The Sports Doc Chalk Talk

As the high school year comes to a close, there are a number of things for high school student athletes to think about – especially upper class students who wish to one day play college sports (AHPS).  Of course, the odds are long for most kids wishing to play college sports (only about 5-7% move on from high school to college sports), but there are still a number of tips sport psychologists suggest that can help increase the chances of playing at the next level (even if it’s DIII).

• Of course, the #1 (and most obvious) thing high school student athletes have to do is play their sport very well. While the rest of the tips below may help your son or daughter’s chances of playing college sports one day, none of them will be a substitute for the athletic talent needed to compete at the college level.
• Assuming your child has the athletic potential needed to play beyond high school, you will need to think early and often about “marketing” your child to colleges.  Keep in mind that while college coaches are limited to when and how often they can communicate (recruit) with potential student athletes about their athletic program, families can do a number of different things to help their chances.  Some of these ideas include developing a portfolio that highlights athletic, academic, and social activities; creating a sports video of his or her in action; and attending specific camps and clinics to raise visibility of your child’s athletic abilities.
• Speaking of camps and clinics, be sure to target the ones that make the most sense and commensurate with your child’s athletic abilities and potential.  For example, if your child is a borderline DIII student athlete, it might not make a lot of sense to sign up for elite-level DI camps where his or her talents may not be a fit. Similarly, if your child is a potential DI student athlete, your son or daughter might be “over-qualified” for a DIII college camp.
• Aside from athletic responsibilities, potential college student athletes need to also stay on top of academic grades, extra-curriculars, and other leadership-type experiences.  College coaches invest a lot of money in athletic recruiting and scholarships these days, making it even that much more important that they choose kids who are responsible with their decision-making and life choices.
• Think about having your child take the SAT or ACT early, if possible.  Some kids postpone taking these tests until their senior year, and by that time limit their opportunities to re-take these tests if their first scores were not quite as high as they would have liked.  Of course, make sure that your child has taken the right courses ahead of time in order to sit for these exams — if you are not sure of this, call your child’s school counselor for assistance.
• If your child is serious about playing college sports, he or she will also need to get registered with the NCAA clearinghouse – again, see your school counselor for assistance with this process.

While there may not be many things to “substitute” for a lack of athletic talent and potential when it comes to playing college sports, there are a number of things families can do to help improve the chances to play after high school (including the tips provided above).  Do your homework and leave no stone unturned — good luck!

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Sport Success 360 is the tool for helping families, youth sports leagues, and school athletic departments maximize the athletic experience – check it out today!

Ever since Junior Seau’s surprising suicide a week ago, the mainstream sports media has continued to rev up the coverage of false correlations suggesting brain damage, concussions, and head trauma are to blame for Seau’s (and others like him) troubles upon sport retirement.  This is surprising, especially as we have plenty of sport psychology research to examine over the last 20-30 years that actually points quite clearly to a number of inter-related psychosocial factors that are far more responsible for sport retirement difficulties.  From a personal standpoint, I have tried to reach out to a number of national outlets to help better inform people about what research has found, and not what many media folks are trying to develop as the primary reason why athletes struggle (the brain damage theory). Thus far, these attempts have been met with very little interest.

Although brain damage should certainly be considered when an athlete displays any kind of cognitive trouble, it’s also important to widen the lens and look at many of the facts we now know in 2012 to be true:

• First, millions of athletes each year struggle with sport retirement.  These athletes are sometimes from the professional level, but they are also found at the college and high school level, too.  In fact, I bet you probably know a young person who had difficulty with sport retirement, even if he/she wasn’t suicidal.
• The vast majority of athletes who have trouble with the sport retirement transition do not have brain trauma, and most come from sports that are low- or no-contact sports.  Athletes who compete in baseball, softball, soccer, basketball, lacrosse, and wrestling are at-risk, as are athletes from many other sports.  While it is true that these athletes do experience physical play, rarely do they experience concussions and/or head trauma.
• With athletes today often starting the sports careers as early as 5-6 years old, and many specializing in one sport and playing it year-round, it’s easy to see why so many develop an exclusive athletic identity that sometimes limits their self-value beyond that of “athlete.”  This paradigm has nothing to do with concussions of brain damage, but instead a product of how one perceives oneself, couple by how the world around the athlete often limits his/her worth to athletics.
• Many athletes, especially talented ones, foreclose on their future careers outside of sports and display what we call a low level of career maturity.  What this means is that they are often far behind in the “normal” career path that one takes, often having an unrealistic expectation of going pro in their sport (and as a result not very invested in looking into more realistic careers).
• Even though we know countless athletes from all different sports and age levels struggle with sport retirement, there are still very few programs available to help athletes with the sport retirement transition.  Making things more difficult is the “machismo” mindset many athletes have that served them well in sports (not asking for help but doing things on their own).  While this might make a strong athlete, it usually limits people from gaining the help they need in order to readjust to a new identity and learn more about potential future careers beyond sports.

