In this episode of SCI TV, we explore the theme of Athlete Hazing with Associate Executive Director of HazingPrevention.org, Emily Pualwan. She discusses the types of issues concerning hazing in sports.
For years now, smaller schools around the nation have been traveling to play bigger and better opponents on the road early in the season. These guarantee games have benefits for both schools. The bigger school gets a guaranteed home game on its schedule, a chance to fill the stadium and sell concessions, and an almost certain victory moving them one step closer to bowl eligibility. The smaller school is guaranteed cash, sometimes over $1 million, which can be put toward improving the school or athletic facilities. Increased exposure and the recruiting benefits of having a big school on the schedule is also crucial. For example, it might sway a prospective student athlete when informed he will be playing a game at the Big House in Michigan during his sophomore season. For those reasons, guarantee games are beneficial for the administration and athletic departments of both schools.
But how do these games affect the players on the smaller school team? Are they suffering a humiliating defeat and risking injury so that their university can accept a payday? Is it truly competition, a fundamental element of sports, when a small school is likely to be blown out by 60 or more points? In fact, guarantee games are great for the small school players in addition to their universities, here is why.
In 2005, the University at Buffalo made $1.5 million for playing three guarantee games. They finished the season with 1 win and 10 losses. However, the money from those three guarantee losses was spent on new locker room furniture and a new weight room. In that case, the money from the guarantee games was a direct benefit to the players
One of the concerns surrounding the recent O’Bannon ruling is that the $5,000 minimum cap required under the ruling will benefit the bigger, wealthier schools. That is to say, assuming the NCAA wishes to limit the amount of name, image, and likeness money schools may pay players it may not cap that limit below $5,000 for any player (As an aside, the cap is roughly based on the amount of a currently available Pell Grant and is an extremely odd part of this ruling considering it is an antitrust case, but that is another story altogether). Further assuming the NCAA sets the cap at the minimum, bigger schools will theoretically have the funding and desire to pay every recruit the additional $5,000 permitted under O’Bannon on top of the cost of attendance. Smaller schools will not be able to afford to do so and further, will not be allowed to pay in excess of $5,000 to a single recruit to try and woo him from a bigger school. Therefore, the wealthier schools gain a recruiting advantage under the minimum cap because they can pay even second-tier recruits, who smaller schools may have had a chance at getting, above the cost of attendance.
However, the money earned by small schools through guarantee games could free up other athletic money earned through name, image, and likeness to go to recruits. While that name, image, and likeness money might previously have been needed for other costs, the money from the guarantee game might be used toward those costs instead. Therefore, under O’Bannon, guarantee games might allow smaller schools to use name, image, and likeness money to pay a greater number of their recruits above the cost of attendance.
For a high school football player, it would be a dream to play for Southern California, Michigan, or Alabama. The reality is, only a few will get the chance to play in a national caliber program. For those that do not get that chance, playing in those schools’ stadiums as an opponent is the next best thing. Getting beaten badly is beside the point to some extent and not humiliating whatsoever. It will give many college athletes the experience of playing on the biggest stage in the game, against the very best players in their game, and they will likely be treated like a big school athlete.
For example, when I was playing college baseball we visited Arizona State and Oklahoma State, two highly ranked baseball programs with big-time facilities. While playing centerfield at Arizona State, I looked toward the left field wall to see Barry Bonds’ name and number honoring him as an ASU alum. I realized I was roaming the same outfield that he once played in. At Oklahoma State, we played in the amenity-filled AAA ballpark in Oklahoma City, we got to stay in an amazing hotel, and ended up splitting the two-game series with them. When I look back on college ball, those are two of my favorite memories.
For small school players in guarantee games, walking into the Big House in Michigan, the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, or Bryant-Denny in Alabama will be the chance of a lifetime. Someday many of those players will be telling kids and grandkids they played at USC against a future NFL star or Heisman trophy winner. The outcome of the game will not matter in their stories, nor will the money exchanged. The experience of competing against the best will be their most valued memory.
