One of the best parts of my job working in the high school setting is seeing so many different sports and performances. In the fall and spring seasons, it's not uncommon for me to be around five or more teams in a given week. With that comes a snapshot of each sport and a cumulative mental model collage of high school sports as a whole. Sometimes I notice themes, and one of them over the last two to three years, in particular, has bothered me. Both in the moment and after games, the reaction to success seemed to lack noticeable joy. There are little celebration, appreciation, and congratulations. Few smiles. High fives. And hugs. No, the look and feel are pretty often more of relief than joy. Relief from what? I think pressure. Imagine, if you will, young people are balloons, and the pressure to perform is the air constantly blowing up the balloons. If you're bold, you can even picture your favorite young athlete in balloon form. The pressure builds and builds until it is on the verge of popping. Then, a goal is scored, a game is won, and some of the pressure is relived. The air is let out a bit, and then it immediately starts to fill up the balloon again. Any number of root causes could be there.
High school athletics today is different than in the past. In some ways, for better, and some probably for worse. The time demands have increased exponentially. So has the skill level. The expectations on so many young people and of parents have shifted to investment in the future rather than enjoyment of the experience of the now. There are many different reasons young people participate in high school athletics, and I'm not one to tell them why they should. I can say that regardless of the intentions of the athletes, teams, and coaches, there is room for joy. In fact, even for the ultra-competitive, I'd argue that joy is a competitive advantage. Are people more likely to give great effort, risk failure, and buy into something bigger than themselves (all elements of a high-performance culture) in an environment they enjoy being in or in one they dread showing up to?
I've learned in the doctoral program I'm in and through experience is that an opinion isn't enough. For change to occur, performance to improve, and sustained change, we need to look beyond our own ideas to see the whole picture. That's both for accuracy's sake and to build necessary buy-in. None of us can do it all on our own. I thought there was a lack of joy but was there? Before exploring the question a little further, I first sent something to our Captain Class student-athlete leaders asking what they wanted to focus on for a project for the year. The options were joy, sleep, and parent behavior. Sleep got some votes, but it was clear the group's choice was joy.
The next step, a couple of months ago, was to meet with a couple of groups of Captain Class members. With the first group I asked them what they thought and about an idea for the next steps. The group unanimously did agree that there was more we could do to help our athletes experience joy. We decided to start with a survey for student-athletes and coaches to help move beyond the opinions of one or a few. The student-athlete survey was sent out through Captain Class members and coaches. We ultimately got 158 responses with some level of participation from every team at the school, except for one. The results were interesting.
There's an infographic accompanying the blog with main findings, so I'm not going to bother regurgitating them here. Instead, I'll share takeaways I had from the results, and what I think they mean moving forward for the project. The first takeaway is that, at least according to the results, there is more hope than naturally cynical Coach E realized. Almost 75% of those surveyed said they experience joy in their sport daily or almost every day. That's a pretty solid foundation to start with. It's reflective of positive experiences and opportunities still for growth. A second thing that stood out to me is that joy, although overall a mixture of personal success and team, skews much more in the team components of the experience. For whatever reason, there's a tendency to think young people only care about themselves. If you start a tweet with, "In today's society," you're nearly guaranteed to go viral amongst high school athletics social media. Sometimes we assign intention for behavior that either isn't intentional or isn't accurate. The findings reflect young people care a lot more about the team than we may give them credit for. It is also clear many do care about individual success too. I think that's okay. We and me can coexist. Again, we're challenged to be better by moving beyond our opinion.
The final major takeaway is what brings young people joy within their sport. A second group of Captain Class members met with our strength coach and me to review the results and note themes we saw in the answers. It was a lot of fun, and the Captain Class members did a great job. Unfortunately, someone lost a picture with the themes we came up with (that someone was me, but I don't want to call myself out in front of the whole group reading. I'd rather address the mistake with myself 1-on-1 because I know I am a soft snowflake). I did my best to recreate the themes in looking at the results again. Six emerged. They were success, the team, growth mindset, others related to self, fun, and coaches. Success was the number one answer, and it ranged from winning to making plays individually. Made sense. You spend a lot of time putting in the effort and want to see it pay off in the form of results. There's nothing wrong with that. The team was a close second, and the category was all about being part of a group. Again, makes sense. People want to belong. The fact that success and team so overwhelmingly stood out, in my opinion, speaks highly to the level of competitive young people we have who also yearn for a quality team atmosphere. The growth mindset category included answers about improvement, difficulty, and challenge. I found the number of responses that fit into the theme to be pretty encouraging and indicative of an area to help others. The final three themes were others related to self, fun, and coaches. I lump them together because they didn't show up nearly as much as the others. Of note is was that fun and joy are two different things. Also, although coaches did not appear a lot, I think it's important to acknowledge how crucial they are to both success and team. Coaches create the environment, after all.
So, where do we go from here? I'm not sure! Sharing the results is an important step for sure. At first, I had plans to do interviews with student-athletes and create a video. Time hasn't allowed for that, though, and probably won't. One hope is adults involved in sports see the clear idea that success and being part of a team are the two most common elements that bring joy to the athletic experience, as an opportunity to mold an environment that allows for both. I'd love to see if there is a correlation between those who find joy in more intrinsic values like improvement and challenge and how often they experience joy. Additionally, we'll be brainstorming further as a group. Sometimes increasing joy can be less about creating it and more about noticing it. We'll be looking at centers around helping our athletes recognize the joy already present in their experiences. We'll also be thinking of ways to notice joy, celebrate it more, and appreciate those who bring it to their teams as well. The process has already led to some interesting findings that have forced me to think and rethink. Still, ultimately the information is only as valuable as what we do with it moving forward. Hopefully, that will be helping our young people to perform better and to enjoy the experience as well. Regardless, I will keep you posted!
Here are some of the results of the survey that I felt were most pertinent to the blog, made anonymous: The Results. Questions about the results? Send them my way. Ideas for how to use the results? I'd love to hear them. Do you have something you're already doing with your teams? Again, I'd love to know. Joy is something all young people deserve to experience in their athletic journeys, and the more we can do to help them the better.