It’s really amazing to me how the sports media continues to push a theory that at best is speculative, and at worst is incredibly irresponsible when you think of the empirical evidence we have ascertained over the last few decades.  Hopefully some of the sports media folks will begin actually talking to athletes (and not just football players) and explore the many issues they experience pertaining to athletic identity, role confusion, career maturity, future planning, and the lack of help available.  If they listen closely to retired athletes, they will see that the issues are far more tied to psychosocial variables than biological “brain damage.”

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Check out Positive Transitions for Student Athletes for more information on sport retirement and how you can help an athlete who is struggling with life after sports.

When we first wrote the book Positive Transitions for Student Athletes in the late 1990′s, our primary intention was to help college student athletes prepare for life after sports (since the reality was that most would not be continuing on with their professional sports careers).  The trend that was already in motion at that time was that increasingly more student athletes were exiting from their collegiate athletic careers confused, sometimes depressed, and often unprepared to leave their athletic identity behind and enter what some jokingly refer to as “the real world.”

Since Positive Transitions was released, the book has assisted thousands of college student athletes prepare for sport retirement by helping them better understand their unique athletic identity, the role confusion they experience when re-defining themselves, and specific tips and strategies designed to help them identify and use athletic transferable skills to help develop the self-confidence and skill set needed to excel in their future careers (similarly to how they succeeded in their previous athletic careers).  Interestingly, while the times have changed since then, the issues athletes commonly experience while exiting from sports have remained relatively stable — perhaps the biggest change, ironically, is that the same issues that were once unique to DI college (and professional) athletes have now “trickled down” into the younger ranks of sports, including small college sports (DIII) as well as high school athletics. What this means is that younger athletes, including those far less likely to move onto professional sports, still experience the same challenges when all of a sudden the identity, lifestyle, and mindset they have developed over the last 10, 15, or 20 years of their sports career is suddenly stripped away from them in a moments notice.

If you are a parent of a student athlete and your gut tells you that he or she may one day be heading toward a difficult sport retirement transition, I encourage you to check out Positive Transitions for Student Athletes. While the book was written primarily for college student athletes, I am confident that there are many tips, insights, and strategies that you can use with your teenage son or daughter in preparation for when sport retirement occurs — an inevitable transition for every athlete who competes in sports.  In the case of sport retirement, “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” is very true, and can make all the difference between your son or daughter using the sport experience to excel in life, or allowing it to hold him or her back because of a lack of confidence and belief in his or her talents beyond sports.

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I believe the time is now that we make concerted efforts to better educate and prepare families for their child’s eventual sport retirement.  With sports being as big as they are in this country, its a shame that so many athletes are still left to themselves to figure out who they are, what their talents are beyond sports, and what future paths exist for them when in the midst of the sport retirement transition.  Fortunately, most athletes do not fall into the worst-case scenarios of suicide (as with the recent passing of Junior Seau), but literally millions of athletes from various sports, backgrounds, and types, experience great distress during sport retirement – often resulting in depression, anxiety, role confusion, and poor future planning.  In order to cope with this distress, many athletes turn to drug and alcohol abuse, aggression, and reckless behaviors (like gambling).

The message I am sending today is designed to promote more action in the ways of better educating sports families about the athletic identity, and how kids often develop an exclusive athletic identity that hinders them when they end their careers in sports.  With so many kids now specializing in one sport and playing it nearly year-round, it becomes easy to see how athletes develop their self-worth around “athlete.”  Their social identities (or how others view them), are also constructed around the athletic identity, too (like when we immediately ask about the game before anything else).  None of this is “bad” necessarily, but it all leads to the fact that most kids never play beyond high school (only about 5% do), making the sport retirement transition usually an abrupt and unplanned one. Without better educational efforts, families will continue to struggle when their kids (who are often just teenagers without great coping skills due to their youth) experience distress during this period — making it that much more important that we make things better.

Help is Here!

