Dear Sam

Sam Stosur ranked number nine in the world had a disappointing loss in the second round to China’s Zheng Jie, during the 2013 Australian Open. Up 5-2 in the third and two points away from converting to a victory, in her own words, “At 5-2, I felt great then all of a sudden it obviously went away quickly,” the mental side of her game came unraveled. Zheng won the match 7-5 in the third but then lost in the next round.

Dear Sam,

The good news is the mental game is fixable. You may be experiencing some sleepless nights since your second round loss at the Australian Open to China’s Zheng Jie. You may even be replaying the points when you were up 5-2 in the third, double break point and experiencing your lead and the match reversing it’s course as you weren’t able to get back on track. Ruminating on the thoughts of “Bloody hell my mental focus failed me again” could probably be going through your mind.

No one but you truly knows the feelings of pressure you put upon yourself on the court. Or what it feels like to represent your country on centre court during the Australian Grand Slam. It’s a privilege and unique experience. Your friend Renee Stubbs, who also knows what it feels like to play in this arena, has been tweeting her support, as have many others. 

In the science of the mental game we know that spending time dwelling on toxic thoughts from that match only builds an inner image and expectation that is a faulty story of your true skills and abilities in pressure situations.

A snap shot of your skills, abilities, and determination demonstrates that you have and can rise to the occasion when it counts. You are the first Australian woman since Evonne Goolagong Cawley to win a Grand Slam Singles tournament. In 2011 you beat Serena Williams in the finals of the U.S. Open no small feat. Altogether you have five Grand Slam Titles to date. It’s clear you have the technical and athletic skills and abilities of a great player. You’ve overcome physical adversity. In 2007 you left the tour after months of competing at half speed when you were suffering from undiagnosed Lyme Disease. When you returned to the tour in 2008 your singles play took a back seat to your doubles success, and then in 2010 you decided to focus on singles and take part less in doubles. 

Let’s shift to what you described in your post match press conference as “The loss was 100% mental.” The media has described this as “choking.” In a recent interview on Brain Science Podcast, episode 76, Dr. Sian Beilock, author of “Choke: What the Secrets of the Brain Reveal About Getting It Right When You Have To” defines “choking” as “Suboptimal performance-poorer performance than when you would have in a non-stressful situation. And it’s really poor performance in response to the perceived stress of what’s going on. So, someone doesn’t have to think the situation is stressful, but you have to think it’s stressful, and because of that, you end up performing below your ability.” I think you are already clear on this part. 

Now that we have a definition of “choking” it is important to talk about the useful tools for preparing for and having the emotional and physical mastery over these “choking” situations. It’s important here to note that these situations happen quite often in the world of professional sports. Tennis, golf, baseball pitchers, basketball players at the free throw line, kickers in football, athletes who are on center stage by themselves with a lot of down time to think are quite susceptible. Dr. Beilock points out, “One thing that we’ve shown is that highly skilled performers are really susceptible to poor performance, because one thing that happens in these stressful situations is that people become conscious of what they are doing; they start trying to control every step of their performance in a way that disrupts it.” “And in these stressful situations, what we’ve shown is that people often have thoughts or worries about the situation and its consequences, and this essentially uses up important resources, our ability to think, attend on the fly-and essentially causes people to do a couple of things. One of those things is to attend to some information and ignore others.” I am just putting in some guesswork here but in your comments from the post match conference you said, “At 5-2, I felt great, then all of a sudden it obviously went away quite quickly.” “Crazy things start popping into your head. You make an error and you tighten up a little bit, but you try to reset and refocus before that next point.” As someone who works with athletes of all levels, I know that these statements are hallmarks of someone who is experiencing the phenomenon of choking. 