In 2007, Appalachian State of the Football Championship Subdivision, essentially the second tier of college football, played a guarantee game at Michigan. Michigan was an 11-time national champion, had roughly triple the enrollment of Appalachian State, and offered 22 more football scholarships. The game was to be so lopsided that the Las Vegas sports books did not set a betting line. Appalachian State beat the Wolverines 34-32 in what will go down as one of the greatest wins in school history. Wins like that are rare for the small school in a guarantee game, but that is why they play the games. For players on small school teams the experience is wonderful, but they are still playing to compete and approach the game as though it can be won.
Here are a few matchups from the first few weeks of the 2014 season to look out for:
8.30.14: Appalachian State @ Michigan
South Dakota State @ Missouri
Louisiana Tech @ Oklahoma
9.6.14: Sacramento State @ California
Eastern Washington @ Washington
Nicholls State @ Arkansas
Author: Kevin Cave, JD
After more than 25 years, my oldest childhood friend just decided to give up his season tickets for football at the University of Florida. I asked Jimmy why. I asked him if it was because he was finally outgrowing football. Hell, that might mean that I might outgrow the sport some day (in the distant future). Or if it was because the Gators are going through hard times with an offense that scores less than the Pope.
Now Jimmy did admit that he would like to fish more, if that is a sign of growth, and that the team’s woes were a factor. However, those were not the main reasons. Simply put, he was tired of spending lots of money to watch long games against mediocre opponents in the blazing Gainesville heat.
The good news is that these are all issues that the University of Florida, in particular, and the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) schools, more generally, can address. The bad news is that this does not seem to be the focus, even though attendance has generally been in decline since 2008.
The FBS schools are keenly aware of the challenges posed by the sheer quantity of college football viewing options, the quality of HD production, the convenience of chilling and grilling at home, and the aging ticket buying demographic. “All of the surveys I see show that the average season-ticket holder is 50-plus,” claimed Matt DiFebo, vice president of IMG Learfield Ticket Solutions. “There’s a whole segment of the fan base that schools are having difficulty reaching.”
Athletic Departments are experimenting with lots of solutions. They’re trying variable pricing and dynamic pricing. Georgia is reducing the student allotment from 18,000 to 15,000 in an effort to lure younger alum. In addition to halving the student allotment from 10,000 to 5,000, Kentucky is also downsizing their capacity to improve the quality of the accommodations, which will presumably allow them to charge more.
Some of these solutions might make a small, short term difference. However, I have a really hard time believing that making it harder for students to attend games is a wise way to cultivate lasting loyalty.
The issues that Jimmy identified are far more crucial. Consider Florida’s 2014 home schedule. They are in the SEC, which means they have a really tough schedule, including home games against LSU, South Carolina, and once powerful Tennessee. The problem is that the season ticket package also includes contests against Idaho, Eastern Michigan, and Eastern Kentucky. Jimmy is not the only fan who would rather go fishing than watch three lambs gets slaughtered. Eastern Kentucky should be squaring off against Eastern Michigan. The Gators should be playing another FBS school.
Last season Alabama suspended the block seating privileges for 20 student organizations because so many fans elected to leave blowouts early, but the real problem is that so many of the games are blowouts.
Florida has done their best to start these meaningless games later in the day, sparing fans the full brunt of being in the Sunshine state in late summer. But many programs schedule such games during the middle of the day.
Uncompetitive match-ups played in unpleasant conditions are especially hard to take because they last so damn long. NFL games usually take three hours. College ones usually take three-and-a-half or more because the commercial timeouts are longer and the clock stops to move the chain after every first down.
You might ask why the FBS schools have not aggressively addressed these issues. Part of the reason is that they have been complacent, assuming that college football will always be King on Saturday, but the bigger reason is their short term fixation on maximizing revenue. Games sometimes have to be played in the blazing heat to accommodate the real king, TV. The extra commercials generate more money for America’s favorite amateur sport and the 200-plus minute games with 20-minute halftimes increase concession sales. And the slaughtered lambs increase the chances of schools having winning records, which helps coaches keep lucrative jobs longer.
The problem is that the Jimmys of the world are starting to opt for more fishing, especially when their alma mater struggles. Nick Saban can get away with punishing student organizations because the Crimson Tide are competing for national titles most seasons. But the betting here is that he would not try to do that if Alabama was in the middle of a series of eight-win seasons.