One approach that we have developed is Sport Success 360, a licensed educational system designed to help schools and youth sport leagues by providing key psychosocial information, tips, and strategies designed to help kids have a safe, fun, and meaningful athletic experience.  I encourage you to learn more about Sport Success 360 by watching this introductory video — Sport Success 360 includes a broad range of topics (including sport retirement), complimentary videos, and free downloads of Sport Success 360 and Sport Success 360 PLUS audio program.

If you are reading this blog, then it can be assumed you have an interest in youth and interscholastic sports (probably as either a parent, athlete, or coach).  While you may not be a decision-maker in your school or youth league, you can help raise awareness by mentioning Sport Success 360, or other great sport education programs out there that can help kids not only better prepare for sport retirement, but also learn about key psychosocial issues like the dangers of performance enhancing supplements, youth sport burnout, hazing, and many more issues.  In all likelihood you have also experienced more traditional issues, like playing time, cuts, sportsmanship, tough coaches (or parents), and travel leagues – Sport Success 360 covers those topics, too.

Education Helps On and Off the Field

Mental toughness is needed on the field, but it’s not limited to just wins and losses — we need to help families learn the culture of sports today, and successful strategies to help kids cope with the pressures they commonly experience in sports.  Just as important as the X’s and O’s are, we need to help kids with performance anxiety, as well as the resiliency needed to bounce back from adversity.  Ironically, these are really life skills and not limited to sports, making these kinds of sport education efforts that much more vital.

Better and more prevalent education does not imply that sports are bad, or that all kids who play sports have terrible experiences — far from it.  Instead, we need to realize that the days of a handful of casual summer games played on the local sandlot are long gone — replaced by high-level, intense, pressure-filled travel league sports schedules for kids who sometimes struggle to keep up.  Of course, these are not bad kids, either – they are just that, kids, vulnerable to kid mistakes when trying to deal with pressure.

Helping Kids – Even the Ones that Don’t Speak Up

Kids don’t always speak up when they feel pressure – be it from their parents or team expectations.  In some cases kids have a talent for a specific sport, but don’t love playing the sport — yet still refrain from speaking out because the see the time, money, and energy being invested in their athletic career.  Some kids have a lot of trouble multi-tasking other activities – like school and social activities — while others have difficulty dealing with resiliency that sometimes manifests into unsportsmanlike behavior and/or uncontrolled aggression.

When we view youth sports through the lens of it being an often intense, complex, and radically different experience than generations of the past, it helps us better frame the educational approach to youth sports as being one of “keeping up with the times” than one that needs to be done because of “problems.”  Introducing new and more advanced ways of delivering contemporary sport education is not an admission that an athletic department or youth league has gone out of control, but instead an example of sports leaders making important budgetary decisions that go beyond the traditional basics.  Of course, finding new revenue streams is never easy, but when issues become important enough people become resourceful – this is often referred to as a “tipping point.”  Are we there yet?  I think so, and from my experiences with many sports people, it sounds like there is increasingly more support to improve future efforts.  I personally believe this will happen, and I hope you do, too.

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Sport Success 360 is the premier sport education system, designed to improve the culture of your youth or interscholastic team/league!

Many athletes struggle with sport retirement, and not because they have all experienced brain damage or concussions (although that sometimes occurs).  The more prevalent reasons for difficulties experienced during sport retirement have to do with psychosocial factors, including the identity and athlete develops, as well as the lack of programming available to athletes when they are no longer able to play.  Of course, every athlete experiences sport retirement in his or her own unique ways, but on this video I discuss some of the common issues athletes experience during this abrupt and often difficult transition.

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In sports, unlike most other life endeavors, participants are often more readily known and recognized because of their number as much as they are their name.  In basketball, #23 will always be Michael Jordan’s number, and in hockey #99 belongs to “The Great One” Wayne Gretzky.  Baseball fans know that Derek Jeter is #2 (another number the Yankees will undoubtedly retire once Jeter calls it a career), and there are dozens more numbers that we have come to associate with famous sports figures over the years. Unlike non-athletes (the majority of society) who go to work each day without wearing a numbered jersey, athletes are unique in that they often become one with their number, which contributes to their unique “athletic identity.” (Sport Success 360)

Even though few athletes will become successful enough in their athletic careers to have their number retired one day, most do become closely associated with their number, sometimes as early as pee-wee youth sports.  Similar to how the professional athlete becomes his or her number, amateur athletes involved in youth and interscholastic sports often begin their association with their number quite early in life, which in turn becomes their major identity in many cases.  This in itself is not a good or bad thing, but it does present an interesting view and better understanding of the life of an athlete (even amateur athletes), and how much of who they are is tied to their athletic persona and player number.

