Enter Sandman: Sports Psychology Discussions

  By: Connor Sand             In the paired podcast, Micah Kaczor took me through the past year of his baseball career which featured an impressive senior season at East Tennessee State, going undrafted/unsigned by a Major League organization, playing independent league baseball, signing with the Colorado Rockies organization in the middle of summer, going to 2020 Spring Training, and then getting released as teams released many minor league players due to the impact of Covid-19. He has faced many obstacles in the past 15 months, yet he traveled across the country to train at Driveline Baseball for 2 weeks just to give himself the best chance going into the 2021 season as a free agent. After being released in May, Micah took a week to reflect on what he wanted to do. He had gone through so much to get to affiliated professional baseball only for it to be taken away by an unforeseen pandemic. The recurring thought during the week was how he felt wh...

By: Connor Sand While  the physical rehabilitation of an athlete after injury is obviously important for their return to sport, the psychological side of injury rehabilitation plays just as important of a role. In talking with Joel Condreay on the paired podcast, this became even more evident as I was able to hear his thought process while navigating the first six months of his Tommy John rehab after tearing his Ulnar Collateral Ligament. Once athletic injury has been conceptualized as a stressor in the life of an athlete, they then evaluate or appraise that stressor in accordance with personal or situational factors (Williams, 2015).The response to injury comes from how the athlete is able to perceive the injury; this cognitive appraisal they develop determines the emotional response which then determines the following behavior in their injury rehabilitation. The way an athlete perceives their injury sets the tone for their entire injury rehabilitation.    Cognitive Appr...