Who's Got My Back? Part 1: The Team
In this three-part series, “Who’s Got My Back,” we will dive into three components of the support system for athletes: The Team, The Coach, and The Friends and Family. Each plays a different role in an athlete’s career, but their encouragement, feedback, and sacrifice are crucial in building a platform for which the athlete can utilize to help achieve their goals.
Within formal, academic research, the idea that an athlete’s relationship with his or her teammates can improve performance is significantly supported. More importantly, “teammate relationship” is consistently termed one of the best predictors of flow state in athletes. If you are unfamiliar with flow state, it is an athletes’ ability to perform at an elite level, with minimal emotional deregulations, at a consistent rate. In other words, the relationship you have with your teammates plays a very important role in how you perform on the court, field, or track!
However, relationships with teammates don’t always have a positive influence. Every athlete experiences burnout at some point in their career. If you haven’t (you lucky duck!) burnout is basically physical and mental exhaustion, a negative attitude towards your sport, a lack of motivation to practice, and much more. Teammates can create a negative ego-involved environment, which is very conducive to burnout, or they can create a supportive learning-focused environment. Since athletes (even ones playing a solo sport like tennis) can spend a great deal of time in their peer-created environment, teammates are very influential in the longevity of an athlete’s career.
Now, it is impractical to believe that you will only have enjoyable, encouraging teammates throughout your career. Every athlete can tell you that some of their teammates “are like family,” but others grind their gears! And though you cannot control your teammates’ actions, attitudes or activities, you CAN control what type of teammate you want to be! How do I become the most loving, selfless, team-oriented player you might ask? Below are a few tips and tricks to help your teammates, and in turn, yourself, reach their potential.
Be grateful. This is probably the #1 tip for success as a teammate because no athlete has achieved greatness alone. Athletic success isn’t created in a vacuum and behind every world-class athlete, there is world-class support. Every goal scored, relay race run, or 3-pointer sunk was ultimately a team effort.
Be aware of your teammates’ well-being. This means not only watching her back when on the field (court or track) but also understanding her everyday baseline and being attuned to times she is “off”. This could indicate negative issues in her life outside of sports and your support within the team structure might really help.
Last but not least, let your play speak for itself. Being a great teammate does not mean that you have to be constantly outgoing and communicative. If that’s your M.O., great, but sometimes your teammates might need a quiet, steady rock who helps create an atmosphere of calm during the storm of a game.
While coaches, trainers, parents, and friends may play a role in athletic successes, your teammates are there experiencing every step of the way with you; every sprint, injury, win, and loss. The way your teammates treat you, and subsequently, how you treat your teammates, can make or break the drive to continue playing sports. We, as teammates, have a responsibility to be supportive in order to develop and build fierce and confident women athletes!