The Implications of Athletic Identity

The Benefits:

• For many kids having a sports number and developing an athletic identity is a great thing, as it gives them (and the world) a lens to view them through  — “she’s #20 on the soccer team.”
• Kids often take pride and develop self-confidence in their role and status on a team, allowing them to appreciate the privilege of being a part of a team.
• When kids are proud of their team and number, they are often more committed and motivated to continue pursuing team and individual goals.

The Negatives

• When an athletic identity and sports number becomes the exclusive identity of a child, it could be too limiting and actually stunt the growth of the child’s overall identity.  While being an athlete is great, most kids also have other parts of their identity that are important to embrace and nurture — including academic, artistic, musical, and social interests.  In other words, “#20 on the soccer team” might also want to be known for her abilities in the classroom, as well as her above-average talent in playing a musical instrument.
• Scientific studies have shown that the more exclusive an athletic identity, the less likely an athlete will be prepared for his or her inevitable sport retirement transition.  This inverse relationship makes sense when you think about it — the more exclusive (and often rigid) we are with our identity, the less prepared we are to move ahead in life without it (and have to develop an entirely new identity).

The sports number and athletic identity are very unique to sports, and as such bring a host of related issues for us to learn about.  While we want all athletes to take pride in their sports number, we also want to make sure that they don’t over-invest in this single identity at the expense of developing holistically as people.

Do your part and learn as much as you can about your kids or the kids you coach and the implications of their sports identities – for more help on this topic, check out Positive Transitions for Student Athletes or Sport Success 360 today!

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Having had the great fortune of teaching, counseling, and mentoring literally thousands of athletes in my career, one of the toughest things for me to watch is when an athletic career ends and the athlete (now former athlete) overlooks or disregards the importance of parlaying the athletic experience into new life endeavors and success.  More simply, while some athletes use the athletic experience for future life success, far too many others compartmentalize the athletic experience and ultimately do not use it to get ahead in life (AHPS).

There are a few truths that every athlete should think about:

1. Every athletic career will eventually end

2. During this transition the athlete will need to decide how much he or she will cull from his or her previous athletic experiences and apply to future life experiences (including career)

3. Athletic transferable skills, or the skills learned in sports that can be transferred throughout life, are there for every athlete to use and help with future life success

Unfortunately, and likely because the sport retirement transition is often abrupt and unpleasant, the majority of former athletes miss out on the real value of sport participation — that is, to learn invaluable life skills that will help across every life domain, including interpersonal relationships, academics, and career.  In other words, sports can serve as a vehicle for future success, rather than an experience that ends when the athlete has played his or her final game.

The point is to remind you to help remind your kids or the kids you coach that the sport experience is actually a “first step” on the road of life, and one that can help trampoline kids into really great future life success!  In order for kids to learn this, we must be overt and direct with our teachings and praise, and help kids actively learn the many sport-life connections.

When young people realize that they already have many tools in their possession that will help them in the big picture of life (i.e. athletic transferable skills like motivation, resiliency, focus, developing mental toughness under pressure, and working successfully with teammates), only then will their sport retirement transition become a facilitating step in their life, as opposed to a debilitating one.

You can learn more about the sport retirement transition, as well as how to use athletic transferable skills by checking out Sport Success 360, or The Parents Playbook!

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Terrell Owens recently claimed in an GQ interview that he is “friendless, broke, and living in hell.”  Assuming Owens is being truthful (and it’s understandable if you don’t believe him after witnessing all the drama around Owens throughout his football career), he appears to be in big trouble as he retires from professional sports.  Sadly, this type of sport retirement reaction is not uncommon for athletes, although you typically only hear of it when it happens to famous athletes (like Owens).

Some fans might think this is fitting for Owens, as he was easily one of the most obnoxious and narcissistic athletes to ever play professional sports.  It was also reported that Owens has been behind on his child support payments for his kids, even though he made tens of millions of dollars while playing — yet another reason to not have much sympathy for Owens.  Still, even many of TO’s harshest critics, including ESPN personality Skip Bayless, are showing sincere concern about Terrell Owens mental health.

These Troubles are not Unique to Owens

It is very common for athletes to experience confusion about their personal identity at the ends of their careers, and re-adjusting to their new identity in society can be quite challenging.  After retiring from sports the big paydays go away, as do most of the fans and social support system.  In Owens case, transitioning from “TO” the football icon to Terrell Owens, public citizen, appears to be destroying his post-sports life.

