The Editor’s Note

Iplayed on my high school tennis team, and full disclosure: I wasn’t very good – but I could at least stay in points for a while – and neither was my team. But we had fun.

One of our most unlikely best players was one of my oldest and closest friends. He was solid playing defensive tennis and more often than not found a way to win long rallies. But to me, what stood apart was that he frustrated his opponents.

I know whenever I played him in challenge matches or even when we played for fun, he’d psychologically beat me with his shot selection and unorthodox strategy. In a nutshell, I hated playing him, and that usually gave me no chance to win before the first serve.

I thought about this while interviewing Fairbanks athlete and fishing, duck hunting and outdoors enthusiast Vicky Persinger, who is headed to this month’s Beijing Winter Olympics in curling (page 15).

She said USA Curling’s sports psychologist has played a big part in the team’s development, and more specifically its toughness. “There’s that mental and dynamic side that I personally take outside of curling, because I think it’s so interesting and helpful. I really nerd out on it,” Persinger told me.

She thinks the presence of an expert in that field helped propel the four-man American team led by skip (curling’s version of captain) John Shuster to the gold medal in the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea, just the second medal ever for Team USA in the sport.

“I think she played a huge role in helping those guys come back to do well in the playoff and win. And I’m not sure they would have been able to pull that off,” said Persinger.

She also related how one of her idols in the mental side of sports was the late hockey coach Herb Brooks, who led the underdog 1980 American team to the Miracle on Ice gold medal at the Lake Placid games. I told Vicky I too was a fan of Brooks and how he was a master at motivation, famously convincing his college players that they could stun the heavily favored Soviet Union in one of the most famous upsets in sports history.

“His philosophies on the game and about not really believing in all-star teams and kind of thinking the right pieces of the puzzle need to be there,” she said of her admiration for Brooks. “There’s so much more to just throwing and sweeping the rock. There’s grit and determination, your will to claw at a deficit when you’re down in a game, and being a good teammate and knowing what your team needs from you to make their best shot or be at their best.”

Perhaps I could have used that trait on the tennis court back in high school! Best of luck to Persinger and her mixed doubles teammate Chris Plys in China.

-Chris Cocoles

Fairbanks curler Vicky Persinger, who’s competing in the Winter Olympics in Beijing, China, is fascinated with mastering the mental side of sports, something she hopes will serve her well on the ice. (BOB WEDER/USA CURLING)