Looking for young athletes.
This is a quote from the famous book, search for man written by Viktor Frankl. It is also the focus of this section. Frankl was an Austrian psychologist who survived 31 horrific months in a Nazi labor camp. His above mentioned book is required reading in many schools and colleges.
Reading that book (for the third time) strengthened my understanding of the importance of empowering young athletes to find meaning in their lives outside of sports. Helping each young person to discover their uniqueness personality it is of great importance for the well-being of their lives.
The inspiration for this piece came from Frankl, along with my sympathy for the young people I know who are lost and confused in their struggle to discover the full meaning of life.
Young people are not only athletes.
Experience and understanding of Viktor Frankl
Without detailing the horrors Frankl experienced during his incarceration at Auschwitz and Nazi Dachau concentration camps, suffice it to say that he managed to survive indescribable mental and physical abuse during his working days. Starvation, disease and physical beatings. Forced outdoor labor in tattered rags and shoes full of holes in cold temperatures. Testimony about the torture and killing of camp prisoners.
He survived all this with a pre-established meaning in his life and the ability to enrich that meaning from the pain and suffering he suffered while incarcerated. According to Frankl’s observations, many people who did not survive the labor camps had no meaning in their lives. Some of them agreed suicide or simply gave up, withered away, succumbed to an early death.
Frankl’s experiences in those labor camps inspired him to develop a new school of psychological intervention called logotherapy. It’s name is derived from “logos” which is a Greek word meaning. It is an approach to therapy that focuses on helping people discover and define their personal meaning in life.
Frankl published many books focusing on logotherapy. There is no detailed description of logotherapy here.
My professional experience and understanding
I have worked with many young athletes as a psychologist and coach for 50 years and witnessed the devastation young people experience when they sports career doesn’t live up to their expectations, especially when it ends. Underperformance, withdrawals, minimal opportunities to play in college, failure to make the team they tried out for, injuries, etc.
Frustration and sadness are perfectly normal feelings when the above happens. The total destruction of the experience is another story, indicating an excessive or complete dependence on their sport or activity for personal meaning.
Young people who experience this devastation, especially when their high school or college athletic careers are interrupted or over, often report a void in their lives and a sense of direction for the future. Some take up bodybuilding and try hard to maintain an athletic figure. Many of these retired athletes are in dire straits depression and pattern of regular activity of meaning.
They are lost in a sad situation where they don’t know who they are and have no direction for their future.
Adults contribute to this mess
Given how much of their lives revolve around sports from an early age, such destruction should come as no surprise. Forced to devote the whole year to sports due to excessive zeal of adults. For such mentors, this is a possible sign that the meaning of their lives is a little narrow.
On the parent’s end, placing their children in this situation shows that they are just doing what the surrounding families are doing and/or believe that it will secure a college career (or professional sports) for their child. That’s unlikely, given that only six percent of athletes advance from high school sports to college sports, according to NCAA statistics.
While the short-term intentions of such coaches and parents may be good, they fail to realize the potential long-term damage they can do to young people. All of the above, plus overuse injury, burnwithdrawal from sports and other harmful phenomena detailed in this previous article You are much more than an athlete.
Forward
Something needs to be done to correct and prevent the pervasive problems described here and experienced by many young athletes in today’s youth sports culture.
The next piece discusses approaches and strategies to help young athletes and other youth understand what is important to them outside of sports in order to improve and prevent the problems discussed above.