I imagine the pressure and largeness of playing at the Australian Open for you began weeks before the tournament started. The media’s stereotyping questions of how your mental game will hold up based on previous performances there may have contributed to your suboptimal performance in the third set. Dr. Beilock talks about the concept of stereotype threat phenomenon, “The really interesting thing about this phenomenon is that the person who’s aware of the stereotype doesn’t have to endorse the stereotype; they just have to know that someone else believes it. And so, it can be really problematic, because it turns out that just being aware that people hold stereotypes about how you should perform can lead you to fail, even if you don’t endorse them.” It is important to be alert to the media’s doubting questions in pre and post conferences that challenge you to prove them wrong. Your ability to put aside thoughts of previous disappointments and worry about how you will perform is a skill that has to be diligently practiced and prepared for weeks if not months ahead of time. 

I am sure your support team which may still include a sport psychologist prepared you with the standard fare of pre, post, and during match mental training that included, managing the off court distractions of, the media, family, friends and well wishers, agents, sponsors, etc. On court you may have a customized process that included breathing, linking your breath and mental thoughts so they were in synch so your mind and body work together. When the match began to turn you had a plan in place to disrupt wayward thinking and keep your mental emotional energy calm and focused. Okay maybe this part was not quite as solid as it needed to be in this situation but like improving any stroke this is fixable. There are many tools, techniques, and practices that can help you clear the decks of mental distractions so you access your skills and abilities even in the most stressful situations. Being the player you are you will get there. 

There are many simple management techniques that are quite effective. One technique that I have found works well for athletes is to take five minutes before your next match to write down your thoughts and worries about the match and issues connected to the match. Doing so serves as a way of letting those pesky doubts, find a place outside of your mind so you are able to do what you do so well on the court. When you write down all the possible distractions that come into your life during this tournament, and I imagine there are quite a few, also write down how you want to deal with them on your terms so you remain in control of the items you can control. Spend another 5 minutes writing down all the things you are good at as a professional athlete and world class player.  This serves to focus your attention on your larger positive attributes as a successful world class competitor. Prior to your matches spend five minutes twice a day visualizing yourself either by watching actual footage that shows you playing well or sitting quietly imaging your best playing self. In the visualization see the stadium, hear the noise, the audience, the players box, the change over seating. You can even start back at the locker room, and if there is an interview on the way out to the court, know what you will say, include as much detail as you can provide to the imagery. Link the imaging to diaphragmatic breathing, even adding music can help you with your movement and mental rhythm, these are things your sport psychologist can help you with.

When you write down all the possible distractions that come into your life during this tournament, and I imagine there are quite a few, also write down how you want to deal with them on your terms so you remain in control of the things you can control.

I know that the Australian Open has enormous significance to you. Developing mental skills takes time, patience and adjustments, but as a professional playing at the highest level you spend a lot of time on your technical and strategic skills. The mental skills become easier and more automatic with practice. Writing down your worries, breathing, imaging and dealing with distractions may seem too simple a picture of how to fix the choking issue you just endured. There are lots of mental pre-performance and on-court routines that can be customized to your specific needs. Biofeedback and neurofeedback both simple and more involved practices and techniques are also available.  You are a great player to watch and the tennis season is just beginning, so I hope you fire up, focus up, and tweak the mental adjustments so you have a fantastic year.

*This article may also be read @ examiner.

Jerry Smith - Santa Clara U. Women's Soccer

In his 26th season as the Santa Clara University Women’s Soccer Coach Jerry Smith is most proud of being known for the development of his players and teams. Over the year’s Smith has built the Bronco program into a national powerhouse. For nineteen seasons the Women Bronco’s reached the NCAA tournament and have been ranked among the top ten teams in the country. Although he has set and met many goals for himself as a coach his biggest goal is for the Santa Clara program to be recognized as the best women’s soccer program in the country. Smith feels the 2013 team has a good shot of reaching this height of excellence.

SZ: You began your coaching career and coached for seven years at your high school alma mater, Homestead High in Sunnyvale, Ca. During part of that time you also served as the assistant men’s soccer coach at Foothills Junior College in Los Altos, Ca. and put in a one year stint at Foothills Junior College as the head women’s coach. What was your soccer playing experience prior to coaching?

