Long before that first touch on the ball, and well before the referee blows a whistle to start a match, some athletes have already lost the game.
It’s not about what will happen on the field, but what’s going on in their heads.
“Players routinely have a fair amount of negative self-talk going on,” said Dr. Curt Lox, the sports psychologist for Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. “They’re defeating themselves before the opposing team has a chance.”
In his role with SIUE’s sports teams, Lox works with athletes to help them develop their mental strength and abilities — which supplements what their coaches are trying to do in terms of their physical skills.
“The goal is to make sure when these athletes arrive that they meet their full potential,” added Lox, a professor in the university’s department of kinesiology and health education. “We make sure they train their head as much as they train the rest of their body.”
Empowering athletes to face their sport’s mental challenges — confidence issues, stress, focus and anxiety, for example — is nothing new. Many professional and collegiate teams have long used sports psychology to help athletes overcome problems and improve.
The idea and its benefits are gaining traction at younger levels, though. In February, U.S. Soccer announced it will begin using behavioral assessments and sport psychology tools with 78 nationwide development academy teams, including the four St. Louis Scott Gallagher teams.
The development academy joins the U.S. national soccer team and more than 60 professional and collegiate teams that use the Mental Achievement Program to help coaches and players work through adversity and better understand each players' needs.
“I think for the players, it’s a huge thing,” said Jeremy Alumbaugh, the SIUE assistant soccer coach and a coach for an Illinois SLSG team. “It’s helpful for the coaches as well. Obviously with these kids going 10 months a year, we’ll be around them even more than we are currently. Trying to motivate them for an entire year is more of a challenge. Any little advantage can only help those players in their pursuit of whatever they want to be.”
Daniel Brennan, 17, uses a form of the self-talk that Lox mentioned as a means to deal with the pressure he faces as the goalkeeper for Alumbaugh’s SLSG team and for Edwardsville's team.
“Goalkeeping is all about being positive and working through those tough moments,” Brennan said. “Before each game, I’m focusing for an hour or two.”
Brennan analyzes 10-15 game situations that he might face and considers how he’ll handle them.
“For me, that’s extremely helpful,” he added. “So many games, going in I’ve thought of the situation and it happens, and I’ve done exactly what I thought about beforehand. And it works out perfectly.”
Ben Sauerwein, 18, plays on the SLSG Metro academy team and gets his focus from thinking and listening to music before each game. He is using this mental focus to help him through an admittedly tough transition from playing midfielder to fullback.
“You just have to stay sharp in practice, work your hardest and it’ll come together,” the Althoff senior said.
Helping young athletes prepare mentally for the game can be as important as running them through physical drills and strategies they’ll need on the field. Without that mental fortitude, many athletes may struggle to recover from a play gone wrong or a referee call that goes against them.
“It’s just understanding that nobody prepares to make a mistake, nobody trains to make mistakes,” Alumbaugh said. “But you need to prepare for what happens after those mistakes. It’s always amazing when you see a kid at 11 who still cries when he makes a mistake, and the same kid at 16, he goes out and fixes it.”
Former professional player and current youth coach Pete Collico says that coaches can do a lot to help their athletes develop the mental strength to come to practices and games focused, motivated and able to recover from setbacks more quickly.
“What you’ve got to do is vary the practices and keep the practices fresh,” said Collico, who works with both SLSG and the Mid-Rivers Soccer Club. “That eliminates a lot of the motivation problems.”
Rick McGuire, the University of Missouri’s intercollegiate sports psychologist and former track and field coach, said what coaches should never do is belittle players in a misguided attempt to motivate them.
“There just cannot possibly be an important enough trophy to justify, an important enough victory to justify humiliating or demeaning another human being in an attempt to motivate them to be the best they can be,” he said.
McGuire suggested that coaches and parents should research how to keep the game fun for young athletes while also encouraging mental and physical excellence. Two books he recommended for anyone considering leading a team are InSideOut Coaching by Joe Ehrmann and McGuire’s own book — to be published this summer — Winning Kids with Sport.
Collico notes that, as important as coaches can be in helping athletes prepare mentally, players can set specific goals for themselves and for the team to work toward.
“I try to make them think about what they want to get out of it, and what goals as a team we want to achieve,” the former St. Louis Steamer said. “That really helps. As a player myself, I know what it takes and what it took to have the success I’ve had.”
Lox agreed that setting goals is a great tool to help athletes mentally map out where they want to go in terms of the game, the season and even life.
For athletes who struggle with anxiety or pre-game jitters, he recommended relaxation techniques such as visualizing a “happy place” — a beach, for instance.
“The whole idea of relaxation is not that you become tired or sleepy. Pre-game, the idea is that you’re composing yourself so that your mind isn’t racing and your stomach isn’t tied up in knots,” Lox said. “You’re looking to take the edge off.”