Feeding the Positive Dog

Today's blog was written by Keenan Bailey, a current Notre Dame senior and a student in the Social Foundations of Coaching course taught by Play Like a Champion Founding Director Professor Clark Power and Program Director Kristin Sheehan. Keenan is majoring in American Studies and is from Pompano Beach, FL. He works as a Recruiting Analyst with Notre Dame Football.

There was once a troubled young boy who traveled from his village deep into the forest to speak with a wise old man. After traveling deep into the forest, the boy found the wise old man and said to him, “I have a problem: I feel like there are two dogs inside of me. One dog is positive, loving and optimistic, but the other dog is negative, angry and pessimistic. I feel like these two dogs are constantly fighting inside of me. I don’t know which dog will win, so I came to seek your advice.” The wise old man laughed and replied, “Boy, the answer to your question is obvious. You say that these two dogs fight inside you, but that you do not know which will win? I know which dog will win…the one you feed the most. So feed the positive dog”.

The American Institute of Stress recently publicized a study revealing that 75% of doctor’s visits are stress-related, that 40% of stressed Americans have less healthy diets than unstressed Americans, and that nearly half of those stressed Americans lose sleep every night. Whether it be unhappiness or unhealthy habits within daily life, or the crippling effect it has on athletic teams, stress is a major debilitating aspect of modern American life. Luckily there is a cure for the daunting epidemic that is stress, and it doesn’t cost a dime! By feeding the positive dog each day, we cultivate the trait of positive energy, which is kryptonite to stress.

Every day we have a choice to feed the negative dog orthe positive dog. It is easy to feed the negative dog, it requires almost no effort at all and is the far more convenient option. On the other hand, consistently feeding the positive dog requires sacrifice and commitment, but the effects of feeding the positive dog reveal that the sacrifices to do so are far overshadowed by the benefits of cultivating positive energy.

In her landmark research, University of North Carolina psychologist Dr. Barbara Fredrickson tested the effect of negative and positive thoughts on the human brain, and her findings revealed extraordinary results! After hundreds of experiments, Fredrickson discovered that positive thought expands the brain and broadens cognition. Ultimately her research highlighted the benefit of positive thought in providing a competitive advantage, as the broader perspectives granted by positive thought promote more efficient and productive performance in decision making.

When coaches feed the positive dog, they cultivate positive thought and subsequently eliminate the negative effects that stress would otherwise inflict. These positive coaches experience expanded cognition and are more effective decision makers, which results in more victories. Further, if coaches instill this same choice, to feed the positive dog each day, within his team then the result is one cohesive group of stressless, effective decision makers.

Feeding the positive dog at the start of training camp, when the possibilities of a new season are abundant, is easy. So is feeding the positive dog when the team is winning. However, feeding the positive dog after a difficult loss, or in the middle of a sloppy practice is much harder to do. In the end, feeding the positive dog in every instance will benefit not only the coach, but the team that he or she oversees. When compared to the power of positive energy, the hindrance of stress appears to be nothing but a small temptation, so I challenge you to make a commitment to yourself, to your team, to a stressless lifestyle and to positive thought.

Which dog will win the fight? That’s simple. Whichever dog you feed more. 

Feed the Positive Dog.

To Play or Not to Play on Sunday?

Recently, we at Play Like a Champion have heard of a growing debate on whether or not Catholic sports leagues should schedule activities on Sundays. We've heard from partners on both sides of the divide from the theological to the practical. Should Sundays be reserved for Church and family time? Are sports a form of spirituality, that often involve the whole family? Will canceling Sunday games help to stem the tide of decreasing youth participation in the Mass? What about young athletes who are involved with multiple teams? If Sunday games are abolished, is there enough gym space available to fit the games in throughout the week?

To learn more about the issue, we turned to two partners: Dobie Moser of the Diocese of Cleveland CYO and Brian Milone of the Valley Catholic Sports League of Southern California. Their arguments are below. We would love to know what you think. To share your thoughts, please click the comment button at the end of the blog.                                                                                                

In Support of Playing on Sunday by Dobie Moser:

When dealing with complex challenges, seek out the simplest solution, and then discard it, because you are dealing with a complex situation.  Beware of a half truth: you may get the wrong half! These adages come to mind when considering the question of whether to ban Catholic youth sports games on Sundays.

Those who oppose holding games on Sunday are concerned about losing young Catholics.  They are asking important questions, such as why are only 20 – 30% of families in parishes attending mass and why are so few young people involved in parish youth clubs?  They are also critical of the attention, time, and resources that youth sports demand as well as reports of negative fan, coach, and athlete behavior.  They hope that by getting rid of Sunday sports in Catholic settings will take us back to bygone days when Sundays revolved around Church and family.

