Focused Discussions: Room 2
Emotional Needs of Student-Athletes: Teaching Relationship Management and Emotional Intelligence
Focused Discussion Brianna Lynne Anderson, Kelly Bost
Athletes are immersed in a culture of aggression that does little to promote healthy relationships and emotional intelligence (EI). As emerging adults, collegiate student-athletes (SAs) are susceptible to underdeveloped self-regulatory skills and EI, affecting athletic performance, academic achievement, and interpersonal relationships. Preventative education can improve EI before dysregulation cycles are ingrained. In preliminary focus groups with current SAs, we found that many struggle to identify, understand, and manage emotions in both athletics and their daily lives. Based on these findings, we adapted two lessons from the Dibble Institute’s evidence-based Love Notes curriculum to address the most salient issues for SAs. These workshops have been delivered to SAs in their Freshmen CHAMPS Life Skills class in Summer and Fall 2017. Efforts were evaluated by SAs, and two primary themes emerged: knowledge of the topic improved after the workshops and more education on relationship management and emotional wellbeing was desired. Such feedback indicates a need to continue to build EI and relationships skills through programming. We need to identify other relevant emotion management topics and adaptation and development of workshop material that can be shared across collegiate campuses, beginning with a focused discussion among professionals at the Sport and Society Conference.
Making a Difference : A Mentoring Program Partnering a Collegiate Sports Team with an Inner City Public Middle School Team
Focused Discussion Melissa Falen
I would like to present my practical experiences in a mentoring program I started which involved pairing our collegiate women's lacrosse team with a Baltimore city public middle school team. The focused discussion would include the purpose, obstacles, challenges, and benefits of such a program. My purpose was two-fold. I wanted our players to "give back" and I wanted to contribute to attempts to diversify a sport which is one of the least diverse sports sponsored by the NCAA. While the women's participation in NCAA lacrosse has more than doubled since 2000, the % of African-American participation has only increased from 1.6% to 3.3% according to current NCAA data. I believe that a partnering program if adopted by numerous schools could encourage participation in sports like lacrosse in under-served communities. My experience involved working with coaches in the inner city schools, working with Parks and People, and with US Lacrosse. I obtained a grant from US lacrosse to support this partnership. The partnership involved our team traveling to the partnered middle school to give clinics and run practices with the middle school players. We also hosted the middle school team on our campus for practice sessions and play. Middle schoolers attended collegiate games and on one occasion the NCAA championship. We incorporated a tour with our admissions staff when players were on campus to introduce the middle schoolers to campus life and hopefully encourage interest in attending college. Through the course of this partnership, I was able to identify some best practices, as well as obstacles to success.
How the World Anti-Doping Code can turn Heroes into Villains
Focused Discussion Matthew D. Kaiser
As an international sports lawyer who specializes in representing athletes who have been accused of doping, I have experienced how sport and the structures put in place have impacted both athletes and fans alike. With the news about the Russian State-sponsored doping program breaking in 2014 and escalating leading up to the Rio and PyeongChang Olympic Games, society has established certain biases and preconceived notions about athletes who are accused of doping and do not fully appreciate the particular facts or the governing laws in place which can determine whether an athlete is guilty of an anti-doping rule violation and if so, how long his or her sanction will be. I would like to present on the practical applications of the World Anti-Doping Code, which is the conceptual framework all of the doping violations are based on. The unique circumstances of each case have made us reassess how the Code is structured or should be structured. The outcomes and takeaways from my experience are that not all athletes are cheaters and unfortunate circumstances have put them in this situation (bad advice from others, even doctors, or contaminated supplements). The implications from my work are that there clearly needs to be a reassessment of the sanctioning scale in the Code, athletes need to do more to protect themselves from doping violations, and society must take a moment to understand the circumstances involved before rushing to judgment about athletes accused of doping.
A Human Rights-based Approach to Sport: Improving Access to Sport through Human Rights on Community, Interpersonal, Policy and Global Levels
Focused Discussion Melissa Otterbein
In developed countries, youth sport participation remains a hallmark of childhood for most children of middle to higher income backgrounds. In lower-income countries as well as America’s low-income neighborhoods, sport access is limited. Data from the Aspen Institute of Sport and Society found that children from low-income households are half as likely to play one day’s worth of team sport than children from households earning at least $100,000. How do we make sport equitable for all, including those most often left out of sports participation, such as women, immigrants, people of color, refugees, and those who are differently-abled? Through a UN human rights framework, this focused discussion will discuss goals, processes, outcomes and strategies for coaches, policy makers, practitioners, researchers, and managers to apply a human rights-based approach to sport in order to increase access for all populations while contributing to community identity and development. Sports' contribution to the global Sustainable Development Goals will also be discussed to leave participants aware of empowering frameworks for a variety of contexts, both domestically in the US and globally. Attendees will be able to articulate how sports greatly contribute to global and community level development agendas.
The Collateral Consequences of Equipment in Gridiron Football
Focused Discussion Cullum Brownbridge
Sports equipment has evolved over time to both enhance performance and to reduce the risk of injury. Protective equipment is particularly important in contact sports where injuries are frequent. In American football, helmets and shoulder pads are two pieces of protective equipment which are strictly implemented to absorb hits of massive force to reduce the risk of head and upper body injuries respectively. While the risk of injury is reduced, the athlete's calculated perspective of risk is altered. This change in risk equilibrium has the unintended consequence of the individual foregoing caution and playing in a faster and more aggressive style. This altered behavior not only increases the individual's own risk to injury, but also puts other athletes who are on the receiving end of contact at greater risk themselves. This displacement of risk is particularly dangerous when an athlete is hit in an area that is unprotected and vulnerable, or in an area where the equipment is not as effective as perceived. Drawing on existing research and theories of risk in sport, this preliminary study will examine the relationships and potential disjuncture between sports equipment changes, athlete perceptions of injury risks, and actual injury risks, and will outline future directions for this research.