JS: Soccer was the last sport I started playing. I competed in football, baseball, basketball and water skiing. I didn’t take up soccer until I was in the 8th grade at Cupertino Junior High School and the coach there, Earl Montgomery, convinced me to go out for the soccer team. I did and fell in love with the sport. I played on youth teams in the 8th grade and joined an AYSO team. Then I joined a CYSA team. In high school I became the second freshman in school history to make the varsity team. I was honored to be invited to play on the varsity team and ended up being a starting player which was very exciting. I played four years at Homestead High. Afterwards I was recruited to play for Santa Clara University, UCLA, and U.C. Santa Barbara, but chose to attend Foothill Junior College. I felt FJC was the best soccer environment for me as an athlete. The coaches and player’s there were fantastic. There were many foreign player’s on the team and the soccer was a very high level. Soccer was the driving force for me as I wanted to play professional soccer. I attended FJC for two years and played for two seasons. Afterwards I bounced around on various professional teams trying to got a spot. 

At the time the North American Soccer League, had the best player’s in the world. Pele,  Franz Beckenbauer, George Best, and others. There were only two or three American’s on each professional team. There were only about twenty to thirty American’s who made it onto the professional league teams. I was never good enough to make it onto a full time roster. I ended up kind of being signed by teams as a practice player. After a few years I decided I was just going to have to let go of the dream. I went back to school and focused on academics. Then began to get into coaching.

SZ: Your experience as a player enabled you to understand the athletic system and develop an emotional connection to what athletes go through, which is helpful as a coach.

JS: It was helpful and I am painfully aware of how difficult it is to become a professional soccer player. While I have certainly been able to coach young men and women that have continued on to become professional player’s, ninety-percent of them do not go on to play at that level. I can help player’s understand at a very early time what the numbers are in terms of being a professional soccer player and how hard it really is and to some degree what they are going to have to do to make it. At the same time it’s important to have a back up plan and make sure they are marching down both paths, academic and athletic. 

SZ: Who were your coaching role models and mentors during the early stages of your career? 

JS: One of my first influences was my high school basketball coach at Homestead High, Marty Mathieson. He was a fundamentals guy and a discipline guy. He taught me to always put the team first, always work hard,  always be responsible and I learned a lot about coaching young people through him. After high school attending FJC the coach there, George Avakian, taught me a lot about discipline, mental toughness and work ethic. I’ve never worked so hard in my life at least physically the two years I spent at FJC. Under George I learned a lot more about the sophistication of tactics of the game. Prior to his coaching I was just playing and a lot of things fortunately came pretty naturally. I had no idea of the layers of sophistication that were involved in tactical decisions. So I became very aware of how in-depth those decisions could be. It really became interesting for me on an intellectual level trying to break down opponents, maximize team potential and the match analysis that goes on during a game. George was a big influence on creating this awareness.

Two other influential coaches who happened to be assistant coaches at FJC at the time I was playing was Mitch Murray and Steve Sampson. Mitch was also my youth coach and had coached me in club soccer. Steve had attended Homestead High School before I did and went on to play soccer at UCLA. Steve ended up becoming the head coach for the men’s soccer team at Santa Clara U. in 1986. Steve was the person who invited me to come on board at Santa Clara U. in 1987. Mitch who was also an assistant soccer coach at FJC while I was there became Steve’s assistant for the men’s team at Santa Clara U. When I was invited to come on board at Santa Clara U. by Steve I came in with a dual role. I was an assistant coach for the men’s soccer team and the head coach for the women’s soccer team. Looking back the four most influential people were Marty Mathieson, George Avakian, Steve Sampson and Mitch Murray.

SZ: What mental skills do you look for in a potential athletic recruit? With limited opportunities to watch recruits perform under competitive pressure how do you assess whether a player has the skills you are looking for and will fit in with your current team?

JS: In our sport as in most sports it’s broken down into four basic categories, mental skills, physical skills, technical skills and tactical decision making ability. Parents ask me all the time what we are looking for and I say we are looking for athletes who have exceptional aptitude in all four areas. We prioritize what’s important and most important are the mental skills. If a player has the mental skills we can work with that. If they don’t have the mental skills to perform at our level then we move on. If a player has the mental skills then next we look for the physical skills. To be honest most players we recruit have the mental and physical skills. They don’t yet have the technical and tactical but those are areas we feel we can teach. 