All of these questions deserve thoughtful conversation, reflection, and response. Little good is done by hand wringing and blaming others.  Acting precipitously may well make matters worse.

Time for Different Questions

Asking different questions can open doors to considering new ways forward. Here are questions that change the conversation and invite other possible responses.

• What is the mission of sports in a Catholic setting and how is that mission best achieved?
• Are sports in Catholic settings formational for children, parents and coaches? If so, what needs to happen to help all involved to be more faithful disciples of Jesus Christ and active members of our Catholic faith community?
• What would most likely happen if all Sunday athletic contests happening in Catholic settings were halted?

 A Catholic Framework for Youth Sports

Saint Don Bosco, founder of the Salesisans, took the approach of going out into the streets of Turin to meet young people where they are to connect with them. Upon building relationships with them, he started oratories where children could get educated, play sports, and pursue music and the arts within an intentional Christian community. In a similar way, in the 1930s Monsignor Bernard Sheil went into the streets of Chicago to reach out to young people who were not practicing their faith and started the CYO (Catholic Youth Organization) that was the birth of  youth ministry in the United States.

In both cases, these men of vision and faith understood sports as a way to reach young people and to form them as disciples of Jesus. Building on that foundation, our Catholic church believes that sports in Catholic settings today:

• are rooted in the mission and values of the Church, and are, therefore, youth ministry;
• train and prepare the coach as a youth ministry leader representing the faith community;
• form the team as a small Christian Community that is part of the larger Catholic community;
• help young people to grow as disciples of Jesus within the faith community.

This understanding and approach to youth sports in Catholic settings assigns particular roles and responsibilities to the different parties involved.        

• Players play – they learn to play, develop skills, win, and lose while modeling Catholic values and behaviors;
• Coaches teach – they are faith leaders and sport leaders who help the children grow;
• Officials officiate – they are trained to provide a safe experience according to the rules;
• Parents support – they provide encouragement and support while modeling Catholic behavior and values.

It is easy to give examples of athlete, coach, and parents misbehavior in Catholic settings. Yes, bad behavior is prevalent throughout youth sports, and is regrettably present in Catholic youth sports as well.  Yet this is why having our Catholic perspective present to offer another way is critical.

Our Catholic schools and parish youth ministry programs are becoming aware of the shortcomings of youth sports culture. We are responsible to find a better way, a faithful and Catholic way, to operate sports programs in Catholic settings. Programs such as the Notre Dame’s Play Like a Champion Today and the Diocese of Cleveland’s  CYO  are examples of ministerial approaches needed to build a Catholic culture in youth sports.

It is understandable to want to eliminate sports in Catholic settings on Sundays as a response to difficult challenges and real frustrations about low Church attendance and disinterest in Church activities more generally. Yet parents and athletes who participate in athletics in a ministry context believe that they are engaged in faith formation through sports. A strong case can be made that Catholic youth sports is our Church’s largest youth ministry program with the most volunteers, especially male volunteers.

It is critical that our Catholic Church stays involved in youth sports. Of course, Catholic youth sport programs should not schedule games and practices on Sunday mornings.  The issue is whether youth sports should be eliminated altogether on Sundays. Such an action would cripple many Catholic sports programs already struggling to schedule practices and games with limited available facilities.  Do we really believe that if sports were eliminated on Sundays, young people would become more active in their faith? It seems more likely that they would leave Catholic youth sports programs for other non-religious youth sport programs.

We need to recapture the evangelical zeal of Saint Don Bosco and Bishop Sheil and go to where young people and their parents are.  Let’s use sports to bring our children closer to the Lord, back to the Lord’s Eucharistic table, and more fully into the Christian community.

Dobie Moser, D. Min, is the Executive Director of Youth and Young Adult Ministry and CYO in the Cleveland Diocese. He has served on the U.S. Olympic Committee and has trained thousands of coaches in Catholic settings throughout the U.S. and Canada. He is a contributing author of the 2015 book, Youth Sport and Spirituality, Catholic Perspectives from University of Notre Dame Press.

In Support of a Resting on Sunday by Brian Milone:

Outside of the occasional tournament, the Valley Catholic Sports League does not play on Saturday's or Sunday's. A few reasons for this are as follows. First of all, other athletic programs/organizations (club teams and other organizations) have consumed many of our student-athletes. These programs have either taken student-athletes completely away from our schools, or have put our families in a position that leaves our student-athletes with little time for anything else other than sports. We feel a well-rounded student-athlete is a more prepared student-athlete for the future. 

Furthermore, it is difficult to find facilities to accommodate games on the weekends. Our schools use their church and school parking lots, which many have 4-5 Masses on Sundays. This makes it difficult to have the space available for sporting events. When it comes to using other facilities, we find ourselves competing with those same organizations mentioned above for space, not to mention the cost that can be an issue for many of our schools.  

