As an Upper Elementary Guide, working with students from 9 to 12 years old, I am often confronted with, and confront my students with, the oncoming doom of puberty and adolescence. My job is to present the final gauntlet of human experience before they either forget it all or don’t want to hear anything resembling advice from anyone ever! UGH! (Capturing such angst in writing is the sign of true genius, or madness, both of which I am lacking). What I have seen trending in my years as a teacher is that students…children…are often hitting puberty before they have had a chance to fully secure confidence in themselves that should alleviate some of the confusion and chaos that follows. Adding to the physiological mess of it all are the increased social demands, real or perceived, that make a scuffle a brawl.
How then does this affect our young athletes and their ability to manage school, social life, and a competitive field? How do we recognize the signs of psychological burnout and misdirection and its impact on the fragile emotional component in regards to sport? How do we resist our urge to (metaphorically) strangle the living daylights out of them and attempt to contact that scared, confused, and eager young adult that got lost in the big scary world?
It is going to take an investigation into Ego (of which I will provide a brief glimpse) and an attempt to highlight the urgency of supporting these creatures at an early age, especially ones who plan to participate in any competitive field.
The Freudian Slip-pery Slope
Sigmund Freud often gets a bad rap. (Or does he? Do people still talk about him? Has the public’s opinion changed?) We aren’t here to discuss anything more than his theory of the Three Stooges of personality: the id, the ego, and the super-ego. In short, the id represents basic instincts and impulses and is impulsive and irrational. (Study trick: use all words that start with “i” to remember what the id is). The super-ego strives for perfection and achievement of morals; one’s conscience. The ego attempts to operate between these two forces, balancing impulses (id) and inhibitions (super-ego) while maintaining rationality and testing reality.
At this point, you may be confused, asleep, both, or worse…left wanting more. (For those of you who feel this final way I will include some resource links at the end). To narrow the focus of our purpose, the Ego is driven by the id, but attempts to find was to express these desires in a socially acceptable way. Now, let’s superimpose that on the generic definition of “ego”: a person’s sense of self-esteem or self-importance.
Obviously, mixing a splash of Freud with anything will take it up a notch, so I want to caution against a full marriage of these two ideas. However, if we identify the ego of a young athlete as a mix of both of these thought-camps, we are left with an explosive combination that explains the dramatic swings they are capable of experiencing and expressing.
The New Student-Athlete
Especially true for middle and high school student-athletes, life can be demanding, confusing, exhausting, confusing, and demanding. (Exactly). Not only do they face adolescence, but now navigation of a new, expanded social network, an array of external pressures and expectations, and increased exposure to their peers’ performances. The headline match-up becomes:
Ego Development vs Ego Protection
For a teenage athlete, this is the epitome of a zero sum game. Already in a constant, delicate state, there are still many external factors to consider. Has previous performance garnered high-praise such as local or national ranking? Has a depth-chart reflected an appropriate and realistic fish-to-pond ratio? Has a social group constructed a pedestal? Have parents and family members provided a support system that reflects an actual potential? Some of these external factors are also internally sparked. Has the athlete created a social media presence that accurately depicts their skill level? Does the athlete remain humble and driven or do they seek acknowledgement and notoriety? Where does the balance tip between looks and performance?
Does anyone envy this new breed? Would anyone choose to enter into this melting pot of passion, personality, and profile?
What Does It Mean For Coaches?
How many interactions can you remember with your athletes that made you cringe? Those “non-traditional” young athlete responses that look and feel more like a multi-million dollar athlete disagreeing with him multi-million dollar coach about how the game should be played? Those tantrums and emotionally (I’m really running out of synonyms for “fragile” at this point) disparate instances demonstrating Pride and Shame within a moment’s time?
Of course, we are encountering these student-athletes at their most vulnerable, in an arena that they may have created as a haven! If they struggle to keep pace with the image they have promoted of themselves within their sport, then they will undoubtedly react to protect that image. As a result, our best athletes are frequently the least coach-able, and dangerously, the least reachable.
It doesn’t help that their professional counterparts, also more exposed and publicized than ever before, are experiencing and demonstrating the shift to a “gotta look out for me” mindset even within team sports. (I don’t envy the history and mismanagement that has led to the business side of sports creating such animosity). But we need to improve our ability to not just coach, but teach and mentor as well, even when, especially when, we are closest to losing our tempers with our athletes.
How Do We Help Foster Personal Success?
Empathy is the first step in not kicking these athletes off the team. Minor joke, major point. We may not have all gone through that time of life with the same variables in play, but we have all gone through it. We have the hindsight to look back and understand its value, and recognize the coaches and teachers that meant the most to us during that struggle. We now have the opportunity to be those mentors.
Demonstrating the abandonment of Ego Protection in favor of Ego Development can benefit all parties involved. To show our palms to our athletes can help them see us as champions of their growth, not obstacles to it.
Open communication is valuable, but we need to remember that we may just be more static to all the noise they are attempting to manage. Listening may be something that few of those other influences are offering. Remember, all of their peers are probably going through the same issues at the same time. It is rare for those young adults to have the maturity to sit down and give each other the opportunity to speak with someone genuinely listening to what they have going on.
Finally, remember that regardless of your psychoanalytical leanings, they are going through some internal battles. They may reveal a lot of their challenges and struggles through the opportunity of sport. As always, we must observe, adjust, and coach, in all of our unique deliveries and approaches. On any given day, the biggest competition they are facing may not be the game on the schedule, and our jobs are about much more than wins on the court.
Own Your I
Additional Resources:
Google search: Id, ego, super-ego; Freud; Psychoanalysis; Ego