Research directed toward mental health has skyrocketed over the past decade, and with that, more teams across all sports are beginning to invest in their athletes’ mental health.
The Toronto Maple Leafs, along with most other National Hockey League teams, have become invested in the impacts that the psychological process can have on sports and high-performance athletes.
For professional athletes, every move they make becomes sensationalized. Their wins and losses are placed under a microscope, and the public puts immense pressure on them to perform. This is unsustainable for most, leaving a load too heavy to bear for most athletes.
Leafs star and one of the best hockey players in the world, Auston Matthews, stated in a 2020 interview with the Spittin’ Chiclets podcast that the introduction of Greg Harden, a motivational speaker and life coach, and Dr. Meg Popovic, a player welfare expert, helped drastically improve the lives of professional athletes, both on and off the ice.
Matthews implied most superstars utilize mental health coaches on some level, citing Nathan MacKinnon, a star centreman for the Colorado Avalanche, who also benefits from the services of a sports psychologist.
While it’s true professional athletes are subject to more public scrutiny, an argument can be made that there’s more internalized pressure within the minds of collegiate athletes, who are constantly competing and fighting to prove themselves as worthy of professional deals and professional contracts.
This has led to many post-secondary programs in the United States and Canada employing sports psychologists to boost the performance of their student-athletes.
Queen’s fits this curve, with Becky Haist serving as the Mental Health Coach for all of Queen’s Varsity Athletics.
Haist completed her Master of Clinical Health Counselling education and training with an NCAA program in Virginia after earning her Kinesiology degree from Western University in London, Ont. Haist has also served four separate International University Sports Federation (FISU) World Universiade Games, citing her ion for seeing people reach their potential as the main driver behind her career choice.
When working with collegiate student-athletes, you have to deal with more than just sport—students have to balance class, practice, training (strength and conditioning), and film review, on top of travelling across the province frequently.
This workload is incredibly demanding, especially for athletes who aren’t being paid to play but are competing with the hope of earning a future opportunity where they can get paid for their efforts.
In addition to Haist, Queen’s employs a sports psychologist, Dr. Hannah Marchand. Whereas Haist handles the overall lives of the student-athletes, Dr. Marchand’s work primarily deals with on-the-field problems.
Sports psychologists work alongside athletes looking to rehabilitate from concussions, injuries, motivation, and emotion management. They provide their athletes with the skills needed to thrive in high-pressure situations, as well as the tools needed to stay focused on improving during the offseason.
There’s no doubt the focus on mental health and psychological performance in the realm of sports has immense benefits for the subjected athletes, and it’s going to be exciting to see how this new field will continue to develop and help the landscape of sport evolve.
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