How to Help a Youth Athlete Manage Emotions During High-Stress Moments

One of the hardest parts about being a high-level athlete – no matter their age – is the high level of emotion involved. As if the pressure to perform and fear of failure weren’t stressful enough, sports like soccer carry so much uncertainty, making it very difficult to stay calm before and during a match.

Also, the low’s in high-level sports can be just extreme as the high’s. When elite athletes fail, they don’t just inhibit their team’s success. It feels to them like they fall further away from achieving their lifelong dreams.

If your kid has ever experienced these emotions before, they can seem impossible to overcome. Yes, managing emotions during high-pressure situations is difficult, but it can be learned just like any other important part of the game. In fact, it’s one of the most essential skills an elite athlete can possess. If they can recover from disappointment and stay calm in big moments, nothing will stand in their way.

Acknowledging Your Emotions

The key to managing heavy emotions is accepting and then processing them. In our athletic careers, we both learned very early on that dismissing or repressing emotions is not conducive to your recovery or composure.

So, when your youth athlete is feeling the stress, anxiety, and disappointment that comes with high-level competition, it’s important to acknowledge these emotions with them, as opposed to pretending they’re not there or acting like “it’s no big deal.” This can make you feel that their emotions are wrong, and that they should be ashamed or embarrassed for feeling them.

Why Emotions Deserve Our Attention

No parent wants to see their child in pain. It’s only natural to wish your child would just return to their usual self as quickly as possible.

But when we don’t give heavy emotions the attention they deserve, we don’t learn how to control them, which gives them more power over us. For example, if your athlete gets anxious before matches or feels depressed after a loss, this will continue to happen if your athlete doesn’t take the time to understand where these emotions are coming from and why they are so powerful.

Learning to Understand Heavy Emotions are Normal

Heavy emotions are natural outcomes of being an elite athlete. So, make sure your child understands that these feelings are completely normal, and every other elite athlete deals with them. That includes the iconic athletes your child admires. You can even tell your child that if they want to be more like their favorite athletes, managing heavy emotions is going to be a big part of their life.

We have also found that processing emotions is much easier when you can vocalize them and express exactly what you’re feeling. This is why countless elite athletes have benefited from therapy. It gives them a safe, judgment-free environment to face their emotions head-on and tell someone how it feels to be in their shoes at this moment.

Great Players Process Their Emotions

In our experience, the ability to manage heavy emotions is often the difference maker between players that make it to the top and those that fall off on the way. Handling the pressure is something every great athlete has in common. When they feel stressed or anxious, they not only accept their emotion; they welcome it like it’s part of their job. By taking the time to process their emotions, they are fulfilling yet another core responsibility of an elite athlete.

At Beyond Goals Mentoring, we help athletes develop the mental tools to control their emotions so they can stay focused and relaxed when it matters most. By building consistent routines and identifying why they play soccer in the first place, our athletes are able to minimize stress and anxiety while getting plenty of joy and fulfillment out of their sport.

So, if your athlete is struggling with the pressure of high-level competition, let’s set up a mentoring session today.