A Little Anxiety Can Go a Long Way

Katilin Russo, a psychology major and pre-physical therapy student in the Verrazano Honors class of 2018, finds that a little stress can be a good thing!

Kaitlin at work

My name is Kaitlin Russo and I am a Psychology major, pre-physical therapy student. This past semester, I conducted research with guidance from my mentor, Florette Cohen. Since I was able to choose a topic of my interest, I researched anxiety and its effects on athletic performance. In the beginning I was convinced this project would be extremely difficult and long, but I was able to relate to this topic well and it became fun. Being a soccer player, I have felt the effects of anxiety on my performance, which is the main reason I wanted to learn more about it. From personal experience, I believe that anxiety negatively impacts the way an athlete performs. It is extremely frustrating when anxiety puts worried thoughts in your head and messes with your game. Learning about various ways to ease anxiety is helpful because I can share these tips with my teammates, and hopefully help them control their pre-competitive anxiety as well.

Kaitlin at play

I hypothesized that anxiety would have a negative effect on performance, and most of the research I found supported this conclusion. Surprisingly, a certain level of anxiety actually helps athletes perform better, but any levels too low or too high disrupt performance. One technique I learned to help reduce anxiety is to create pre-competition routines. These routines help ease the effects of anxiety and distraction when extreme pressure is placed on the player.

One of the studies I researched focused on the effects of negative words on anxiety. It explained how negative sports words distract players, make them doubt themselves, and brings down their performance level. This study suggested for players to focus on positive words, and to have coaches try to speak in positive sports words rather than negative. This made me realize that over the years I have responded to negative and positive words in just the same way this study explained, so it must have some truth behind it. Being able to relate to the studies I researched only made the topic more personal and more important to me that I will have to share it with other athletes.

I hope to teach athletes more about anxiety and the effective ways to keep restraint over it. I feel this topic is pivotal for athletes and coaches to understand, and even become more educated about, because it would provide athletes with the means to perform at top levels mentally as well as physically. I felt accomplished after completing this project because it was a lengthy process, but I successfully made it through and ended up enjoying every bit of it. I was beyond excited to share my newfound knowledge with my friends, and even considered setting up future interviews and surveys to conduct my own experiment. Further research could be done on different team sports, as well as on individual sports to see if anxiety has the same effect.

CSI Dolphins Soccer Team