Sport psychology for regional, rural, and remote pre-elite adolescent athletes

Abstract

[Abstract]: In this paper we describe how we have provided sport psychology to pre-elite adolescent athletes who live in the New England and North West Region of New South Wales. Providing sport psychology to regional, rural, and remote athletes is more challenging than it initially appears. It involves more than simply confronting the tyranny of distance that these athletes and their coaches and families face. The dilemma is how to make sport psychology relevant and accessible to athletes who live in or near small country towns that are a world away from State and National Sports Institutes and the sporting facilities that were built for Olympic and Commonwealth Games. Simply rolling out programs developed for city-based athletes fails to consider the psychological, social, economic, and political issues that confront young people who are growing up in regional, rural, and remote Australia. This short-changes these athletes. Instead providing sport psychology for this athlete population involves conceptual, technical, and service delivery innovation. A central feature of our redevelopment of sport psychology has been to construct it as low-cost, low-tech, and locally available mental equipment. We have developed the NIAS Mental Equipment Packs that contain small inexpensive objects as communication, concentration, motivation, emotional control, approach behaviours, and relaxation equipment that can be taken to competition and to training.