychological impacts such as depression and in extreme cases suicidal tendencies in the injured athlete (Jevon & Johnston, 2003). Injuries have a dramatic impact upon an athlete’s life (Deutsch, 1985), Crossman (1997) interviewed athletic trainers and established that 47% of respondents believed that every injured athlete suffered psychological trauma. Walker, Thatcher and Lavallee (2007), explain there is a need to advance current knowledge of the way injured athletes psychologically respond, with deeper understanding it would be possible to aid rehabilitation professionals and help the athlete cope better psychologically. Psychological issues have an important role in the athletes ability to recover from injury (Arvinen-Barrow, Penny, Hemmings, & Corr, 2010), understanding how an athlete responds will have multiple practical implications. Ford and Gordon (1997) suggest that if an athlete experiences negative emotions then it will lead to non-complinace of the rehabilitation process. In order to understand athletes psychological responses to injury several frameworks have been suggested. These include the: integrated model of response to sports injury and rehabilitation (Wiese-Bjornstal, Smith, Shaffer, & Morrey, 1998), the Bio-Psychosocial model of sport injury rehabilitation (Brewer, Andersen, & Van Raalte, 2002), the staged-based grief response models (Kubler-Ross, 1969) and the stage model of the return to sport (Taylor & Taylor, 1997).
The emotional pain comes later for the athlete who has been injured during play. This pain is realized when the athlete is soaking and icing, their dislocated joints, bones and torn muscles. After a while, distress sets in as they consider the prospect of lost participation in their sport, says sports psychologist Albert Petitpas, Ed.D, of Springfield College, an expert on rehabilitating injured athletes. "They become anxious or confused, wondering whether they can ever play again and what they would do if they could not. Serious clinical problems, such as depression, alcoholism, and suicidal tendencies, may ensue", says Petitpas (p.1, APA Monitor) . His research suggests that 5 to 13 percent of injured athletes who develop clinical distress, are those who most identified strongly with the sport and who o...
In first semester I took beth’s sports psychology class, we talked about almost everything in chapter 11. I definitely think that chapter 11 is a very important chapter. I definitely think most athletes who suffer a major injury suffer from the Kubler-Ross reaction. I think a lot of people just only realize an athlete’s physical injury, when the athletes have just as much going on psychologically as well. As an athlete I have definitely went through the struggle of relating to your team when you cannot contribute physically. I think it is very important for the team to make sure to try and keep the injured athlete as involved as possible. I think especially with guys they feel like they are just being a wuss and feel like they should just play through the injury. In addition to feeling like they let their teammates down I think athletes many times just miss their sport so much that they come back much sooner than they should. When I had my pelvic bone injury I came back three months before I was supposed to because I missed being out of the sport I loved for an extended period of time.
Overall, research has shown that individuals suffering from sports injuries who commit to rehabilitation efforts, putting in their concentrated effort, use positive psychological skills while utilising their social support network and avoid any risk taking behaviours, are most likely to successfully recover from the injury and return to their previous athletic ability (Wiese-Bjornstal, Smith, Shaffer, & Morrey, 1998), than individuals who do not attempt these behaviours (Levleva & Orlick, 1991). Adherence to sports injury rehabilitation courses is an important aspect of behavioural responses to sports injury and recovery (Brewer, 1998). Specific environmental, situational and personal factors have been highlighted in relation to commitment to rehabilitation efforts (Wiese-Bjornstal, Smith, Shaffer, & Morrey, 1998). Self-motivations is a specific and powerful factor in personal rehabilitation, studies have shown a positive correlation concerning rehabilitation commitment and self-motivation (Duda, Smart, & Tappe,
Children who participate in sports are developing rapidly in sports skills, sportsmanship, and psychologically, but does this come from organized sports are just nature’s process. Children develop emotional and social benefits from participating in sports. Children experience character and leadership development through peer relations leading to an increase in self-esteem and a decrease in anxiety levels. Children will get opportunities to experience positive and negative emotions throughout their practice and games trials. It is important for the coach to understand the “psychology of youth sports and physical activity participation” (Weinberg & Gould, 2011 p.516).
Sports psychology continues to evolve in order to ensure that comprehensive and evidence-based psychological services are available for athletes and teams. Giving athletes an understanding of their psychological functioning, and building the ability to implement a range of psychological strategies in competition enables athletes to both execute their skills and thrive under pressure as they strive to reach their performance potential.
He sprints up and down the court, as sweat pours down his face and on to the hardwood. The player’s legs are in severe pain, and he is out of breath, yet he continues to run, utilizing every last portion of energy that he maintains. He desires to better himself, not necessarily for his own benefit, but for the benefit of his team. He knows that every single member of the team, including himself, must work as hard as they possibly can on the court to reach their potential and achieve success. Organized sports teach athletes some of the most powerful moral values and life lessons that any individual can attain. Despite the opposing opinion that students who take part in organized sports suffer academically due to time deprivation and focus misdirected away from the classroom, involvement in sports teaches young men and women to maintain imperative values, such as hard work, selflessness, and commitment, which ultimately improves student-athletes’ academic performance.
It is unquestionable that lessons of teamwork are learned through involvement with sports. Sports are all about working as a team to reach a common goal- winning games, meets, or matches. As most athletes know, this goal is not possible without becoming one joined team rather than a bunch of individuals. According the newspaper, Courier Mail, “It teaches you to always treat others with respect and not to get too cocky about your own abilities” (Sport a Teacher on the Playing Field of Life). If athletes play the game just to benefit themselves and their personal future, it is impossible to improve as a team overall and achieve success as a whole. Along with treating teammates with respect, it is equally important to be honest with not only fellow teammates but with oneself. Quarterback Kemp also said, “I learned that if...
Friends, fame, money, and success is something that everyone wants in life but what if all this came with the price of a fatal brain injury, would you still look at life the same? Football players across the nation ask themselves the same question when choosing a career in football. “What factors do football players use to measure the importance of their lives, success or their personal health?” The film “Undefeated” (2011), by Daniel Lindsay and T.J. Martin, and an article published in the New York Times titled “Dying to Play”(2012) by Kevin Cook, took a part in helping me to understand a deeper meaning of this question. Both articles analyze the positive and negative effects of football and
The personal relationships in a sport context like athlete-partner, coach-athlete or athlete-family, are very different from most of other types of work due to the particularity of athletes. Generally, they have to get alone closely with partner and coach in most of the time every day in order to build up tight relationships and sync the minds to strive toward the goal. Among these relationships, the coach-athlete partnership is considered the most crucial one on affecting performance in terms of the field of psychology (Serpa, 1999). This relationship can be represented as a complex coaching process that, if it is effectively establish, provides the means for coaches and athletes to express and fulfil their needs
During the semester, I learned a lot on how to deal with psychological distress and how as an athletic trainer I should deal with athletes to overcome their situation and be there for them. Throughout my time as an athletic training student, I always liked to observe my preceptors on how they deal with athletics that are having psychological distress after injuries, and how as an athletic trainer I should handle these situations in a professional manner. There is one situation in particular that occurred during the King’s College football season that I would like to discuss.