Imagine being the starting quarterback of an NFL team in your rookie season. Then, in your second season you help them reach their first playoff appearance since 1995, and in subsequent seasons you lead your team to the AFC Championship game. The athlete that fits this description is none other than NFL All-Pro quarterback Josh Allen. Undoubtedly, he is one of the bests of current times and a gem for the Buffalo Bills football team. But a star like this wasn’t always on the scouts’ radar. Even after having a good senior high school season, Josh was not considered for the highest level of college football because the scouts thought he couldn’t “handle” the step up. After attending Reedley Junior College for a year, he finally received a scholarship to play for the University of Wyoming. He continued to perform phenomenally over the last few years and has shown scouts that he has the mental skills to perform consistently at an elite level.
On the flip side, there are several incidents when all-star athletes have surrendered to the immense pressure of their sport. One famous incident happened during the 2006 FIFA World Cup Finals between France and Italy. At the end stages of the game, former French captain, and football icon Zinedine Zidane was sent off the field with a red card for head-butting Marco Materazzi of Italy in the chest. Zidane did not participate in the penalty shootout and Italy won it 5–3 crowning them World Champions. Zidane later confessed that his actions resulted from provocation and regrets his behavior during his farewell World Cup match.
What Should We Look For?
What are the differences between athletes (regarding their mental skills) when they perform at their best versus when they don’t? Recently, sport psychology professor Dr. Natalie Durant-Bush and colleagues (2022) published an article examining athlete performance and found that the most important mental skills for consistent elite athlete performances can be grouped into three different categories. The first category is called Fundamental, which consists of motivation, confidence, and resilience. The next category found was Self-Regulation, which looks at how an athlete manages their stress and emotions and their level of self-awareness. The last category is Interpersonal, involving an athlete’s leadership and teamwork abilities in addition to their communication and relationship with coaches.
So How Should We Measure What We Are Looking For?
Recruiters, scouts, and coaches of sports teams have long understood the importance of these mental skills; however, they rarely assess athletes for them before they make a decision/selection. They often put potential athletes through an assortment of physical and technical tests (e.g., strength, speed, and agility drills), and when they do assess for athlete mental skill when recruiting they often use tests that are easily faked (i.e., self-report measures) or use tests that are used in business/education settings and have nothing to do with measuring mental skills in sports. For example, the NFL used the Wonderlic cognitive test to assess potential draft picks starting in 1970 and kept using it until 2021. Ironically, that test was not developed for athletes. It was designed for the corporate world to give businesses more profound knowledge regarding their prospective employees. What could be the flaws and possible impact if something is improperly used for fifty years? Recently the NFL has brought in a new cognitive test called S2 to its combine. The S2 test assesses an athlete for spatial awareness, motor sequencing, and distraction/impulse control. A percentile score is given by evaluating how fast the athlete can respond to that information. The information that the athlete is given through the S2 assessment is also not sport-specific. Questions generally show shapes on a screen and ask the athlete to recognize and recall the shapes. Unfortunately, it still does not examine most of the mental skills mentioned above (e.g., confidence, resilience, interpersonal factors) and several athletes have skipped taking the test because of possible inaccuracies and leaked test results.
So How Should We Measure Them Properly?
If this blog has created problems regarding the understanding of athletes’ mental skills, it offers a solution too. HeadSet has created a new Situational Judgement Test in Sport that is a first of its kind. This test consists of different situations and asks an athlete to rate how effective or ineffective the solutions to those situations are on a scale of 1 (being the least effective) to 5 (being the most effective). These situations account for everything an athlete goes through before, during, and after competition. The best part of HeadSet’s SJTS is that research has found that faking has less impact on SJTs than self-report inventories (such as personality tests). SJTs’ format makes correct answers appear less apparent to athletes and is thus less susceptible to distortion/faking. Also, all of the questions are focused on situations that athletes actually face in their sport.
Here is an example of an SJTS item.
During your competition/game you are feeling fatigued. Your decrease in energy is impacting your ability to focus. Please rank the effectiveness of each of the 5 following courses of action in order from 1 (the most effective to improve future performance) to 5 (the least effective to improve future performance).
– You use specific words to help you believe that you will get through the fatigue.
– Expect that the feeling of fatigue will not get better, and you just accept it.
– Tell yourself that everything happens for a reason. Distractions are just part of the game. You will use your refocusing routine to get back to the task at hand.
– Don’t pay attention to the fatigue. Keep your mind focused on the outcome of the competition/game.
– You decide to stop competing and you ask for a break to bring your energy level back up.
By being able to use a test that is reliable, valid, and focuses on sport-specific situations, sports teams can now make better decisions. The two links below are good examples of how high the stakes are when it comes to recruitment and selection. Currently, Division 1 football teams spend upwards of a million dollars on recruiting each year but can gain a healthy return on the investment by choosing the right student-athlete.
https://watchstadium.com/this-is-how-much-it-costs-to-land-one-of-college-footballs-top-recruiting-classes-07-24-2019/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2020/04/18/how-much-is-5-star-recruit-worth-college-football-program-study-says-650000-per-year/
To learn more about the HeadSet’s SJTS and its use in athlete recruitment and development, please go to https://www.headsetsports.com/situational-judgement-test/
References
Durand-Bush, N., Baker, J., van den Berg, F., Richard, V. and Bloom, G. (2022). The gold medal profile for sport psychology (GMP-SP), Journal of Applied Sport Psychology, https://doi.org/10.1080/10413200.2022.2055224
https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/agency-directs-nfl-draft-prospects-to-skip-cognitive-tests-year-after-c-j-strouds-s2-test-drama-per-report/
