5 Ways Pressuring Young Athletes to Perform Well Does Them Harm

by Eva V. Monsma

When Buffalo Bills player Damar Hamlin collapsed during a January 2 NFL football game, much of the public attention was on the pressures athletes face to perform despite the perils they face on the field.

However, as a scholar who specializes in youth sports, I have found that this pressure often begins well before a player enters the pros – often very early in a young athlete’s life. And sometimes the biggest forces behind this pressure are coaches, peers and parents.

Here are five ways young athletes experience unhealthy pressure, and what those influences do to their minds and bodies.

1. Harsh criticism

Coaches who belittle athletes, yell and emphasize winning over personal improvement use what is known as a “controlling style” of coaching. Rather than provide information and feedback about technique, tactics and attitude, controllingstyle coaches tend to communicate objections to obvious mistakes and personal insults during crucial moments.

This style of coaching shifts athletes’ attention away from their abilities and toward mistakes, a win-at-all-costs attitude, unethical behavior, injury and burnout. Many athletes value their coaches’ perceptions more than their own self-perceptions.

When coaches focus on the negative, they influence their athletes to do the same. But it’s much more effective to tell athletes what they should do with concrete specifics, like “push the ground away” or “aim for the rim.”

Often, these sorts of old-school controlling-style coaches use methods that were used on them as young people, despite years of research showing such methods are dangerous. For instance, it is now known that punishing athletes with physical activity – running so-called “suicide” sprints, staying late to run laps, and dropping for 20 pushups – does more harm than good. Expending energy randomly at the end of practice increases the likelihood of fatigue and injury.

The example coaches set is crucial to the health of young athletes

Katherine Frey/ The Washington Post via Getty Images

2. Peer pressure and influence

Peers also follow the behavior they see from coaches.

Athletes who perform well in matches and within-team scrimmages find acceptance and opportunities for meaningful connections with their teammates. For many athletes, making friendships outside of sports is challenging, especially in collegiate athletics.

But teammates who observe and repeat ridicule, bullying and exclusion can create conflicts with other team members. As a result, their fellow athletes may approach practice not seeking to master skills, test abilities and make friends but rather to avoid conflict and targeting. Those mental and emotional distractions break their performance focus and consistency.

Coaches and players who focus on athletes’ looks and weight – often in aesthetic or weight-restricted sports like gymnastics and wrestling – contribute to a culture of body shaming that values athletes’ physical attributes rather than what their bodies can accomplish. Athletes who think that others want them to be smaller or bigger than they are can experience anxiety, depression and eating disorders. Expectations like participating in public weigh-ins, avoiding sweets and wearing revealing competitive uniforms are common in upper echelons of sports like cheerleading.

Chris Leduc/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images

3. Parental expectations

The effects of competition begin long before the start of a season, game or match. How kids feel about themselves in sports, especially after a loss, is often linked to how parents view, value and teach competition.

When parents pay their kids for scoring points or winning the game, they turn their kids into selfish teammates and decrease their long-term motivation. Of course, most parents can’t continue opening their wallets forever, and even students who earn scholarships to college tend to lose their motivation when they’re paid for performance.

Parents can behave badly when they are looking for external signals of their children’s achievements, like championship trophies, selection for elite teams, scholarships, endorsements and, now, name-image-likeness deals (see page 9), in which student-athletes can earn money from product endorsements and advertising appearances. But those goals can conflict with children’s natural motives in sports – including to demonstrate competence, make decisions and be with friends (see page 10).

When kids sense their parents’ stress over expectations, they shift their ideals and become more prone to perfectionism, burnout, anxiety and depression and eating disorders.

4. Early specialization

Parents push their kids into year-round intensive training in a single sport as early as age 7. Overuse injuries, psychological stress and burnout are well-documented consequences of specializing before 12. But is this necessary? Super-early training isn’t really helpful for sports whose athletes tend to peak later in life, like marathon runners, for example.

