This article is written by young athletes from the North of England who have come together to share their stories. including their experiences of the psychological pressures in competitive sport, working with applied practitioners and what they would like from practitioners in the future.

“I feel brave and ready to do the dive, but when I get on the board I flop and my emotions take over me, like stress, fear, sadness and much more” Gabriel, Springboard Diver, Aged 10

“So basically before a game especially an important game, like a final for example I often get very anxious about the game and have this sort of knotty feeling in my stomach because I’m worried about messing up and it costing my team the game and it’s always before the game and once the game starts it goes away. Having a sports psychologist would help my settle the nerves and possibly make me feel more confident about myself that I won’t mess up, this would help because I would go into the game feeling more confident and that may even make me play better during the game, it would also obviously help me remove that knotty anxious feeling as well” Ashley, Footballer, Aged 18

“Nerves affect my performance as they cause me to become unfocused and therefore I am unable to visualise dives going correctly. They also cause me to become shaky which means I am unable to execute dives correctly, due to the fact that I can’t maintain my balance on the board. I would like a sport psychologist to help me to understand the reason behind my nerves, both when training and competing, so that I can find a way of coping with them in order to improve my performance.” Shauna, Springboard Diver, Aged 17

“Diving is a very mentally demanding sport. Constantly I am having to overcome mental blocks and fears to perform new skills. Often I have spent long periods of time trying to overcome my fears of certain dives and it has resulted in less progress compared to someone who would not struggle with these mental blocks.  Sport psychology would make a large difference to someone like me as working with the brain and helping to find out how to overcome these fears would make a massive difference in a sport like diving. It would allow me to make faster progress and eventually move on to performing harder and more complex dives that will allow me to compete at a higher standard.
From a sport psychologist, I would probably want them to be friendly and welcoming and easy to talk to. This would make me more relaxed and mean I am more comfortable talking about ways in which my brain is thinking about these skills. I think someone who is open minded would also help as everybody thinks differently and the way to be able to overcome these fears will also be different to everybody. A sport psychologist would massively help an athlete like myself in a sport like diving due to its high mental demand.” David, Highboard Diver, Aged 14