The Wonderlic: Utility & Flaws in Athlete Assessment

Success in the NFL and other sports consists of four core factors:

Tom Landry, former Cowboys coach (Wikipedia)

Background

Photo credit: Wikipedia

Stereotype threat reflects the behavioral effects that result from an individual’s fear that his actions will confirm a negative stereotype of a group to which he belongs.⁶ Stereotype threat can manifest in anxiety, which can impair performance and trigger a self-fulfilling prophecy.  The stress related to his or her group membership causes the individual to underperform, thereby unintentionally corroborating the underlying group stereotype.

US Soccer’s Development Academy launches EXACT MAP

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This spring, EXACT Sports will launch Mental Achievement Program (MAP) with the US Soccer Federation Development Academy.   The partnership brings the MAP to over 4,000 elite level club soccer players across the country.   The program will give Development Academy Club’s the ability to monitor and train character in a focused program built towards success at the highest level.

The MAP is a short behavioral survey that provides coaches with feedback on player’s intangibles, such as leadership ability, self-confidence, training attitudes, and achievement motivation.  The program is used by over 100 NCAA teams, the National Hockey League, teams in professional baseball, and elite level youth programs.

In an effort to create a more comprehensive understanding of who is succeeding in soccer and why, the Academy will now be able to track player’s mental development along with other key metrics.

“The MAP allows coaches to improve their communication process and approach with players, raising the athlete’s self awareness,” said Director Simon Clements “The traits the MAP captures are essential to maximizing development”.

Dr. Ralph Tarter, EXACT’s Scientific Advisory Board Chairman was integrally involved in the development of the MAP..

“Our team has spent over 10 years developing a tool focused on providing consistent objective feedback on athletes character to coaches” said Dr. Tarter, “EXACT has worked with many of the world’s best athletes, creating standards and benchmarks for character that will allow coaches and athletes to better understand where they stand relative to their competition”.

The MAP’s online system will provide a detailed mental profile of each Development Academy athlete and team to the coaching staff.  The profile includes coaching tips, graphical representation, the ability to compare athletes, and a strategy to apply the information to the team and player in training.

The Tim Tebow Craze…How Does He Do It?

The recent Tim Tebow craze has been nothing short of remarkable.  The second year quarterback out of the University of Florida has led his Denver Broncos team to seven wins in his eight games as a starter this year.  He has done it in dramatic fashion, posting fourth quarter comeback wins in an incredible six of those games.  One who doesn’t know football would assume that his statistics would need to be at least above average to win so many games in a short period of time, but that simply is not the case.  He ranks dead last (32^nd) in the NFL in the categories of completion percentage and yards per game.  He is only completing 48.5 percent of his passes and averages a mere 117 yards per game.  So what is it that Tim Tebow has that makes him such a winner?  In this article, I am going to tell you a few of the traits Tim Tebow possesses that have helped him become such a great winner.

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1.  Drive to Succeed

Tim Tebow always has had an innate drive to succeed.  His mindset is to live every day to the fullest and do as much as he possibly can with his time.  Whether it is through football or in other areas of life, Tebow has always wanted to be the best he can be and gives all of his effort in his endeavors.  In football specifically, nobody practices and plays harder than Tebow.  Practice is just as important as the games themselves, since what you do in practice prepares you to do your best in games.  Tebow realizes this and takes it to heart.  Tebow once said “I don’t believe it’s the will to win.  It’s the will to prepare.  If you wake up early, stay late, grind, games will come easy to you.”

2.  Confidence

Confidence is another trait that Tim Tebow possesses that enables him to do seemingly miraculous things.  Even though he is evidently not nearly as talented as many other NFL starting quarterbacks, he always keeps his head high and truly believes that he is going to do good things on the football field and win.  Even in his interviews, when he is often criticized for not having great statistics, he doesn’t ever let his critics get to him.  This confidence on and off the field is contagious; it instills a sense of confidence in his teammates and encourages them to also give everything they have each day in practice and on game days.

3.  Leadership Qualities

Tebow’s leadership qualities are crucial to his success as well.  For a moment let’s go back to his Florida days.  After being upset by Ole Miss in 2008, Tim Tebow gave one of the most memorable post-game speeches in not only college football history, but in sports history.  Now often referred to as “The Promise,” Tim Tebow came out and promised the nation that nobody would practice and play as hard as he would for the rest of the season.  He didn’t even field questions from the press, he just gave his 45 second speech and left the podium.  This is a perfect example of how Tim Tebow is a great leader.  This speech instilled a sense of pride in Tim Tebow’s teammates and eventually the team went on to win its third ever National Championship.  A good leader takes things into his own hands while getting others to buy into what he is saying and follow him, and that is exactly what Tim Tebow has shown he can do.  Even while highly doubted and criticized in the NFL, Tebow continues to make passionate pre-game speeches that rally his teammates around him and make them play their hearts out.  His teammates recognize his innate drive to succeed and win, contagious confidence, and extraordinary leadership capabilities, and they give it their all for him.

