The Intersection: Where Sports and Social Work Meet

I've been engaged in some very interesting conversations over the past... 15 months... although not really interesting enough to excuse such a long hiatus from writing!  But, what can I say.  Life's tough when you've got toddlers.   So, these conversations.  I've heard from coaches at various levels of NCAA in a few different women's sports that "these athletes are just different", and not in a super positive way.  Many coaches I've talked to are at a loss for how to motivate their student-athletes because they don't exactly know what motivates them.  It seems like their student-athletes enjoy the connection being on a team brings, but they don't necessarily want to engage in the hard work it takes to be successful.  This can be a problem for several reasons — namely if the coaching staff is employed at a school that gauges success by win/loss records,  and coaches fear being dismissed if their teams aren't performing to the level they are

I attended a magnet school for performing and visual arts in high school.  We always joked that our stands were packed on Friday nights to watch the halftime show, not to watch the football game (for real, though, our band was lit, if marching bands can be such a thing).  I was also the second graduating class, so our population was lower than most schools in the area, and I think that also led to our sports being not great.  I joined the swim team and the soccer team along with a number of other choir nerds, band and orchestra geeks, musical theater and drama fanatics, and some visual art peeps.  Needless to say, we rarely went .500 in a season.   My junior year, we got a new soccer coach.  Coach V was a young (late 20s) math teacher from Maryland who had D1 golf experience, but who had played soccer most of her life.  She held a meeting with all the girls who were interested in playing and our parents, and gave off an air of actually knowing what she was doing (as opposed to the coac

"That's perfect!  Great work!"   "Awesome.  Total perfection!" "Practice makes perfect." "Perfect practice makes perfect." Maybe we've heard or said these statements in the past.  No harm, no foul, right?  The way I see it, not exactly.  One of my students wrote something in a discussion board post this semester that really stuck with me, and I hope it does with you too:  Impact > Intent.  If you remember from 4th grade math, "the alligator eats the bigger number".  So in this case, impact is greater than intent.  That means that no matter what you MEAN when you say something, it could have a very strong, unintended, impact.   Alright.  So where exactly is perfection in all this?  Well, perfectionism is really problematic because it is the thing that deters us from taking risks.  And all of us, particularly those who identify as female, have been praised by our parents and teachers for being quiet, staying in our seats, raisi

Self-confidence is a really funny thing.  Turns out, we’re born with some form of it, and it’s nurtured by our parents like crazy.  It’s what allows babies to learn to walk and talk, and to try new foods and skills like walking and later, running.  A survey of 1300 8-18-yr old girls and their parents gave some really alarming insight .  The research shows that there’s basically no difference in confidence levels between girls and boys under 12.  But by 14, girls are way less confident than boys.   The craziest thing about this research is that it says girls are less confident than boys in middle and high school, EVEN THOUGH THEY GENERALLY PERFORM BETTER ACADEMICALLY THAN BOYS.  A 14-yr-old girl from the study said, “I feel that if I acted like my true self that no-one would like me".   Something that stuck out to me from this study was that  self-confidence in girls peaks around age 9.   9-year-olds are usually in 4th or 5th grade.  Elementary school.  Usually pre-pubescent.  So i

Did you know that the student-athletes of today are way different from those of us who were college athletes 5, 10, or 20 years ago?  It's true.  Today's student-athletes are plagued with anxiety disorders, suicidal ideation, depression, eating disorders, histories of trauma and adverse childhood experiences (ACEs).  These issues have a lot to do with the way the world is today.  The Instagrams and TikToks and SnapChats and constant availability of news or contact with peers somehow makes everyone feel lonelier and less connected.   Then, if you add in adverse childhood experiences like family violence, community violence, divorce, extreme poverty, or world events, and you've got some real issues.  Also, the student-athletes I've talked to, which are mostly white, upper-middle class females, talk a lot about struggling with perfection in all aspects of their lives.  Perfectionism is something that I'll talk more about next week, but here's a teaser-- it's pe

Social Work.  That age-old profession of nosy white women taking kids away from families.  Right?  RIGHT?  No, in fact; that's not what social work is all about.   Social Work as a formal profession has been around for decades and informally has been around for millennia.  It started formally late in the 19th Century to help vulnerable people, like immigrants, escape poverty.  Since then, it has become a full-fledged professional career and helping profession with more than just poverty on the mind.  The core values of social work include social justice, promoting the dignity and worth of people, the importance of human relationships, competence, service, and integrity (in no particular order).  Informal social work still exists in our world today-- think of people in communities who work to help those in need or churches that host soup kitchens.  But as a profession, social work has a definite mission, which is "to enhance human well-being and help meet the basic human needs