Team Psychologist

I have had several responses to my question about who wants info on my 2008-09 plans so that topic will be covered over the weekend when Carol is engrossed in some escapist novel and I am being ignored on my holiday.

Today I will touch on the addition to our program for the remainder of the season, team psychologists. We are adding a "team" of psychologists to work primarily with our Cadet teams, one male and one female. This will allow them to share ideas of how to approach common issues ie game readiness without enough games (that is what I am focusing on, training environment), while still leaving room to go in different directions.

Oddly enough both genders have a similar issue to address and they both brought it up on their own, away from the other team. The boys describe it as not being jerks and treating each other like sh-t. They have a macho aura that tends to prey on the weak - or who they see as weaker than them at the time. This is a genetic trait that is reinforced in an intense competitive setting if we don't deal with it each generation. The girls express it more softly as supporting one another and not being negative. They are struggling with the same sort of group dynamic but to be alpha female does not encourage being openly negative so it works below the surface.

It's good they all see the issue because it is common at this age, 13-15, as everyone establishes their place in the hierarchy. We all know that boys deal with this process differently - see a conflict, explode, move on. Girls do things in their own way; that often involves darkly embracing tension and playing with it. The blow up doesn't appear until it is far removed from the original problem and has developed rich and complex layers. So, 2 team approaches might be needed even if the issue is similar.

I won't go into what the teams do or the details of the work the psychologists undertake. I will discuss the impact the work has on training and competition, if any.