How Big's Your Circle

Sports Psyche AP is by far the best, most intense class at SportsChallenge! Taught by Coach Koster and me, a group of 25 returning student-athletes have been pushing themselves mentally in class. Yesterday, we worked through an awesome discussion of what is inside our circle of control.


As a class, we came up with a list of 40 different things that can affect the outcome of a game, such as hard work, referees, field condition, focus, energy, etc. Then, the student-athletes were asked to decide if they felt a particular factor was inside, or outside one's circle of control. Students moved to the side of the room they agreed with, and then they had small group discussions to decide who would argue their case on behalf of the group. Finally, the two representatives from each side came to the center, and they debated why a factor was on the inside, or the outside. The discussions were great - student-athletes were not only coming up with creative arguments, but they were pushing each other to think further. The theme of the day is Empathy, and several times throughout the discussion students were asked to put themseles in each others shoes. When we spoke about field condition, something most of the group felt was outside of their circle of control, Jonathan stepped up and said "When it snowed on our field in New York last winter, our team showed up to the field 5 hours before the game and shoveled the whole thing".

The challenge to student-athletes after the exercise is to work on enlarging their circle of control. As we grow into leadership roles, it's important that we work on making our circles larger.
-Coach Stafford (Washington DC)