As an athlete, no matter what level, no matter how skilled you are, I would strongly encourage you to try to match your drive to succeed, confidence, and leadership qualities to Tim Tebow’s.  It is clear that if you can do this successfully, the sky is the limit as to what you can accomplish.

Sources

http://briandoddonleadership.com/2011/04/22/23-leadership-quotes-from-tim-tebow/

How Injuries Affect Athletes and Helpful Coping Strategies

Whatever the sport is that you love, you know that one of the worst things that could possibly happen to you is to sustain a serious injury during the season.  After all the practices and games, that sport becomes your life, and when you cannot play, you suddenly feel lost.  When an injury occurs, athletes try to ignore the pain or try to hide the injury from their coach or athletic trainer in fear of missing out on game time.  There are few things that an athlete hates more than sitting on the sidelines.  Now, what happens to an athlete when they are kept from playing because of an injury?  The answer is that it takes a significant psychological toll on the athlete. This adverse psychological effect on the athlete happens for three main reasons:  our sport is our sense of identity, our major source of self-esteem, and/or a constructive way for us to cope with our stress. 

When one is injured, an athlete faces at least one, if not all of these psychological factors that can overwhelm them due to the internal and external losses they are going through.  The feeling of losing one’s identity when unable to continue playing the sport they love, is a very common psychological side effect of being injured. If you are unfortunate enough to sustain such an injury that limits or causes you to miss out on practice or game-time for a substantial amount of time, it can be really hard on you.  Athletes immediately begin to feel as if they are losing their identity, which is often referred to as “identity confusion”.   If you are a baseball player, for example, who has a major shoulder injury that is so debilitating that it ends your career, what do you do?  If you have played the game since you were a little kid, you begin to question who you are without your sport.  This causes stress and in some cases depression among certain individuals. 

An athletes’ self esteem can often take a serious hit when one is injured, and, consequently is forced to depend on other people for help and support. Most athletes have a strong sense of being very independent.  They become so consumed in the game that they begin to rely solely on the routines and rituals that they have developed on their own to prepare themselves for their lives on and off the field.  Now, however, they have to learn how to be dependent on doctors, athletic trainers, physical therapists, and everyone else around them.  This is not an easy thing to do after becoming so accustomed to handling situations on one’s own.

Also, with all the time to yourself and trying to recover, you begin to feel alienated.  Being at practices and doing your warm-ups every day for years, you begin to have a routine.  Once you are injured and out of the game, you feel as if you do not know what to do with yourself, and in some cases you can feel as if you have no one.  Whether it is your baseball team, soccer team, hockey team, or your coaches; these are the people that you spend most of your time with, and who begin to become your entire life.  Along with this comes stress.  When you used to have a really stressful day, you could count on your teammates, coaches, or even sprints to take out that stress for you.  When what you lean on and are familiar with gets taken away from you, you suddenly need to find other ways to cope with all of these new problems in your life.  A lot of athletes treat their injuries with denial, which is never healthy.  So here is a list of coping strategies that have been proven to help you if an injury does occur.

1. Be Sad:  Feeling is one of the most important parts of the healing process.  You can only be strong for so long.  So do not allow yourself to just be strong, brave, or macho.  Doing this does not help you cope any faster.

2. Deal with what it is: The sooner you accept what happened, the better off you will be in the end.  Athlete’s tend to focus on “what was” and “what could have been” instead of what is happening right now.  You cannot change what happened no matter how much you want to.

3. Set new goals for yourself (but keep them realistic): Do not try to do more than you are capable of.  You need to let yourself heal and regain the strength back in your arm, leg or wherever you are injured.  Take baby steps until you are ready to achieve your old goals again. 

 4. Keep a positive attitude: Negativity slows down the healing process and is never good.  You must continue to have a positive attitude throughout the whole process and as Dr. Alan Goldberg stated, “If it is to be, it is up to me.”

5. Take an active part in your healing: Use healing imagery to help you feel less helpless and hopeless throughout your rehab.  Do not cut corners, and make it to every rehab, listen to the doctors no matter what they tell you to do or not to do, and be smart about when you are ready to get back out on the field again. 

6. Don’t stop practicing and working out: Practice mentally, or if you are able to work out with your injury, do so.  Go to your team practices and watch, and mentally rehearse what you would be doing out there; every step, every touch, communication.  This keeps the neuromuscular connections activated so it is like you never missed a beat.