College Football is a negative-sum game. For every Alabama, there are eight other teams in the SEC that have no realistic chance at conference honors, let alone a Top Ten ranking. Given this, the FBS schools really need to think about how they can foster long-term loyalty, which can see a school through the inevitable lean years, rather than trying to suck out every dollar when times are good and scrambling by offering gimmicks like dynamic and variable pricing pricing when they are not.
Good times don’t last; far-sighted policies do.
–Ken Pendleton
With the start of a new academic year, college athletes and coaches prepare for another season and often a whole new environment. They encounter new team members, the pressures of performance and a longing for home. During this program, Joshua Gordon, of the Sports Conflict Institute and Stephen Kotev will discuss what student athletes and coaches can do to optimize their performance on and off the field.
A conflict management professional for more than twenty years, Mr. Gordon is an experienced mediator, facilitator, educator, and organizational capability builder. Mr. Gordon specializes in sports related conflict management building on a history of contexts that have included business-to-business, organizational change, energy, environmental, real estate and housing, family, and gang-related conflict and disputes. He especially appreciates and enjoys complex, multi-party conflict that requires non-traditional solutions to impasse.
Stephen Kotev is a Washington D.C. based conflict resolution consultant offering mediation, negotiation, conflict analysis, facilitation, training and somatic education to private and government clients. He holds a Master of Science degree from George Mason University’s School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution and a black belt in the Japanese martial art of Aikido. He is a former employee of the Association for Conflict Resolution, the American Bar Association Section of Dispute Resolution, the Ohio Commission on Dispute Resolution and Conflict Resolution and the D.C. Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency as an ADR Specialist.
In this episode of SCI Talk, we explore the world of NCAA college football with Yale University’s Associate Athletics Director Sports Publicity, and Primary Media Contact for Football, Steve Conn. He discusses the types of issues that are unique to college football, and the unique features of Yale’s program, as compared to other college football programs.
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Why do we often allow sports culture to deviate so far from societal norms? Why is bullying often an accepted norm in sports, or, frankly, why is bullying behavior often not recognized as bullying when in the context of sports?
Let’s start with a definition used by the Workplace Bullying Institute:
Bullying is repeated, health-harming mistreatment of one or more persons (the targets) by one or more perpetrators. It is abusive conduct that is :
Many involved in sports will hear their inner voice loudly declaring that that’s not bullying, that’s sports. If that’s your first reaction, you are not wrong but that doesn’t make the behavior right or productive, either.
Sports are built on tradition. Coaching styles, the norms established, and the elusive “sports ethic” are influenced more by experience from our own sports culture roots than by carefully considered study of motivation and human behavior. Sports are rooted in toughness and hazing and bullying are part of the historical methodology for how teams were formed and the tight bonds among teammates were cemented. There is a romanticism about the days when “men were men” and sports built character.
It’s tempting to say that we have become soft over time. That what was once OK should remain OK and that it’s healthy to weed out the meek given the demands of competitive sports. Yet sports aren’t the only context that demands effort, expertise, focus, dedication, and coordination. In fact, most industries have demands to exact the most of its employees and employee every motivational tactic available in order to reap the benefits. It’s often not about human kindness or dignity. It’s generally about performance. Which raises the question, is there something inherently different about athletes that would require extreme and harshly negative motivational tactics in order to ensure optimal performance?
The motivational profile of an athlete must be understood not in generalities but, rather, in understanding that particular athlete. What are the ways that a particular individual learns? When is feedback best delivered? Are they an experiential or visual learner? Can peers deliver the message organically or should it come from a coach? There is tremendous variety in what motivates and engages any athlete. However, it is rare that anyone performs their best under threats, humiliation, and intimidation.
This is not to say a coach or team shouldn’t be demanding. This is where many seem to become confused. High expectations are healthy. Candid feedback and building a realistic understanding of strengths and weaknesses is healthy. Stress is normal and a healthy part of adaptation and learning. It should be exhausting, challenging, and demanding to perform to one’s capabilities in any endeavor – especially sports.
Coaches must walk a fine line but is it really that challenging? Use the son or daughter test. If you are a coach, would you want someone else speaking to your son or daughter the way you are speaking to your athlete. Is the culture one in which you’d want your son or daughter to be immersed? If not, why not? How is it helping to motivate and exact performance consistent with expectations for your team or program? Likely, it isn’t if it fails this simple test.
