User:Dfrench17/sandbox

Emotional Intelligence In Sports is the ability to perceive, understand, and manage emotions in order to enhance athletic performance and provides a feel for how an athlete is likely to respond situationally in his or her sport. While physical superiority and technical ability are major components to athletic success, the mental aspect of sports is often undervalued and overlooked. Daniel Goleman wrote a book Emotional Intelligence where he notes that twenty percent of life success is based off of IQ, while eighty percent is based off of EQ; this same philosophy translates to sports. There are five main components to EQ that any coach should be familiar with when handling athletes; self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skill. When there is very little to separate between two players fighting for a roster spot or a starting role, emotional intelligence can be a strong determining factor for which athlete gets the advantage. High EQ has been proven to be beneficial both for athletes of team sports and individual sports.

Background
Sports have dominated American culture for a majority of the country’s relatively short history. Today there are hundreds of thousands of student athletes that use athletics to further their education and opportunity to advance to the next level of their chosen sport. Professional athletes make hundreds of millions of dollars to play a game while representing their organization and the city they’re in. There are numerous variables that come into play when looking at what makes an athlete worth hundreds of millions of dollars. One variable that is often over looked is the emotional intelligence of the athlete. Emotional intelligence (EQ) is one’s ability to perceive, understand, recognize, and manage their own emotions. Physical gifts along with socioeconomic background are two obvious variables that come into play as well, but how reliable an athlete is to “keep their head in the game” is a variable that can help predict their sustainability. An example of EQ correlating with a long career would be Tom Brady, his leadership and intangibles are well known as unprecedented among American athletes. He is now in his 40's and not only still competing against younger players but he is still excelling because his "mental" game is second-to-none. When there is very little to separate between two players fighting for a roster spot or a starting role, emotional intelligence can be a strong determining factor for which athlete gets the bump.

Developing youth
Young athletes are not near mature enough to navigate their own emotional intelligence so it’s crucial that the environment they’re in provides a balance of competitiveness and encouragement. When a young athlete is put in a negative environment this can completely stunt their development and growth. These negative circumstances can come from an over emphasis on winning and less focus on the individual. This can lead to low self-esteem, negative relationships, poor sportsmanship, or expose them to other psychological abuse within youth sports. Coaches don’t often realize what effect they have on young athletes and should be mindful of the imprint they leave on their players. A coach mishandling a young athlete can be responsible for psychological abuse such as strained cognitive, psychological, emotional, and even social development. Margaret Gatz reinforces how crucial it is that young athletes are properly developed in her book Paradoxes of Youth Sport. Studies support that there is a positive relationship between physical competency and interpersonal and social competency. 45 million kids across America play youth sports every year, so understanding how their brains work at a young age is critical for knowing how to approach player development as a coach. A study done in 2000 showed that youth who engaged in sports were more likely to eat healthy and live a healthy lifestyle. Health issues in youth sports is a main concern across the nation because keeping the youth active and encouraged to do sports is paramount to increasing the overall physical and mental health of future generations.

High-level competence
Emotional Intelligence can be taught and developed like any other skill. As an athlete matures and advances through the stages of their career the recipe for success doesn’t change much, the same five essential elements of EQ are still just as important. Goleman uses a four quadrant model that further simplifies the variables to emphasize the most. Self-awareness, self-control, empathy, and influencing others are the main categories Goleman stresses. There are a total of 18 different competencies, studies indicate that in order to be effective one must master at least six of them. Understanding emotional intelligence and implementing it are two separate things. Bruce Lee is famously quoted for saying “knowing is not enough, we must apply.” This follows suit well with EQ because a person can be very emotionally intelligent but still choose to not exercise their knowledge, similar to someone with a high IQ. EQ is gaining traction within the sports world which will lead to less of a stigma around athletes giving attention to their emotions. In general, athletes like to quantify things with scores, numbers, and times which can make them apprehensive to sit down and talk to a sports psychologist. As athletes are becoming more used to EQ being a part of their training, coaches are having to think about better ways to develop players. One coaching method commonly used was positive reinforcement which creates a rewarding stimuli to playing hard and executing. This method focuses on maintaining a high level of internal competitiveness matched with a high level of internal encouragement, creating unity over the themes of togetherness and work ethic.

What I learned "writing in Wikipedia for COM 300"
Com300 was a class that forced students to take ownership of their experience and get out of it whatever was put into it. Throughout a majority of the semester it was easy to let days if not weeks glide by with it seeming like I had barely done any work for the class. On the one hand this was great because I could focus on other class work and not stress too much about Com300, but on the other hand I felt like I checked out more than I care to admit. One focus in Darrin's class is strengthening your academic independence; in other words, improving your ability to be a self-motivator and be proactive about your student experience. For me one large takeaway from this class was maintaining a balanced level of engagement, what I mean by this is knowing when I can afford to pump the brakes on Com300 during a slow week and then get back to full speed to stay ahead or on pace. Employers aren't going to ensure that you get the work done rather they just expect that you handle your business. Darrin's class was a great opportunity to get a taste for this type of leadership where the expectation was clearly established up front and the rest was left up to the students to execute. Another thing Com300 taught me was to fight procrastination as much as possible, it is better to front load work rather than back load it. A common theme for this class as a whole was that we would vote for assignments and quiz dates to get pushed back to "later". This was a great policy for Darrin to implement and it gave the students a sense of empowerment and ownership in the class, but ultimately it ended up creating more stress for the students in a smaller time frame at the end of the year rather than smaller stress doses spread throughout the semester.