Confidence is a crucial element of athletic performance. Athletes who doubt their abilities or fear the ramifications of failure may perform at a much lower level than their physical talent would normally dictate.
Conversely, athletes who feel more secure in their abilities and have a positive way to deal with failures can play at a much higher level than their physical talent alone would suggest they are capable of.
Seems like a simple enough concept, right? Positive emotions and low anxiety equal higher performance; negativity and high anxiety equal lower performance.
But where does that positive mind-set and confidence come from when the results of your efforts are consistently negative?
The ability to reach that mind-set is an elusive trait known in sport as “mental toughness,” the ability to compartmentalize or put aside setbacks or negative results and still perform at an optimum level.
The men’s basketball team, with a roster made up primarily of freshmen and sophomores, is still developing that quality, says Oregon head coach Ernie Kent. This season’s freshman class is among the highest-rated recruiting classes in Kent’s 10-year tenure as head coach at Oregon. That high rating comes from the success these players have already achieved at the high school and AAU levels.
It is precisely that success that makes Kent believe the lessons of a winless round of conference play, while obviously not desirable, can be an important formative experience for his young team.
“They’re really not mentally tough yet, because everything has been so easy for them. They’ve been the best players on the best teams and everybody was patting them on the back,” he said. “Now let’s see how tough you really are. Let’s go through some adversity.”
According to an article by Bowling Green State University’s Vikki Krane, published by the Association for Applied Sports Psychology (AASP), players maintain confidence and low anxiety about performance when coaches help them focus on playing well and set realistic goals to improve specific skills. This helps them feel proud of their performance, even though their team may not have won the contest.
“I continue to tell them their failures are not failures, they’re just stepping stones to their victories,” Kent said. “If you look at all great teams and great players you will go back and find that there’s some mental toughness there that has allowed them to achieve and come through adversity … My job is to show them how to do that. Regardless of what has happened here, regardless of everything coming on the periphery we stay focused, we stay calm and we just keep moving forward and getting tougher.”
Another source of confidence for athletes who are seeing negative results is a strong support system within their team, according to the published research of Minnesota State University’s Kimberly Harpin. Experiencing adversity with teammates helps athletes better deal with similar situations in the future, thus achieving progressively better results.
“Everybody goes through adversity, teams and players, it’s just a matter of you keeping a positive mind, staying focused and knowing that things are going to get better,” said junior guard Tajuan Porter. “We keep each other up and keep a positive environment. We just feed off each other.”
Oregon’s recent losses at Cal and Oregon State certainly count as progressively better results, representing the Ducks’ two narrowest margins of defeat in the first round of conference play. Porter said these close results and the ensuing film study have helped his team’s confidence immensely. “We could see it. We were right there,” he said. “We had a great two days of practice today and yesterday so we just got to keep that positive spirit going.”
Kent agreed with Porter’s assessment of the team’s practices this week, and the effort and focus has encouraged Kent’s view of his team’s growth through the losses.
“They are getting better because they are getting tougher and they are getting tougher mentally. That’s why they can come out here and practice the way they have practiced the last couple of days, where their enthusiasm has just been off the roof, because they’re starting to feel it,” Kent said. “If we can try and get them to a breakthrough now, they’ll just take off.”
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