Systemically, it would behoove athletic directors and other administrators to align winning with healthy locker room culture but establishing clear values and ensuring all incentives, contracts, and other evaluation systems tie-in to these values. Winning and a healthy team culture or not mutually exclusive. Look at the San Antonio Spurs and how they’ve built a team based on a core set of values that exemplify the alignment of performance with healthy culture. They recognize the need for bonding, for hard work, for demanding expectations but they do so without tearing down individuals and without bullying or hazing.
Similarly, visibility is key. Do post-season assessments. Don’t create an insular environment. Get outside perspective on the experience your athletes have and see if it is truly consistent with your organization’s values. The power structure in sports can minimize an athlete’s ability to tell a coach that there is a problem with bullying. Build structures, such as an athlete ombudsman, to create a safe, confidential space for such concerns to be raised and communicated back to the organization in aggregate. Most importantly, create rituals and new traditions that form teams that are close without the historical baggage that we too often perpetuate. Ask yourself, why do we do that tradition? If you don’t have a good answer, it might just be a historical artifact left in the past. Finally, have a zero tolerance policy against bullying and hazing. They only harm a team’s ability to perform and there is no reason why they should be more acceptable in sports than in any other context.
Author: Joshua Gordon
Having participated in more than half a dozen different team sports for more than twenty years, I have witnessed and been the target of bullying in sports often. At times, the behavior of my teammates was mentally and emotionally harmful and detrimental to accomplishing team goals. In other cases, bullying in sports created positive results, benefiting me as an individual and advancing team goals. Even then, bullying was not the only means by which the benefit could be realized. Between these different results is a fine line that can be difficult to stay on the proper side of. To determine which side of the line behavior falls on, the nature of the bullying and its purpose must be balanced against its effectiveness in accomplishing that purpose and any other means available for accomplishing the same.
Nature & Purpose of Bullying v. Effectiveness in Accomplishing Purpose & Available Alternatives
Bullying is the use of verbal abuse, intimidation, humiliation or threats practiced by individuals or groups in order to exert some amount of power over others. It can be overt and extreme in nature or take effect subtly over time. Bullying in sports takes all forms and has been commonplace for decades. But why has abuse and humiliation remained a part of locker room culture for so long?
One reason is that the purpose of bullying often aligns with team goals and can be effective in helping the team accomplish those goals. Modernly, appropriate alternative means can replace bullying completely in accomplishing the same goals. Therefore, even bullying with a proper purpose that accomplishes its goal and is subtle in nature is likely unnecessary and avoidable.
Bullying in sports is often done for purposes of socializing team members to behave in ways that enhance team performance in at least three ways. First, sports require a certain level of mental toughness. Enduring an atmosphere of bullying can build mental toughness and enhance performance under pressure. Second, athletes must often consider the goals of the team above individual goals in order for the team to succeed. Bullying in sports can strip an athlete of individuality and rebuild his identity based primarily on being a member of the team. Third, performance is enhanced when athletes know they have the support of teammates in accomplishing a common goal. Bullying can expose those athletes who seek only individual accomplishment and are unwilling to make individual sacrifices for team improvement. Those athletes are faced with the choice of leaving the team or enduring continued bullying.
Other times, bullying in sports is done for selfish purposes. For example, intimidating younger talented players may hinder performance and allow more senior athletes to keep roster positions or places on a depth chart. Bullying of this type fails from the outset because of its invidious purpose. This type of bullying is often overt and extreme in nature because its purpose is to humiliate and intimidate.
On my high school soccer team, we were required to run a couple of warm up laps at the beginning of practice. The seniors on the team would typically dribble a couple of balls along with them on the jog. At some point they would fan out to either side of the double-file jog line and start aiming shots at the heads of the younger players. They would pair the attack with rhetorical questions aimed at any particular freshman. Most questions regarded what the freshman should do with his girlfriend and whether he was physically mature enough to do the suggested activity. I witnessed players receive “wedgies” so violent as to rip the underwear clean out from under their soccer shorts to be hung on the nearby tree branches. The fear of having my wrists and ankles taped to the goalpost and my pants taken down, a common threat from seniors, haunted me in the hours of the school day before practice. Few things would be as humiliating for a pubescent high school frosh.
