How Do Sports Affect Athletes?

In the ever changing society in which we live one thing has remained constant over the years, sports. The Super Bowl, World Series, Olympics, and many other sporting events are considered equal to holidays in the eyes of most Americans. Sports provide a safe haven for fans, a shot in the dark that the underdog will win, in the simplest terms a sense of hope. What about the athletes? As fans it is easy to be the one yelling at the television when your favorite wide receiver does not make the catch, but what about him? Pause for a second and think about the pressures, stress and anxiety placed on his shoulders. What impact, good or bad, physical or mental, do sports have on athletes? Most athletes play their sport of choice from a young age all the way through adolescence, and some even in to adulthood, but it is not free of consequences. It is time for athletes, non-athletes, sports fans, and former athletes to learn the …show more content…
Athletes, former athletes, and non-athletes all selected fear of a poor individual performance from the choices to indicate their greatest sources of stress. The stress sources showed little variation across sports and among athletes, non-athletes, and former athletes. Many believe that coaches and/or parents are to blame for this. A reported thirty percent of athletes blame a coach or parent for their decision to quit sports all together. This is usually due to what is called a burn out. Burnout is defined by sport psychologists as “physical/emotional exhaustion, sport devaluation, and reduced athletic accomplishment.” Burn out can occur because of many different reasons such as, excessive stress and pressure to win, feelings of entrapment, costs of the sport begin to outweigh the benefits, disempowerment of an athlete, and loss of