Finally, the other reason is something that has trickled down from our local Catholic High School’s, which are regulated by CIF (Southern Section). They are prohibited from participating in any school organized event on Sunday’s, and we have followed that same rule for our Catholic Elementary Schools. It is our understanding that Sunday is a time to pray, get away from the grind, and be with family in some other environment outside of competitive sports.  

 Brian Milone is the Director of the Valley Catholic Sports League in Southern California.

Gay Athletes and the Ongoing Challenge of Full Acceptance

Play Like a Champion Founder and Director Professor Clark Power recently published a piece on athletes who are  gay in the Huffington Post.  The original post can be found here, or is excerpted below.

Media attention has rightly focused on Jason Collins and Michael Sam who have courageously confronted a homophobic professional sports culture. Like Jackie Robinson, they have exposed the intolerant underside not only of NBA and NFL locker rooms, but of American culture itself.

This week, University of Notre Dame varsity tennis player, Matt Dooley, joined Jason Collins and Michael Sam by coming out publicly as a gay male. In a brutally honest first-person account of his agonized struggle for self-acceptance, Matt Dooley illustrates the challenge of self-acceptance in a hostile environment. As he wrestled with his sexual identity, his Catholic education made him feel even more apprehensive about his future: "The Church's teachings were not exactly adding up with where my life was headed."

Matt writes that he never fully acknowledged to himself that he was gay until his sophomore year in college. That realization brought with it self-condemnation: "I was wrong, undeserving of respect, and I had a life that was not worth living." In his sophomore year, Matt attempted suicide: "Death was better than accepting -- or revealing -- that I was gay."

After he left the psychiatric ward, Matt's tennis team became his lifeline. As the second anniversary of his suicide attempt approached in September, he came out to his team. To his surprise, they all embraced him. Matt's life changed from one of despair to hope. He and his team both became stronger. Matt is now involved with others at Notre Dame in reaching out to other gay athletes.

Like Jason Collins and Michael Sam, Matt Dooley asks for nothing more or less than the respect that any human being deserves. Yet, as Matt Dooley's story demonstrates, one cannot demand respect from others until one comes to respect oneself. Self-respect is nurtured in groups, like the Notre Dame Tennis team, where morality matters and coaches and players commit themselves to care for and trust in each other.

Educational and religious leaders have a responsibility to make schools and churches places where young people, whatever their sexuality, can learn to study, play, pray and love with self-respect, gratitude and hope.

Bonding or Bullying: Does Hazing Build Character?

Play Like a Champion co-founder and director Clark Power is a professor of psychology at the University of Notre Dame and has a blog on the huffington Post.  Today's post can also be found on his blog.

Over the past few days, allegations of bullying and extreme hazing have rocked the Miami Dolphins football team and the NFL in general. Although few defend Richie Incognito's alleged treatment of offensive line teammate, Jonathan Martin, some NFL players have blamed Martin for deserting his team and publicly criticizing a teammate. FOX Sports NFL Insider Mike Garafolo reported that some Dolphin's coaches knew about the hazing and thought that it might help to toughen Martin up. Many NFL players and former players support that view. Football is violent game and requires extraordinary mental as well as physical toughness. Moreover, enduring hardships together builds lasting bonds of friendship. To some, Martin appears selfish, weak and whiny. They argue that others have put up with all kinds of harassment, and ask why he feels that he is special and how he can be so disloyal to his team. The complaints against Martin appeal to a commonsense view of character development and are deeply rooted in American culture.

I hear these arguments routinely in the clinics that I give to youth and high school coaches of all sports as well as in the class that I give to teachers and school administrators. They certainly ring true on one level. We live in a rough and tumble world. We can't count on others looking after us or caring about our feelings. We have to develop a thick skin, earn what respect we get, and wait our turn to boss others around. Above all, we have to learn to be loyal to those who hold power.

As an educational psychologist, I have been fascinated by how quickly children learn how to adapt to the cruelty and insensitivity of elders, as well as peers. We know a great deal about the resilience that children can develop in the most adverse of circumstances. However, the fact that those children can develop the inner resources to hold up under oppressive conditions should not be used to minimize the evil or the harm that they are forced to endure. We know that children and adults suffer when their basic sense of dignity is assaulted by repeated acts of degradation and humiliation. Persons, whether they are children or adults, have an inalienable human right to be respected. True bonding is built on mutual respect, not on fear and coercion.

Discussing concrete cases helps to expose distorted views of loyalty and toughness that protect those in power at the expense of their victims. There are many young athletes playing at the high school and college level who feel incapable of walking away from abusive peers and coaches (however benign their intentions may be) for fear of prematurely ending their sports careers. We should acknowledge abuse for what it is and take decisive action to root it out-- without having to wait for another Jonathan Martin.