Due to the bullying by the seniors on the varsity team, I purposely played poorly at tryouts as a sophomore so that I would be placed on the junior varsity. I easily could have made the varsity team that year and would have helped it win more games. Other of my teammates simply quit. The purpose of bullying done by those seniors was to exert power over the talented younger players to ensure the seniors would get playing time in the coming season. They kept their place in the lineup by convincing players like me that we would be better served to stay on the junior varsity one more season or by limiting our ability to perform through intimidation. The team was therefore not as strong and many young players lost a great deal of confidence and love for the sport.
In this case, the seniors were effective in accomplishing their goal but the nature and purpose of their bullying was improper at the outset. The desired purpose was selfish and against the betterment of the team. The nature of the bullying was extreme and involved inappropriate physical abuse. Because the nature and purpose were invidious, the bullying had a negative effect on individuals and the team regardless of whether it was effective or whether alternative means were available.
On my college baseball team, I was one of three freshmen that made the traveling team. Ten to twelve other freshmen participated in practice and red-shirted their first year. When I returned for my sophomore season, I was the only one of the freshman class to return from the previous season. I witnessed both subtle and overt bullying of the freshmen by the senior players. During fall practice freshmen were required to carry all of the team gear, catch bullpen workouts for pitchers, put the field to bed after practice, clean the locker room, chase all the foul balls, and leave practice last after making sure that everything was in order for the evening.
At times further tasks like fetching ice from the training room or preparing water coolers were assigned by the more senior players. All of these tasks sent the same message to the freshmen: serving the team was more important than their individual success. When a freshman made an error in the field or failed to swing when a hit-and-run was on, he had to wear the “Sweet Player Jersey.” The jersey was a pink tie-dyed practice uniform that was never washed, smelled horrible, and was humiliating to wear. Invariably, it ended up on a freshman every day of fall practice. For a group of freshmen that were the best players on their respective high school teams, the systematic breaking down of their confidence was too much of a sacrifice and many transferred after the fall semester.
By the time spring came, I was transformed from a confident player into a humble athlete willing to do whatever it took to endear myself to my teammates and coaches. I received a room assignment on the road with a junior and a senior who had starting positions. During road trips, they employed various methods to let me know my place. On one trip, they used athletic tape to create a three by three foot box in the corner of the hotel room. I was required to keep all of my gear within the box and stay in the corner myself at all times. On nearly every trip, it was my job to go get dinner after the game while my roommates lounged on the hotel beds. I was given far too little money to accomplish the task and was told to “make it enough” by spending my own meal money to cover the difference. I carried their gear to and from the bus and was given the nickname “green” because of my naivety.
In this case, the bullying treatment had a positive effect in three ways. First, the pressure of constant bullying, loss of confidence, and the threat of humiliation made performing at practice more difficult. In many ways, it mirrored the pressure that I faced later in game situations. In that way, the bullying by the seniors was effective in that when called upon to perform in a game situation I was mentally ready to do so under pressure. Second, when it came time perform in a game situation my main focus was to do what it took to help the team. Because I knew that my performance was for our collective accomplishment, it carried a heightened importance and relieved me from individual pressure at the same time. Third, by enduring the bullying of my freshman year my teammates came to know that I bought into being a part of the program and team. They knew that I was aware of the fact that the game and the team were more important than my achievement. The team was not a vehicle for my advancement but a separate entity that was far more important than me as an individual. By remaining in the program, choosing not to transfer, and enduring the initiation I became a trusted and respected teammate.
Even though I learned valuable lessons from the subtle bullying on my college baseball team, alternative means may have made for even greater team gains. I eventually became a starter on my college baseball team, became a much more skilled player, and formed lasting relationships with my teammates. However, I never fully regained the confidence I had before enduring my freshman season. Confidence is as critical to success in baseball as physical prowess. Many players equally if not more skilled than me left the program entirely after that season. Had the seniors used other means to improve performance under pressure, increase focus on team goals, and ensure player dedication to the program, we may have been a better team going forward.