Transitioning to higher levels of play during adolescence strengthens athletic identity as training expectations expand to diet and exercise. To conform, athletes may begin using anabolic steroids, overtraining, playing through injury and restricting their diets. Encouraging a healthy diet for training purposes can translate to compulsive ingredient checking, food planning, restricted eating and other symptoms of a relatively new eating disorder: orthorexia nervosa.

Trying out various sports while young helps athletes discover what they enjoy most, and which activities work well for their body types.

5. Overtraining

Overuse injuries like “Little League elbow” and Osgood-Schlatter disease, a cause of knee pain, are becoming more common. American high school athletes who specialize in just one sport are 50% more likely to experience an injury from overuse than people who play multiple sports – and athletes who focus on two sports are 85% more likely. High-pressure environments that expect athletes to endure injuries can lead to long-term conditions like arthritis and tendonitis.

In such sports as football, boxing and mixed martial arts, the culture even rewards injuries and risk-taking. But when an injury forces an athlete into an early and unexpected retirement, coping with the transition is tough. Identity loss and purpose can exacerbate mental illness and even increase the risk of domestic violence, particularly when the injury involves mild traumatic brain injuries.

Witnessing sports-related injuries – just as the millions of NFL fans who watched Hamlin did – has consequences for observers, too, such as psychological trauma. Symptoms, which can include intrusive thoughts linked to the injury, nightmares and anxiety, can last from a single day to more than a month. The situation can even escalate to post-traumatic stress disorder. In the coming weeks, teammates who witnessed Hamlin’s collapse may be up to 25% more likely to develop symptoms of psychological trauma than the rest of us.

That’s something to keep in mind as people watch and cheer young athletes to run faster, jump higher or score more points. The question becomes: At what expense?

Eva V. Monsma is professor of Developmental Sport Psychology, Department of Physical Education at the University of South Carolina. Courtesy of The Conversation.

Name-Image-Likeness (NIL)

by Kristi A. Dosh

Alabama Crimson Tide quarterback Bryce Young has a total valuation of $3.2 million in NIL deals. He saw his value rise in 2022 after winning the coveted Heisman Trophy the previous season

NCAA photo

I receive emails almost daily from high school and college athletes, as well as their parents, asking how to get started with Name-Image-Likeness (NIL).

There’s a lot more you can do with it than simply make $100 on an Instagram post, whether it’s a long-term contract that pays you consistently, or a deal that opens the door to your future, post-graduation.

When I speak with student athletes, I start by asking them first, “What do you already enjoy doing outside of your sport?”

I ask this because the easiest—and most fun—way to make money is doing something you already do. So, if you have fun posting your #OOTD [Outfit of the Day] on Instagram, then partnering with brands and boutiques to create more Instagram content is a great idea.

The second question is, “What do you want to do after graduation?” One of the smartest things an athlete can do with NIL is use it to engage with people, companies and deals that help them get to where they want to be after graduation.

For example, I know athletes who are asking for sit-downs with key executives at companies as part of their NIL deal to promote the company on social media. They’re getting face time and networking with people they might want to work for down the road.

I know athletes who are forming LLCs and getting realworld experience running their own company, doing things like creating business plans, marketing strategies and more. They’re learning how to create products and find manufacturers and distributors.

I spoke with a young woman recently who wants to work with children in some capacity after graduation, so we talked about how she could give lessons or host a camp or a clinic with her high school coach. NIL allows her to profit from that, but those opportunities also give her the ability to gain experience she can put on her resume that relates to her future career.

Atlantic 10 Player of the Year Sam Breen, for example, is set to release a line of signature dog treats called “Turbo’s Treats,” inspired by her dog, Turbo.

This deal is unique because the proceeds from turbotreat sales will be donated to the Dakin Humane Society, a Springfield, MA. nonprofit focused on animal welfare.

