With K-Day upon us, parents, teachers, coaches and most of all, young athletes have been preparing themselves for the weekend of winners and losers. Although extreme care is taken with physical preparation, how much effort has been put into the psychological well-being of these young sport stars?
With K-Day upon us, parents, teachers, coaches and most of all, young athletes have been preparing themselves for the weekend of winners and losers. Although extreme care is taken with physical preparation, how much effort has been put into the psychological well-being of these young sport stars?
Sports psychologist and counsellor Greg Wilmot shed some light on sports psychology in the context of schools at an academic lecture held at Fort England last week.
“Do we have the right support for these school sportsmen and women that are now appearing in a big way on television and in the local news, continually under scrutiny by the public?”, he asked.
The enormous pressure we put on players can often lead to problems like eating disorders, body dysmorphia and depression, Wilmot said.
Earlier this year at Hoërskool Hans Strijdom, in Naboomspruit, Limpopo, a rugby player left the game's referee unconscious on the field after headbutting him. Cases like this of young sports players snapping is not isolated and happens far too often, according to Wilmot.
Physiotherapist Jane Holderness mirrored Wilmot's concerns about unhealthy minds on the sports field. “When approaching big events like K-Day, our practice is just full of sports-related injuries, the majority being school sportsmen and women who want to speed their recovery up so they can play their game,” she said.
“They have no concern for what could be the lasting impact of stress on their injuries but rather just making it onto the field.”
A shift in the perception of the goals of sport appears to be the answer.
Wilmot advised a focus on playing sport to one's best ability, instead of harping on rivalry and competition. “Let's rather look at task mastery, rather than the ego orientation we see now. Players need to have an internal focus of 'Did I learn something from this? Did I improve my game?'”.
This will help sustain an internal motivation for the player to want to better themselves, he believes, which eliminates a fear of failure and brings back the fun in sport.
“With K-Day coming up, we need to remember that there will be as many losers as winners. But instead of placing all the positive energy on the victors and all the negative on the losers, we need to observe the bigger picture of how everything went,” Wilmot advised.
“So long as each team improved on their games and worked well together, they should not be made to feel shame.”