Aly Wagner was the Gatorade Youth Player of the Year and number one recruit in the country. She came to SCU and excelled in all four areas. But it’s not common to get a player like Aly. So back to the mental skills, it’s by far the number one most important category and biggest determining factor when it comes to the likelihood that the athlete will have the type of impact on your program you are looking for. 

SZ: Often the phrase mental skills is a broad term. Break it down for me.

JS: These would include mental toughness, work ethic, determination, passion for the sport, competitiveness, self motivated, responsible, team first mentality, leadership, and communication skills. Those would be some of the most important. Yes, we can’t know these things about a player by going out and watching them. We do our homework and research. We have an evaluation form that anyone who works with a potential recruit fills out and sends back to us. It can be a candidates high school counselor, their high school coach, their club coach, it could be an alum of SCU who lives in that area. It could be from a coach that doesn’t necessarily coach the individual but has played against them. When we receive five to ten evaluations things begin to work themselves out and we have a pretty good idea of how the athlete will perform.

SZ: What do you think are important qualities for Freshman athletes to make a successful transition into the collegiate academic/sports environment? What do player’s  need to know about making a commitment to collegiate sports prior to signing on?

JS: The biggest challenge is time management and prioritizing. When I sit down with a recruit I ask them if they think they are a normal person. Most of the time they say, “Yes” and then I tell them that our program is not for them. They are stunned and look at me like what just happened? I tell them that if you are a normal person this program is not for you because they will need to be almost obsessive about studying and soccer. I say, “We are going to prioritize things and academics is number one and soccer is number two. You might be able to do one and two most days. If you think you are going to do more than that or want more than that then this is not the place for you.” 

SZ: That’s an interesting piece of this equation because as you mentioned 90% of the athletes will not make it onto a professional team, yet the commitment for four years of collegiate involvement in sports and academics is pretty socially isolating except as a team participant.

JS: We think the social aspect within the team is a really important skill. When people ask me what I do and I say I teach life skills to young people, because of the stage we are on, because we are trying to be the best team, because we are trying to win the national championship, I can teach the players about responsibility, dedication, sacrifice, commitment, time management and prioritization. Most of the player’s will not go on to the next level of soccer but a lot of them will go on and work for big companies. I receive phone calls every year from Apple, Google, Facebook and other companies in this valley who say, “We are interested in your student athletes because of the type of program they are coming from.” 

SZ: There are four outstanding senior player’s on the 2012/2013 team. Do you create strategy around the strengths of your core player’s? Or do you have a core strategic philosophy and recruit player’s to fit your coaching style? 

JS: It’s a little bit of both. There are some things that are core to our program that in my twenty-six years have not changed. So those are not going to change. For example, our possession style of soccer, we absolutely believe that one of the best ways to be successful is to keep the ball better than our opponent does. That has never changed and is not going to change. Having said that our formation of play changes year to year and even from opponent to opponent. We definitely have a handful of things that are core to our program but every year the dynamics of the team is different. To be a successful coach it’s necessary to be flexible and look at different ways of being successful. 

SZ: Because soccer has such a strong foundation now in the U.S. it must be fun for you to see player’s come into collegiate play prepared and experienced. 

JS: Honestly there are positives and negatives. Absolutely I’m excited about the growth of soccer and the player’s are more sophisticated tactically. Having said that there are youth player’s that focus solely on soccer and we see more burn-out because of that. We see more injuries because of that. Years ago we’d have an occasional ACL injury on 

our team. Then it grew to a two or three ACL’s  per year. Now we are seeing one or two ACL’s before they enter college. There are a lot of different theories but I am absolutely convinced that the kids are focusing on one sport too early. 