 7. Use your experience as an athlete in other areas of your life: You may feel as if you have no other skills, if you are forced to retire from your sport because of a very serious injury.  However, this is not the case.  Every athlete learns and practices success skills such as commitment, dedication, persistence, motivation, time management, and much more.  These are some of the greatest set of life skills that you can use in your everyday life, so don’t let them go to waste.

8. Seek out the support of your teammates, coaches, and family: Do not separate yourself from your team.  Go to the practices and games no matter how much it hurts you to not be able to play.  Isolating yourself will only do more harm to you physically and mentally.  Make sure you reach out to all of them when you are in need, they will always be there for you. 

 9. Seek out a counselor if it gets too bad: Getting the help from a professional is a sign of strength, not weakness, so if you are feeling very miserable and depressed for a period of time, don’t be afraid to seek out the help of a therapist.  Talking to someone who can understand is always helpful and can get you back on your feet again.

 10. BE PATIENT: Make sure you give your body enough time to heal properly.  Do not jump right back into it the day you start to feel a little bit better; this will only slow down your healing process.  And as Dr. Alan Goldberg also stated, “go slower, arrive sooner.”

REFERENCES:

http://sportsmedicine.about.com/od/sportspsychology/a/Injury_Coping.htm

http://www.competitivedge.com/resources_rebounding_from_injuries.htm

NBA Players Use Lockout to Pursue Education

With the NBA lockout lasting nearly 150 days, NBA players needed to find something to keep them busy.  Several decided to take their talents overseas, including Deron Williams and Tony Parker, some decided to stay put train here in the United States, and others focused on doing work in the community.  Minnesota Timberwolves forward Kevin Love, Oklahoma City guard Russell Westbrook, Cleveland Cavaliers guard Baron Davis, and New Orleans Hornets guard Trevor Ariza had a different idea.  These four decided to head back out to California and re-enroll at UCLA and take classes.  Each of them were stars while playing their college ball at UCLA and left for the NBA prior to finishing school, so they all decided it would be a great time to head back to school and inch closer to getting their degrees.  Additionally, being in California has enabled these players to continue their training routines at top-of-the-line facilities and train with other All-Star caliber NBA players.

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Ariza explains that he decided to go back to school for his two sons.  “Eventually they’re going to realize that their dad fulfilled his dreams doing what he wanted to do and still got his degree. For them to see that will be a great example for them to follow,’ said Ariza.  He believes that this lockout is not such a bad thing in that it has a real chance at encouraging other players in the same position that he is in to go back and continue their education.  With the recent news that the lockout is coming to an end, Ariza plans to continue to take online classes.

UCLA’s athletics assistant director of academic services Kenny Donaldson played a big role in recruiting these former players to come back to school.  He has always reminded former players that even though they may have left school early to go to the NBA, it is important and possible that they return at some point to work toward their graduation.  “When the lockout looked like it was going to be a definite thing, I kind of sat down with each of them and laid out a game plan,” Donaldson said in talking about these four NBA players.  “You don’t want to get them back in something that they’re not going to be interested in. I presented them with options and they found classes that they thought would be interesting, and are easing back into it right now.”

Other NBA players are also returning to school.  Minnesota Timberwolves forward Anthony Randolph rented an apartment in Baton Rouge within walking distance of his former school Louisiana State University.  He only played one season at LSU before being drafted in the NBA, so he was eager to get back to school.  He enrolled in a math class in the summer and has taken three classes this fall.  “I don’t have the basketball distraction. I’m a more focused student now after being in the real world for a couple of years,” says Randolph.

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With the average NBA career lasting just under 5 years, there is a lot of life for most players after basketball.  Even though many NBA players often receive outrageous contracts that make them multi-millionaires, many others aren’t nearly as fortunate.  The league minimum salary still makes those who receive it extremely wealthy in the meantime, but with the average career length being so short, getting an education can be crucial for many.  It open the door to countless opportunities in life after basketball, and many players are urged to head back to school so they are ensured to be taken care of financially later in life.

As an avid fan this NBA lockout seemed absolutely ridiculous and was certainly extremely frustrating.  However, when I look at it from a different point of view, I realize that period of time really gave players a chance to do things they otherwise wouldn’t have, as was true for Love, Westbrook, Davis, Ariza, Randolph and others.  It is refreshing to see so many players deciding to go back to their respective universities and really use the lockout to their advantage.  Other things matter in life besides playing your sport, and it’s important for all athletes to realize that and utilize whatever opportunities they get to pursue other things, such as getting their education.

Sources

http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/news?slug=mc-spears_nba_players_ucla_080911

http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/sports/08/10/11/some-nba-players-back-school-due-lockout

http://www.takingbadschotz.com/?p=1530