Young athletes need to find right balance to deal with pressure

Watch the video above: young athletes need to find right balance to deal with pressure

SASKATOON – Pressure on up-and-coming athletes in sports can be a good thing and can be a bad thing if it is not known when and where to draw the line.

Wyatt Sloboshan from Vanscoy, Sask. is hoping to crack the Saskatoon Blades roster next season.

He’s doing whatever he can to make this a reality.

“You take a little bit but not much, a couple weeks maybe, you always need to be training and trying to get better, to get better then the next guy,” said Sloboshan.

That mind set is what drives him and puts the pressure on.

Sloboshan, 17, was a third round pick by the Swift Current Broncos in the 2012 WHL Bantam Draft.

“It’s mostly myself, and my parents obviously want me to do good, mostly myself wanting to be as good as I can be,” said Sloboshan.

Shane Endicott trains Sloboshan and knows all about the pressure. The director of skill development for On Ice Connections played at the highest levels, both in the NHL and overseas.

“You need the right balance, right combination of skill, attitude and mental strength along with a good support group,” said Endicott.

Endicott still promotes fun while he trains youngsters to be elite athletes.

“There are a lot of kids who all they do is hockey, hockey, hockey and they can’t take their mind off it. I think it’s important to have a healthy release from the work environment,” said Endicott.

Pressure is not just in hockey, it’s in all competitive sports, according to University of Saskatchewan (U of S) Kinesiology Human Performance Centre Coordinator Jason Weber.

“The sad part is we’re not building athletes anymore. So if you look back to five, 10, 15 years ago, it was true off seasons, hockey was over we played baseball and played soccer and all these different things in the summer because there wasn’t ice available,” said Weber.

There is also such a thing as good and bad pressure.

U of S psychologist Dr. Gerald Farthing says pressures come from all over but the wrong pressures can have the greatest affect on children.

“If our pressure makes kids anxious, I mean over anxiety just makes a brain fog and so there’s going to be a drop in performance, unrelated to ability,” said Farthing.

There is no break from pressure; most kids have expectations to live up too.

If used correctly, balancing between good and bad pressure can be more of a benefit then a hindrance.