Event Title

Confidence in College Athletes

Presenter Information

Kimberly Halpin, Minnesota State University, Mankato

Location

CSU 201

Start Date

22-4-2008 10:30 AM

End Date

22-4-2008 12:15 PM

Student's Major

Communication Studies

Student's College

Arts and Humanities

Mentor's Name

Warren Sandmann

Mentor's Department

Communication Studies

Mentor's College

Arts and Humanities

Description

I researched the processes used by intercollegiate athletes to maintain confidence throughout their sports career, including how they prepared for games/competitions, how they dealt with pressures, and how other factors affected their performance and mental thought process during games. For this research, I created and administered an online survey. I found that many things gave the athletes confidence in themselves to play their sport such as· family, teammates, self, coach, faith, preparation, supporters in general, friends, doing well, and previous feelings of accomplishment/success. However, some things also lowered the respondents' confidence levels such as failing, negativity, being yelled at, negative coaches, "dad's negative perspective", penalizing mistakes, poor performances, consecutive bad games, bad practices, and body pains. Results imply that athletes, for the most part, seem confident and optimistic. Almost every response showed that the person answering the question has had struggles in the past when engaging in sports, but was able to overcome them with the support of teammates, coaches, family, and friends.