For the positives, having women’s soccer in the Olympic Games, World Cup for Women’s Soccer and the U20 World Cup Team, which one of our player’s, Julie Johnston, captained, these are incredible opportunities and very exciting. I am very happy about the growth of the game. I think though we have to be careful about the damage or harm that can be created if we are not careful about giving player’s time off, or cross-training ideas.

SZ: Do you build periodization into the season?

JS: Absolutely we have a schedule of periodization. There are times when soccer is the lowest priority of what we are doing. In fact this upcoming winter phase for us we play basketball, dodge ball, and go for hikes.

SZ: The fun aspects of training.

JS: I tell recruits, and they are surprised when I say this, “You are going to focus on academics and soccer but at the same time you are going to play far less soccer than you did as a youth.” Young kids are playing two to three games a weekend and soccer games are meant to be played once a week. At SCU we do a lot of team building, it’s a big part of what we do. Most of the time this is done away from the field without a soccer ball. 

SZ: Do you have other coaching goals beyond collegiate women’s soccer?

JS: Right now I have three main responsibilities. SCU is certainly one of them but I also work with our Olympic Development Program. In fact I am in the process of overhauling the entire Olympic Development Program for girl’s soccer. It’s a massive undertaking. I’ve been spending three to four hours a day on that project since the summer. This month kind of starts the new programming for the Olympic Development Program. So I’ve been very nervous. I’ve been the biggest critic of our Olympic Development Program saying its not what it was designed to be. If we are to call ourselves an Olympic Development Program we’ve got to do a much better job. Of course what always happens is if you are the biggest critic you become the person who ends up overhauling the system. 

I am also involved in the National Soccer Coaches Association and I’m teaching a course called “The Premier Course” the highest level coaching course we offer. This particular course is being held at De Anza College and began last night. The National Soccer Coaches Association is the largest coaching association in the world and it’s my way of giving back to coaches. 

Do I have other coaching goals? I honestly do and people are surprised when I say this but every month I think about going back to coach the men’s game. I also think I might coach basketball instead of soccer. I love teaching young people. It doesn’t matter if it’s soccer or basketball. At the same time I have set goals for myself and for the SCU Women’s Soccer Program and I haven’t accomplished them all. One of the biggest goals is for SCU to be recognized as the best women’s soccer program in the country. Right now that program is still the University of North Carolina. Although UNC is a team that we’ve defeated three times in the NCAA tournament, twice in the final four and once in the National Championship Game. I feel we are in a pretty good spot but they are the National Champs again this year. UNC has twenty-one National Championships and we have one. I am very motivated for SCU to be the best program in the country. I feel very good about our chances of winning a National Championship next year.

Over the years I’ve had other opportunities. I’ve turned down a lot of coaching jobs including an opportunity to coach our Women’s National Team. It would have meant resigning from SCU and I wasn’t ready to do that as I am still not ready to do that. I am very grateful for the opportunity to be at SCU and motivated to what is in front of us. I am careful not think the grass is greener somewhere else. 

SZ: This summer 2013, you will be running the Santa Clara Girls Soccer Camp. Where can people find more information about the camp schedule? 

JS: Two things I’d like people to know about one is our summer camp sign-up  schedule will be available soon at www.scusoccercamps.com  And second we will be one of the two or three most talented teams in the country Fall of 2013. It’s going to be a very exciting team and I invite people to look into our playing schedule and come watch.

SZ: Do you have an favorite quotes, stories or tips that have influenced your coaching career? 

JS: Years ago myself and a number of other people came up with core values for the Women’s Soccer team. Written on the five walls of my office, written everywhere in our locker room,  and written on all our publications are our core values. The core values are Personal responsibility and commitment to excellence, Embrace the opportunity for growth and success, Respect the game, others and our tradition, Compete with toughness and determination, and Bronco Pride which is more about just being proud to be here at Santa Clara in our athletic program. 

I’m also a big John Wooden fan, “Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.”

SZ: Jerry thank you for taking valuable time from your busy day for this interview. 

GO Broncos!

*Featured guests are not former nor current clients of Susan Zaro

*This interview may also be read @ examiner.