T.O. is on the brink of self-destruction, and he desperately needs immediate professional attention.  The sport retirement transition can be lonely and isolating, and without a support network of caring people around to help, it can be a life-threatening transition. Many athletes struggle coping and turn to drinking, drugs, risky behaviors – and even suicide.  Owens fits the prototype of an at-risk athlete, and his latest confessions provide even more evidence of just how confused he is today.

Unfortunately, stories like T.O.’s are not unique to just “big-ego” athletes, or even professional athletes — there are tens of thousands of college and high school athletes each year who experience the same loss of identity, role confusion, and depression commonly associated with the end of a sports career.  It’s easy to see why when you think about it – young athletes these days often specialize in one sport early in life, and sometimes play that sport year-round with few breaks.  As a result, they essentially become an athlete by developing an exclusive self athletic identity, as well an exclusive athletic social identity (how others view them).  When this identity ends (sport retirement), it is often an abrupt change that was not welcomed or prepared for by the athlete.

Why Sport Retirement can be so Difficult

One of the best ways for athletes to cope with sport retirement is to use their support system, but in most cases their support system quickly disappears.  Since the athlete is no longer part of the team, hanging out with players becomes difficult (if not impossible), and fans lose their interest with the athlete’s fleeting fame.  Some athletes prepare ahead of time for their inevitable sport retirement, while others only begin to deal with transition when it eventually happens.

Examining Owens, the hope is that he seeks professional sport psychology assistance and commits to working hard on his post-athletic career.  If he does this, he will likely find happiness and success after the NFL.  I say this as he appears to be a bright guy, has an unbelievable work ethic, and his worldwide visibility will always command attention (and opportunities) in the future.

If you know an athlete facing sport retirement, check out Positive Transitions for Student Athletes!

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The inevitable retirement transition from sports that all athletes eventually experience has always fascinated me, mostly because it usually happens relatively early in life, and rarely is it noticed or cared about by society.  Thousands of elite-level athletes retire from sports annually, and hundreds of thousands more will end their careers by the time they are teenagers.  For some athletes the transition is a welcomed one, while others seem relatively indifferent.  Still, there are many athletes who experience tremendous stress, frustration, anger, depression, and anxiety while facing the end of their sports careers (AHPS).

In the mid-1990′s, a colleague of mine (Ohio State athletic counselor Darin Meeker) and I created the nation’s first sport transition course at Ohio State, Positive Transitions for Student Athletes. In fact, I studied the efficacy of this course for my doctoral dissertation, finding mountains of empirical evidence that suggested many athletes do indeed experience an unplanned and life-changing event when they are faced with the sport retirement transition.  Most athletes we studied experienced issues with their post-athlete identity, role confusion, poor future planning, poor career development, and in some cases mood disorders.

Today it’s 2012, and if anything we have learned that we were really just scratching the surface looking back to our work in the 1990′s.  With the internet and social media, it seems commonplace these days to hear stories about athletes experiencing difficulty at the ends of their careers — stories that include financial hardships, depression, drug and alcohol abuse, and even suicide.  Of course, it would be crazy to think that all of these stories could be averted, but sadly, many of them could have turned out a lot better had more aggressive advances by high schools, colleges, and professional teams taken place since our early work.

Instead of seeing a surge in the number of courses and programs designed to help athlete at the ends of their careers, there’s been a flat line.  Sadly, when an athlete plays his or her final game, there is usually a harsh reality the individual faces: Few people seem to truly care. Rather than help the exiting athlete, schools and professional teams usually abandon them, turning their attention to the “next” great athlete coming to the team.

Sport psychologists and college athletic counselors help athletes when they can, but there are still only a select number of schools employing these types of professionals designated to help athletes transition out of sport.  Instead, it’s the “elephant in the room” — the schools/teams know that retirement looms, and that the athletes will likely be unprepared, yet usually don’t acknowledge it and instead casually look the other way.  This is not due to spite, or even negligence, but instead more likely due to the fact that the sportsworld lives by a “what have you done for me lately” philosophy – and retiring athletes are not of much worth.

It’s both fascinating to me that sport retirement is still as important to learn about today as it was 15-20 years ago, but frustrating that we really haven’t seen much academic or professional growth during this time.  In fact, our book, Positive Transitions for Student Athletes, is still just as relevant today (if not more) than it was in 1999.

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