Sport Psychology

Sport Psychology is a field that is critical in the sports world and is critical for the athlete to become better at their sport while balancing their personal life. In the article, Sport Psychology Training within a Clinical Psychology Program and a Department of Intercollegiate Athletics, by Thad R. Leffingwell, Shelley A. Wiechman, Ronald E. Smith, Frank L. Smoll, and Donald S. Christensen, the authors tells the readers about a collaborative training and service program that was provide for the athletes at the University of Washington. The clinical psychology program and athletics department came together to for a Sport Psychology Services that provided performance enhancement, program evaluation, and mental health services to the athletic …show more content…
The program offered individual sessions as well as a team sessions. The Sport Psychology Service (SPS) provided workshops for the coaches to attend to educate them on how to prevent burnouts, improve communication between them and the athletes, and topics on team building. With the athletes, the program set up retreats or hourly sessions with the team to go over goal setting, team building, relaxation, confidence building, and etc. The performance enhancement side of the program was planned in conjunction with the athletes’ needs. These athletes were either referral or self-referral to seek help from the sport psychology consultant. These sessions helped the sport psychology consultant to get to know the athletes on an individual level as well as team level. In the article Integrating Social Media and New Technologies into your Practice as a Sport Psychology Consultant, by Stewart T. Cotterill & Rebecca Symes, stress how rapidly the use of social media is growing and how sport psychology consultants should not only be aware of this but also consider using social media or other technologies to improve the service they can provide to their athletes and coaches. The number of users on sites such as, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn and other technology are increasing among all age groups. The population that uses these things the most is the younger population, who may the athletes of the future. Like I stated above, social media sites and other technologies can allow the sport psychologist to provide a more effective service, when used properly. This means the sport psychologist can support to an athlete who is out of the country for summer break or if an athlete is at a training camp/competitions; being able to deliver information to athletes, coaches and other support staff without