BATON ROUGE – It might be a strange scene for some to walk into a room and see 23 college soccer players holding up playing cards to their foreheads and seemingly walking around from one person to another with no apparent direction. That’s until you realize the exercise is being directed by Quinten Lynn, LSU’s director of sports psychology.

A native of Reno, Nev., who earned his Ph.D. in psychology from Bowling Green State University, Lynn spent four years in a similar capacity at Kansas State University before arriving at LSU.

Lynn meets with members of the LSU Soccer program both as a group and individually throughout the year to help the players reach their full potential both on and off the field. He ascribes to a philosophy that helping LSU’s athletes hone their psychological skills will only maximize their performance on the field in leading the program to even greater success.

And when meeting with the team as a group such as before Thursday’s evening training session, Lynn likes to incorporate group exercises to see exactly how the players interact with one another.

After drawing a card from a deck of playing cards, the players were instructed to not look at their own card while holding them up to their foreheads so the cards were only visible to their teammates. The players were then asked to treat each other based on the value of the cards their teammates were holding up with face cards representing the highest values.

Naturally, the players gradually segregated themselves into different groups within the team while breaking up the bond and cohesion initially enjoyed by those in the room.

“It’s a simple exercise to see how the players might embrace certain roles in which they might find themselves, sometimes without even realizing the box they’ve been placed in,” Lynn said. “In doing this, we really try to identify the process by which the separation took place and how it relates back to the team values that exist within the program.

“An exercise like this teaches the players to communicate and be more open and honest with each other in their commitment to team values and holding one another more accountable to those values.”

Like so many other members of LSU Soccer’s dedicated support staff, Lynn is a valuable resource for the Tigers as they work each season to identify the strengths of the team and build upon those strengths to achieve better cohesion as a family unit. The idea is that players with a tighter bond are able to push each other and hold one another more accountable with respect to team values.

While Lynn meets with the team throughout the year, he also works individually with LSU’s student-athletes to address a number of other issues that might arise outside of soccer that hinder their performance on the field, including anxiety, depression, relationships and adapting to college. In strengthening their psychological skills and teaching them to manage their emotions, Lynn is able to help players maximize their potential  on the field with increased concentration, focus, confidence and resilience.

There’s no doubt that a correlation exists between psychology and performance on the field. As Lynn says, “Strengthening the mental side won’t impede performance, but strengthen and improve performance.”