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Sports psychology benefits student athletes on the field, in the classroom and in daily Life |
By Cindy Liu Sports psychology has been a taboo until recently. College student athletes are no longer afraid of talking with sports psychologists. Sports psychology offers them skills to handle various aspects of their lives, such as time management and balancing academic study and athletic training. Dr. Leonard Zaichkowsky, the director of Boston University sports psychology program, has been helping college athletes for more than a decade. He said student athletes' high expectations in the classroom and in sports competition cause a lot of stress. Sports psychologists help athletes with that stress. Take for example, Andy Beatman, a track-and-field athlete at Boston University. He improved his javelin distance by 20 meters by talking with Dr. Zaichkowsky about his performance. He believes having a sports psychologist on campus makes him feel more professional as an athlete. Dr. Grayson Kimball, a sports psychology instructor at Northeastern University, offered a practical method to better manage time. He said that his classes at Northeastern were always beyond capacity in the previous years. Harvard University sports psychologist Craig Rogers said that the most common problem facing student athletes is insecurity. To remedy that, he suggests the students focus on what is happening now and not on what has already happened. The basic conceptual terms in sports psychology include burnout, focused, cognition, etc. Other specific terms include anxiety, emotion, identity, instinct, perception. (Sports Psychology, The Key Concepts) |
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