Purdue game-- coaching seperating does not equal motivating

This past couple of days I was on the road with the women's basketball team. Being team manager has given me the power of observing the sport from the outside, but from as close to the inside as one can be. I understand the players when they get upset about the little things or have problems with the coach or a game or a bad practice, or can feel it when tension builds or they give up because I have been through all that. What is most interesting to me though, is to hear all of it and be able to look at it in an objective way.
The girls got beat really bad yesterday at Purdue, and I could see it coming. It started with a bad practice in which the coach was yelling at the team and I could see them looking defeated instead of turning it around. The starting five on the team has just been switched and this has completely changed team dynamic. My roommate on the trip was sick and coach was not giving her any alternative options: she would go hard in pre-game and start the game. All of these little things were mounting and Purdue being the #6 team in the country was not going to help.
The coach has been making all of these decisions which change team dynamic, and I have come to realize that if I ever coach, I think that keeping the team together is the most important thing. Instead of seperating the players, everything has to be open and truthful and all adjustments should be explained. The best coach I ever had told the truth about everything. He would sit us down after every game and tell us what we did right and wrong. He always called everyone out individually and would announce to the team when he was going to make changes and why. This made it so the team always knew what was going on and so they were able to stay together through it all.

trash-talking/ sledging??

In class yesterday we started to talk about the aspect of talking trash in sports. I think that the mental part of sports is extremely interesting. To me, sports are at least as mental as physical, if not more mental. If you are in the wrong mind set for whatever reason, you will perform poorly. The most talented athletes are always able to get into a zone on the court or the field that blocks out everything else except their goal and their game. Sometimes you can actually tell that someone is "in the zone" by the almost possesed way in which they are playing. I can point to a few of my basketball games where I felt like the hoop belonged to me and like no matter what I shot I could not miss. This does not occur very often for me, but I would argue that for the most elite athletes, it happens much more frequently.
"The zone" can also have the opposite effect on an athlete. If your mind is on something else or if someone is bugging you, it becomes much more difficult for your body to do its job. An example of this is when one of the other players is able to throw you off of your game. They can do this by talking smack, being extra physical, or even just looking at you in a certain way. Many athletes are very susceptible to the "sledging," and it can screw them up. Other athletes say it motivates them. In class we talked about how it is an important part of the game because it teaches you to become stronger mentally, and turn it into motivation. I believe that this is why sports are just as mental as physical. Even if you are not flustered by trash talk or the coach yelling at you or the fans booing, athletes are constantly forced to push things out of their brain so that they can focus. Even your own thoughts effect your play every second. If you are having a bad day and you do not feel like playing, you have to mentally push yourself to pick up the intensity. If you miss a shot you have to re-center your own thoughts and not let yourself get into a slump.
Pressure is also a mental feeling that gets turned into a physical result. Everyone reacts differently to pressure, and pressure can be put on an athlete by their coach, their team, themselves, the fans, or just a big moment. For me, I used to put a lot of pressure on myself, and I had to teach myself not to get really nervous before every game. If a coach added pressure to that and had extra expectations, it would actually help, because I would focus on that instead of my own pressure.
There are tons of social science projects that one could do to look at mental effects in sports. It is a key component of sports, whether it be trash talking, your own mind or pressure of some kind. Hopefully an athlete's mentality can be manipulated to push them to do better in a game, or get them in "the zone," but all those detractions from the game seem to end up to be just as important, if not more, than the game itself.

Minnesota Sports....echhh...

I was excited to move to a new city and get a fresh set of sports teams. Although I will always loyally cheer for the Twinkies, Vikes, T-wolves, gophers and the Wild, I have to say that Minnesota teams have a nack for choking and letting people down. The twins this year were actually a fabulous suprise, and although they got trounced in the playoffs, I maintain that they did better than they should have. The Vikings have become one of the most depressing teams in football. We had that incredible season where we went 15-1 and that song "welcome to Miami" was written practically just for us, and then Gary Anderson( who had never missed one) missed that field goal in OT ....why?? The Timberwolves have the NBA's best player in KG yet we can never find him any kind of support or another go-to that can work with him. Ever since Stephon Marbury left us we have been jinxed, and Kevin is just not Allen-Iverson-enough to do it on his own. My question is--what is it that makes teams choke? How much of sports actually is physical and how much has to do with our "minnesota-nice" teams not being able to toughen up and get the win? I know this sounds bitter but I am more just genuinely curious....how can one state be so good at choking?

first post

So, this being my first post, it seems I should contextualize my reasons for wanting to be in this class so that people can better understand the sports background that I come from. I have always loved sports, grew up in a sports family and always played sports. I played soccer, softball and ran track, and living in Minnesota, also loved and still love hockey. The sport I fell in love with was basketball and from first grade on I played all year round. During the summers I would go outside and shoot hundreds of freethrows and dribble around the block. I was captain through high school and just always loved the atmosphere that surrounded the game. The people who play basketball understand the atmosphere: the crowd, the uniforms, sitting on the bench, the huddle, the big games, the swoosh of a perfect shot, the game plan and your role as a player on any given team. I always have tried to observe and take in as much as that atmosphere as I can.
I am also a sociology major and love to observe different cultures and subcultures and how they work and their habits and traditions. Sports have some of the most fascinating subcultures to me and I wanted to further explore sports and the bigger mysteries of what they are and why people play them.
I am one of the managers of the women's basketball team here at NU and am really interested in the sociological aspects of sports and teams and why certain types of people like certain sports and what sports do for people in general. I would like to incorporate the world of sports into my career somehow and hope that this class will help me discover more.