Bridging the Gap Between Practice Skills and Game Day Performance

Throughout our careers as soccer mentors, we’ve met plenty of young athletes who love practice but dread matches. It’s a testament to the prevalence of performance anxiety, which continues to affect countless athletes today. More often than not, players with performance anxiety thrive in practice but struggle to relax and focus in matches, inhibiting their performance.

Overcoming performance anxiety comes down to changing the athlete’s point of view towards matches. You wouldn’t be nervous about something you viewed as a positive experience, right?

What Causes Performance Anxiety?

Performance anxiety is a natural outcome of the level of importance we place on matches. Yes, matches are important. Compared to practice, matches feel like they have more serious consequences that can affect a player’s future.

But here’s the thing: viewing a match as important and serious doesn’t always help a player focus. Sometimes, it does the complete opposite. When we emphasize the potentially negative consequences of a match, the player comes to view the match as a negative experience. How can they be expected to perform when they don’t even want to be there?

Parents and coaches can change this mindset by reminding young players that a match is supposed to be an overwhelmingly positive experience, regardless of who wins or loses.

Experience > Result

It may seem counterintuitive at first, but one of the most effective ways to reduce performance anxiety is de-emphasizing the result of the match. A player shouldn’t enter a match thinking about what will happen if their team wins or loses, because for youth athletes, that’s not what really matters at their age. What matters is having a learning experience that deepens their passion for soccer.

Think about it: A few losses on the league’s website doesn’t have to deter someone’s soccer journey. A string of profoundly negative experiences, on the other hand, can certainly make someone think twice about continuing with their sport.

When players aren’t worried about winning or losing, they can relax and focus entirely on enjoying the present moment. This is what fuels young athletes to try their best: The classic mindset of, “It’s just a game.”

What Parents and Coaches Can Do

Parents and coaches can help athletes relax before matches by creating a positive narrative that emphasizes the experience itself, not the result. Instead of building pressure around matches, talk about they already did the hard work in practice, and this game is a celebration of their hard work.

You can even remind them that the result of the match is nowhere near as important as how they feel when they’re playing. Why? Because the ability to relax on the field and think freely in big moments is critical to an athlete’s success. An athlete who is not paralyzed by fear during a match is a winner and should be treated as such. That means going out for ice cream after the match, even if the team loses. Anything that encourages your athlete to look forward to these experiences that goes beyond winning or losing is conducive to their focus and performance.

If your athlete is struggling with performance anxiety, Beyond Goals Mentoring is here to help. As two retired pros, we specialize in identifying what your athlete loves about soccer so they can find this source of fulfillment in matches and relax during play. Let’s set up a mentoring session and start building a plan that allows your athlete to thrive in any environment.