Commonwealth Games: Getting rid of the emotional litter

By DAVID LEGGATT

Here's the situation: the key player in your Commonwealth Games team has arrived with a pile of stressful personal baggage.

He, or she, is struggling to cope with the demands of performing at optimum level while their mind battles to set aside a swag of jumbled emotions.

The athlete cannot discuss these worries with team-mates, coach or manager. What to do?

Step forward Gary Hermansson, sports psychologist and the man with the job of getting rid of that emotional litter in time to produce a quality performance.

New Zealand's management support team in Manchester comprises 26 people, including doctors, physiotherapists, a chiropractor, a security officer, and communications, travel and athlete services staff.

And that excludes other support personnel assigned to a particular sport.

Setting aside medical matters, such as dealing with a head cold or strained muscle, a strong case can be made that 61-year-old Hermansson's role is potentially among the most influential of them all.

It is his job to provide the expertise to make sure the head matches the physical preparation that athletes have gone through to be ready for competition.

For a graphic illustration of how the boundaries of sports psychology have expanded, backtrack to the closing stages of last weekend's British Open golf championship.

South African Ernie Els, along with Australians Steve Elkington and Stuart Appleby and Frenchman Thomas Levet, were about to embark on a nerve-jangling four-way playoff.

What did Els and Levet do between the end of the fourth round and the start of the playoff? Head for the putting green? Relax with a cigarette and a coffee? Wrong. They spent several minutes talking to their psychologist.

The days of athletes chucking off at the idea of spending time with a shrink are receding, Hermansson believes.

"There are some traditional views that say, 'If I'm seen with him that means I've got a problem.'

"But that [the Open] is the kind of stuff that is occurring. If someone is in a stressful situation a psychologist can help."

Hermansson, professor and head of the department for health and human development at Massey University, is no unsporting scientific boffin.

He was a good enough No 8 and lock to play for the New Zealand Universities in the 60s and in a classy Wellington pack which beat South Africa and the Lions in 1965 and 66, spearheaded by All Blacks Ken Gray, Graham Williams and Nev McEwan.

In simple terms, he breaks the job down to two parts: straight mental skills or goal-seeking, and work with a counselling base, that is, helping athletes deal with awkward, often personal situations which can be unrelated to their sport.

He has noticed some broad generalisations which go with the Games job.

Hermansson believes individual athletes feel less constricted in seeking his help than those in teams, who may worry at the attitude of their coaches or team-mates.

Women are more "relationship oriented" and open to a fresh approach than men.

Hermansson, who attended the Kuala Lumpur Games four years ago and the Sydney Olympics in 2000, has detected a difference in demands on his time between the two types of Games.

"There is a difference in terms of intensity. [The Olympics] have a smaller group of people working at a higher level. They are slightly more elite and the fact that they've got there [suggests] they have got their capacities taken care of. They are more likely to be self-contained."

And the range of issues he might have to confront?

"Not at these Games, but we had one situation of a personal hygiene issue between people in a living environment and an athlete not being comfortable about raising it.

"My job would be to resolve the situation in such a way that an athlete or official wasn't going to be undermined or offended by it."

At the more serious end of the spectrum is working through a stressful situation to help an athlete not only overcome an issue but prevent what Hermansson calls the "contamination" affecting their team-mates.

"When you get into a high-stress level you are not always conscious of the effect it can have on other people."

For a layman's one-sentence description of his job in Manchester, he talks of ensuring an athlete has "the space where they can actually do what they came here to do."

He relishes the Games environment and pointed to longer-term satisfactions than simply dealing with, then discarding, situations.

"There have been things from my point of view that were very satisfying in Kuala Lumpur and Sydney when people used me to help determine definitively what they want to do beyond the Games."

You also wouldn't mind betting that with a cast of over 200 athletes in Manchester, with the many personalities that can bring, there is scope for a range of case studies when Hermansson gets back to his desk at Massey.

Full coverage:
nzherald.co.nz/manchester2002

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