• Be your child’s best fan and support her unconditionally.
• When you take your child home after a match or training session, please be supportive and always focus on the positive aspects of her game.
• Develop a responsibility in your child to pack her own kit, clean her boots and take a drinks bottle (full of water or squash only) to practice and games.
• Respect the facilities at our opponents’ grounds.
• Do not criticise your child’s coach to your child or other parents. If you are not happy with the coach you should raise the issue with the coach.
• Encourage your child to speak with the coach. If your child is having difficulties in training or games, or can’t attend training etc. encourage her to speak directly to the coaches. This “responsibility taking” is a big part of becoming a mature person. By handling off the field tasks, your child is claiming ownership of all aspects of the game.
• Help your child to focus on the performance and not the result. Remember - winning is not as important as the performance.
• Support all the players in your child’s squad. Do not criticise anyone. Remember – children don’t mean to make mistakes.
• Do not criticise the opponents, their parents or their officials.
• Never audibly dispute a referee’s decision. They will make mistakes occasionally. We all do. If you abuse or shout at the referee you are breaking the rules of the game and risk generating a fine for the club. In extreme circumstances we could even be expelled from the League, be forced to play all our games away or play without any spectators present.
• Parents/carers must not coach from the touchline during matches or training. Leave this to the manager/coach or you may cause confusion and erode your child’s confidence.
• Parents/carers must not enter the field of play.
• Please remember – the game is for the children. It is not for the glory of the coach, manager or parents.

Sport Psychology Uncovered

Introduction

Sport Psychology is a term which is banded about more and more today in books, magazines, in the media, but in our experience some people are still unclear about what exactly it is and role it has to play.

Without a clear definition of what sport psychology actually is, people generally conjure up images of people lying about on couches having their heads read by a psychologist, or imagine that the job involves giving motivational talks to fire people up before the match and shouting words of encouragement from the sidelines. The truth is that there is more to it than that! Without good information, people may also be susceptible to false claims by people that have no professional credentials, and will not impact .

We aim to fill some of these gaps by explaining what sport psychology is, what the role of a sport psychologist is, explaining key words and phrases as well as discussing how to embark upon a career and advising where to find out more.

Understanding Sport Psychology

Sport Psychology is in fact a new and exciting area in sports performance which has been fast evolving since the 1950’s. It seeks to understand the behaviour of people involved in sport and exercise. Psychology can help to enhance the experience of women, men and children who partake in physical activity, whether it be those who participate purely for personal enjoyment or equally those who pursue a specific activity at an elite level. Sport psychologists also attempt to understand the psychological processes involved in the movement of the body, and the interaction between people, how learning and performance can be improved and the manner in which psychological perceptions can be enhanced. It has combined roots in the sport sciences, as well as being an applied psychological specialisation.

As an academic discipline, sport and exercise psychology is the scientific study of people and their behaviour in sport and exercise contexts and involves such topics as personality, motivation, attributions, arousal, leadership, team dynamics, and goal-setting. In essence, the field is concerned with the psychological determinants or mental components of behaviour in sport and exercise as well as the psychological effects of sport engagement and physical activity.

Attitudes to sport psychology vary enormously with people at one end of the spectrum seeing it as an ‘airy-fairy’ subject with little real value, while others at the other end viewing it as imperative. Rushall (1989) described it as, “the key to sporting excellence and success” and explains that although physiological and medical factors have their effect, it is the psychological factors that are the most important determinant of performance in elite athletes. England’s football manager, Sven Göran-Eriksson is a convert, stating “So little is required to be successful in sport. It’s certainly mostly a matter of psychology and in the end it’s that psychological difference that decides whether you win or lose” (Eriksson, 2001).

Sport Psychology encompasses a number of areas including:

1. Assessment and Testing of athletes. This is primarily undertaken for 4 reasons.a. Description – gaining information about various aspects of the athletes;
   b. Prediction – possibility of gaining knowledge about who will succeed in their chosen field;
   c. Diagnosis and intervention – pinpointing existing features of an athletes, and working with them to alleviate negative and encourage positive states and traits; and
   d. Selection and classification – using measures to select individuals for events (Singer, 1988).
2. Design and Delivery of training courses. Educating people about the impact of the mind upon performance forms a large part of the work of a Sport Psychologist.
3. One-to-one coaching. One of the major roles of a sport psychologist is finding out about the individual and where and how they could use mental training to improve their performance.
4. Group work. These are also an important part of the work of a sport psychologist. These often take the form of team building sessions where the psychologist acts as a facilitator to improve the quality of relationships between members of the team to ultimately improve the performance of the whole team. Also included in this type of work would be understanding group dynamics, communication, team roles and relationship building.
5. Research. Many sport psychologists, as scientists, are interested furthering our understanding of the effects of the mind upon performance by various experiments and collecting data. Because the subject is so young, it is important that as much good quality information as possible is gathered.