“I had thought about how the passing of NIL rules for student-athletes could be used to help community-based charities like animal shelters, so when the UMass Collective brought this idea to me, it was a no-brainer,” Massachusetts graduate basketball player Breen said in a statement.

How do you make money with NIL?

Student athletes make money with NIL from social media marketing, personal appearances, autographs, merchandise, NFTs, camps, clinics, lessons, creating their own products, making shout-out videos for fans, even playing video games.

Dozens of companies have been founded to help student athletes find and secure NIL deals, and many companies that already worked with professional athletes or influencers have started new divisions or platforms to cater to college (and, in some instances, high school) athletes.

FanJolt, a new experiential platform that creates memorable interactions between fans and a curated list of premier talent, has entered the NIL market with multiple collective partnerships, including Cavalier Futures (UVA), Garnet Trust (South Carolina), Think NIL (TCU) and The Foundation (Ohio State). These new partnerships will create opportunities on the platform and through the FanJolt app for student athletes to connect directly with fans through live broadcasts, personalized messages, recorded videos and more for a fee to earn revenue from their NIL and support their favorite causes.

Although new to the NIL space, FanJolt is not a new organization. FanJolt has worked with a variety of celebrities in sports, music, entertainment, and pop culture. It supports organizations such as the Rafa Nadal Foundation, Aaron Judge’s #AllRise Foundation, Patrick Mahomes’ 15 and the Mahomies Foundation, Tua Tagovailoa’s Tua Foundation and Jewel’s Inspiring Children Foundation.

-Kristi A. Dosh is the founder of BusinessofCollegeSports. com and has served as a sports business analyst and contributor for outlets such as Forbes, ESPN, SportsBusiness Journal, Bleacher Report, SB Nation and more. She is a former practicing attorney.

Self-Determination Theory has 3 Facets

Research shows that the most common reason young people drop out of sport is their psychological needs not being met. It’s a factor that coaches can control, unlike injury or competing priorities.

According to Self-Determination Theory, the three psychological needs that all people possess are relatedness, competence, and autonomy. When we’re placed in an environment where these needs are fulfilled, we have higher motivation to play within that environment.

According to Self-Determination Theory expert, psychologist Richard Ryan, Ph.D., relatedness means feeling cared for and connected to others: “It’s based on a sense of belonging, a feeling that you matter to the other people that are there,” Ryan says. “And it’s enhanced, not just by people treating you warmly and including you, but by you giving to them, and being able to matter in their lives.”

Competence is fundamental to our motivation and sense of wellness. “To feel effective in your environment, it’s very, very important to have some sense of mastery of the things that matter to you,” Ryan says.

Autonomy is the most essential of our psychological needs. “It refers to behavior that is selfendorsed — that you agree with and find congruent within yourself.

Coaches and parents must create a climate of development within our teams and sports clubs, whereby things like effort, improvement, and the building of connections are prioritized

over results, and there is no favoritism shown to so-called “better” athletes.

Coaches should model good behavior on gameday — by remaining calm and unobtrusive on the sidelines, and minimizing interventions, in order to allow athletes to problem-solve on their own.

Helping athletes to develop a Growth Mindset will also increase motivation. Stanford University professor Carol Dweck says that a growth mindset is a function of how individuals think about ability and talent. An individual with a growth mindset will consider qualities like intelligence, ability, and character as things that can be developed through hard work and perseverance, not traits that are innate or fixed.

A growth mindset, Dweck says, allows athletes to base their enjoyment of their sport solely on factors that they can control — such as their own decisions and effort levels — instead of external outcomes, like results. It becomes easier, therefore, to find motivation.

Ways to help athletes develop a growth mindset include:

• Presenting failure as a learning opportunity.

• Celebrating improvement ahead of outcomes.

• Reframing “achievement” to reflect traits like effort and discipline.

• Promoting a new attitude towards ability (instead of letting athletes believe “I can’t do this.” encourage them to think “I can’t do this yet”).

-Provided by Sport New Zealand

Top high school athletes often face significant pressure to perform

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