My work knows no vacations, there is no time of the year when sports and competitions stop. In the next few weeks there are the European table tennis championships, at the same time, the Italian sailing championships, while the girls’ tennis continue their tournaments and will now travel to North America. This is to talk about some of the sports I am involved in. It is a job that requires a strong dedication and interest in the lives of these athletes. It is work that is mostly done remotely. It is an almost daily commitment during competitions. These are collaborations that can last for years but also for a few months, especially when the families or the athletes/athletes bear the financial burden.
It’s a job, unfortunately, today based very much on the athletes’ stories, because it’s very rare to attend competitions. Before covid when I worked a lot with shooting with Italian athletes and foreign nationals the work is almost always in attendance, I would go to the most important competitions and you would live the experience with the team, being able to intervene at the precise moment when the need arose and to implement the mental routines pray.
Still, it remains a very interesting and helpful job. In particular, in recent years I have seen the great educational value that the sports psychologist can play with adolescent boys and girls 14 years old and up. They know nothing about how to approach competitions, the value of mistakes, how to learn, and more generally the rules of sports. No one teaches them these things while there is only an emphasis on physical fitness and technique, aspects that are obviously necessary but not sufficient to know how to compete and grow as a person.
If these aspects are missing, competitive sports at this age can be a source of insecurity. Sport is a school of life only if it teaches how to cope with difficulties and overcome obstacles, in this way developing the young person’s personality. Otherwise it will only be a form of technical expression without a soul.
