“Who am I without this?”
That is a question athletes may ask themselves when their participation in sports ends, whether through retirement, injury, graduation, or simply not making it to the next level.
A serious athlete may lose their sense of self when their competitive career comes to an end because it’s strongly tied to their identity. It gives them value in the world at-large, as they spend many years building an identity around achievement.
Psychology in youth level sports
Sports becomes a primary source of validation for friendships and social status that makes up any kid’s identity for the most part.
Derek Furlow, Chief Athletic Officer at Operations Onrise, said it best: “Athletes lose their sense of self when they move on from their respective sport because that sport was self. That’s how they identify themselves.”
Some kids have identified as athletes for virtually their entire lives, whether due to financial reasons for their family, parental pressure, or parents living vicariously through their children. After they finish playing sports competitively, they may lose some sense of self until they find another avenue to channel that same competitive energy.
Young athletes may get validation from their parents because they are improving their financial prospects or improving the family’s social status.
Tasha Saunders, Senior Vice President at Operations Onrise, highlighted the rise of sports academies that act as boarding schools where a child’s entire social life is intertwined with their sport as young as 13 years old.
When they have to move on from their sport either by choice, or force, the youth, or any athlete at any age may lose a sense of validation from their parents because of a transactional relationship they may have with them.
The emergence of NIL, Name Likeness, and Image, rights of collegiate athletes may have already contributed to this issue as it has accelerated the cycle by introducing financial incentives and pressure to perform as early as high school
Yes, you may have found friends playing your sport, but if you have an unhealthy relationship with your parents that’s tied to your athletic career, then that is something other external forces can improve.
The power of coaching
“The solution is educating the people who have the strongest influence on our athletes. I think the priority should be coaches. Because they have the strongest influence on our kids and the athletes than us parents,” says Mario Soto.
Soto is a leading sports psychology consultant who works with many professional and student athletes, as well as Olympians, around the country such as Juju Smith-Schuster, Manny Pacquiao and JJ Torano.
In the U.S., the problem is we live in a culture where sports is a specter of judgement. You either win and you’re treated as a hero, or you lose and people say you suck.
Soto believes we need to educate and expose athletic coaches to more knowledge about human behavior and how to manage people. We can do so by training them to lead and invest in society’s most prized possession — our youth. If we don’t, then ignorance will continue to grow as it did in the past. We need to learn from the past, not repeat it.
Coaches should ask themselves the following:
- Am I recognizing what athletes are going through internally?
- Am I helping them reach their maximum potential so they can translate it to their performance?
- Are they shutting down?
- Are they exhibiting overly emotional and/or irrational behavior?
- Are they frustrated?
- What’s their anxiety level?
“If you’re not understanding what’s going on … you’re not coaching” Soto said.
If a coach was to adopt a psychology-based philosophy, then they would also have a better ability to speak to parents about how to improve their relationship with their child. This would instill more confidence in a young athlete and better prepare them for life beyond sports.
Positive coaching will make an athlete believe that they are more than an athlete as what Lebron James promotes with his media company, Uninterrupted, and their “More Than an Athlete” collection.
Transition formula
Saunders emphasized that a successful transition into a career outside of sports starts years before the final game. Athletes should reflect on it in moments of idleness due to injury or early in their athletic careers.
Furlow added a transition formula that starts with identifying intangible skills learned through sports, such as coachability and teamwork, then correlating them to a new field and carrying them over to applied practice.
“So in your athletic journey, you’re thinking about it as football, tennis, track, soccer. But in reality, that’s sports … preparing you for life … adversity, challenges … persistence, coachability … likability, teamwork. That’s gonna prepare you for the real world.”
Soto coached Jake Mangum, currently an outfielder for the Pittsburgh Pirates, in college. Mangum was the best player on the team, and to Soto’s amazement, he sought Soto out for one-on-one coaching.
Magnum was coachable and hungry. Soto asked him why he was different from other athletes he coached and the athlete pointed to his optimism and self belief. “I am one swing away from heaven.”
Every athlete goes through a grieving process which is required to reinvent oneself. Optimism is a key feature that will help the athlete because if you believe in yourself then you can move on to the next phase of your life and apply what you learned through sports into your next passion.
In pop culture, we even have real life examples of former professional athletes such as Dwyane Wade, Draymond Green and Stephen Curry transitioning into new careers in media, management, business and even corporate sales in Derek Furlow’s case.
We all go through a grieving process when we lose something that’s meaningful to us. We may even think sports are our entire identity because of how entrenched it was in our lives, but we are more than that.
Our identities are complex, but they can be positively shaped for athletes by coaches who apply a positive psychologically-based philosophy to help manage their players’ emotions and promote a healthy mindset which will help them achieve success in life after sports.
Featured image: Photo by Vince Fleming on Unsplash
Edited by James Sutton
