Sports Psychology

earned a win, he played in a victory over the Miami Marlins. Throughout the slump, teammates and sports journalists alike praised Young for being a good player despite playing for a (very) bad team. Young himself fielded many interviews where he was asked how that performance affected his confidence. “I’m getting a lot of support,” said Young. “Everyone’s behind me 100 percent because they know I deserve better. Ain’t nothing going my way now.” Rather than doubt his own skills, he said, “I’m a good pitcher, I believe in myself.” All athletes experience bad games, errors, unlucky plays, or cold streaks. However, not all manage to overcome the mental strain that those things put on a person’s sense of self-worth. All competition requires confidence, but many factors affect confidence levels for both individuals and teams. “Confidence,” says Dr. Jim Taylor, author of Train Your Mind for Athletic Success , “is the single most important mental factor in sports.” Draymond Green of the NBA’s Golden State Warriors agrees, claiming that confidence separates great players from all other athletes:

Before you can ever reach anything, you have to believe it. You don’t just mistakenly become great at something—you probably at one time or another believed that you could be great at that. And then you worked to get great at that and you reached the greatness… you believed that before and you worked to get that.

Confidence and pride often overlap among athletes. “If they can’t handle it,” wrote WNBA star Liz Cambage in a Twitter post after a playoff victory, “get in the weight room or get out of the post.” Yet athletes in particular may come to doubt their confidence, because they often face one of the greatest challenges to it: failure. Failures manifest in sport at different

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Sports Psychology