Bullying accomplishes its purpose through negative sanctions. It discourages particular behavior. Alternatively, the increased use of positive reinforcement can have the same effect by encouraging particular behavior. The positive effect of performing under pressure can be accomplished with increased positive verbal praise upon success and constructive advice upon failure, teaching the athlete to deal with pressure without punishing his failures. The positive effect of focus on team goals can be accomplished by creating a tradition and culture of respect for the team as a unit rather than by breaking down individual confidence. Traditions like touching the “play like a champion” sign while leaving the locker room at Notre Dame exemplify this approach. Finally, the positive effect of trust-building between teammates can be accomplished through off-the-field service, team study halls, and team dinners.
By implementing positive alternative means, teams can reap the benefits that subtle bullying accomplishes without sacrificing athlete transfers and loss of confidence in freshmen. Therefore, even bullying that is subtle in nature, positive in purpose, and effective in accomplishing its purpose can be outweighed by the availability of effective alternative means. In that case, eliminating bullying from a program can increase team performance by retaining skilled players and increasing their level of confidence and performance.
Author: Kevin Cave, JD
Major League Soccer has never had it so good. The league is expanding, the values of franchises are rising, and attendance figures to reach 19,000 per match in the next season or two. The huge success of the World Cup suggests that soccer may become a major commercial player in the US, passing hockey, competing with basketball and baseball for second position behind football.
There is just this one not so small problem. MLS’s TV ratings are stagnant. Recent World Cup matches drew tens of millions of viewers, and the Nielsen’s don’t have any way of measuring the huge numbers that watched matches in pubs. The English Premier League doubled its TV ratings last season after moving from ESPN & Fox to NBC. The Mexican League (Liga MX) does extremely well on the Spanish-language networks. And I feel fairly confident predicting that the UEFA Champions League, which pits the best clubs from Europe against each other, is going to enjoy a dramatic increase in viewers now that Fox sees the potential of the sport and has secured rights to the next two World Cups.
Soccer is no longer a niche sport, and MLS is helping generate this wave–but why hasn’t all this success translated into more viewers? Why are Americans increasingly willing to watch major tournaments and foreign matches, or attend MLS and even minor league matches, but not watch them on TV. Answering this question is key if MLS is going to generate the kind of revenue the NBA, MLB, and even the NHL does.
There have been lots of articles written about why Americans will or will not embrace soccer. Some have been worth taking seriously and some have just been silly, but none of them, to my knowledge, have tried to systematically examine how soccer differs from the traditional American sports as an aesthetic experience from the point of view of American viewers.
In fact, I have only read one truly insightful piece about viewing sports: “The Well Played Game: Notes Towards an Aesthetic of Sport,” by Eugene Kaelin. Dr. Kaelin, once a philosophy professor at Florida State University, argued that a satisfying sports event, from the perspective of a viewer, has to meet three criteria. It should be dramatic, characterized by excellent performances, what Kaelin terms continuity, and ‘articulation’, which relates to the spectator’s ability to evaluate the quality of play and identify the tensions that lead to the outcome of a match.
Kaelin’s focused on football and baseball, but I hope to show that his theoretical framework has huge explanatory value for understanding the challenges soccer faces in the United States (and Canada). Unfortunately, I cannot do justice to this claim in a few hundred words. You will have to link to the the white paper I have written. It is really long (more than 5,000 words), but there is also an SCI TV episode on, and a less abstract treatment of, the subject.
–Ken Pendleton
An important, yet regularly overlooked area of an athlete’s life is that of transitions. As an athlete seeking to maximize his talent and performance, one does not just put himself through a grueling training regime over and over again, but is also constantly on the lookout for new things that can be added to the program. Changes in coach, training formula, or sometimes even a simple change of environment, are all commonly cited reasons for an athlete to relocate himself geographically. With a relocation comes athlete transitions. With a different community comes different cultures, food, schedules, and living conditions in general. Speaking from experience, I relocated myself from my home in Singapore to be based in Eugene, Oregon, in order to earn a degree in Sports Business and to become the best distance runner I can be. In moving to a new home across the world, I faced a myriad of transitions that nothing could have ever prepared me for. Some of the rougher transitions that initially hampered my performance included a more physical approach taken by my competitors in competition, a college life with more distractions, and a tougher and more strenuous training regime.
I arrived in Eugene, Oregon in August of 2014 – just in time for the fall cross country races – and I think it’s fair to say that I was thrown into the deep end of the pool. In my home country of Singapore, we do not have anywhere near the same numbers of participants in our college cross-country races, and certainly not many of those that are at my standard or better. I fully expected tough races against many others, but what I wasn’t prepared for the sheer physicality I’d be facing in such meets. With 30 or 40 runners fighting to be at the front of a race on race courses that are only wide enough for 5 or 6 bodies, pushing, jostling, and elbows are all part of the game. Being caught off guard for this nuance in competition left me “psyched out” and unable to perform at my best for my first few races, before eventually learning how to hold my ground, and sometimes throw an elbow or two, when the situation called for it.
American colleges are known worldwide for their parties – just ask any of the athletes involved in the recently concluded World Junior Athletics Championships, many of whom were asking where the nearest college party was the moment they were done with their events. Upon getting to know my new college teammates at the University of Oregon, I was soon introduced to typical American college parties – late nights, cards, dancing, and alcohol. While I always enjoyed spending time with my friends and teammates, this type of lifestyle was, needless to say, not very beneficial for improving athletic performance. Hence came the challenge of how to start saying no to invites to social events without being labeled as rude or aloof. Transitioning to a new social environment was an extremely important part of my relocation to the University of Oregon. Had I not figured things out early on, this new social environment could have had negative ramifications on my athletic performance.
Joining Team Run Eugene with Coach Ian Dobson at the helm also introduced me to a new training philosophy and schedule. Whilst I only used to train 4-5 times a week in Singapore, Ian wanted me to get my mileage up by running nearly every day, sometimes twice a day. Intensity-wise, I used to do the bulk of my workouts at race pace back home, but Ian trained me differently here, assigning workouts that were regularly slower than race pace, or faster than race pace with a long rest. Doing so, I believed, allowed me to develop different energy systems and “gears” as an athlete, which turned me into a more versatile and savvy racer.
With Ian, I also started doing Strength and Conditioning (S&C) sessions twice a week, on Mondays and Thursdays (the days before track workouts). This initially left me sore and tight on workout days, and it took me weeks to get used to it. However, when I finally adapted to the sessions, I realized that I felt much better ion weeks leading up to a race and on race day itself, by simply cutting back on the S&C sessions. I credit the increased core strength and stability as being big factors in my improvement under this new training schedule, but it could have easily have gone the other way if I was not patient to see the results, and instead got frustrated about having to do S&C sessions the day before big workouts.
All in all, the transitions an athlete has to go though over a career can be plentiful, and they often happen away from the public eye. Spectators may often see a poor result in competition and automatically assume the athlete is a failure at their sport. However, they might be better to instead wonder if that athlete is perhaps simply struggling with transitions, like any other person would. Transitions can indeed make or break an athlete’s career. The slightest help an athlete receives during those difficult times can be pivotal in defining the rest of their career.
Author: Rui Soh Yong
In this episode of SCI Talk, we are joined by Bob Scalise – Harvard University’s Director of Athletics – to discuss the role of Athletic Directors and Administrators in intercollegiate Athletics. Scalise shares his experience and insight regarding the issues surrounding college sports, and how the nations’s top university implements athletics as part of their holistic education.
About Bob Scalise:
Bob Scalise was introduced as Harvard’s Nichols Family Director of Athletics in July 2001 after five years as associate dean and senior executive officer of the Harvard Business School. Scalise, the seventh person to hold the director of athletics post at Harvard, oversees the nation’s largest Division I athletics program with 42 varsity sports, 63 club programs, more than 1,200 intercollegiate athletes and a broad array of WELLNESS and recreation programs and facilities. In 13 years as director of athletics, Scalise has seen Harvard win 16 national team championships and 97 Ivy League titles, including a school-record 14 conference crowns in both the 2004-05 and 2013-14 seasons. While Harvard puts special emphasis on Ivy League championships, the department has had considerable success on a national level under Scalise by winning team and/or individual national championships in six of the last eight seasons.
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