Stress in Pro Sports

When I first saw the discussion about a proposed stress event on the editor's board, I kind of scoffed it off. Then one early morning I got to thinking about stress in professional sports. Would anyone think that a pro ball player making several million dollars a year is under stress? How about a pro race driver, contracted for well over a million dollars a year in NASCAR's elite Cup Series?

Lets take a look at the ball player. I've always been mystified why a pro receiver in the National Football League (NFL) drops the ball. This guy is getting millions a year to catch a stupid football! He runs the length of the football field leaps up to catch the pass and he can't keep his hands around the ball? I've seen many a sure catch slip right through the receiver's hands. This is what the guy does for a living; he practices endlessly and has been doing this since grade school or before. Lots of players in the NFL have at least ten years experience playing the game at various levels before they make the pros.

It kind of makes you wonder if the player has been paid to throw the game, and in some instances it may be true, we'll never know. BUT, what we do know is that the players are under a terrific amount of stress. All eyes are on them, millions of eyes, they're constantly watching! The same can be said for the pro race driver. A lot of these young guns (as the new stars are called in NASCAR these days) may be in their twenties or early thirties, but most of them have been racing since early childhood. Four-time Cup Champion Jeff Gordon began racing karts when he was four years old. A lot of the pro race drivers are products of parental guidance in the sport just as Tiger Woods was guided by his parents since early childhood to be a pro golfer. In a lot of instances the stress management of these players has been honed as they ascent up through the years into the pros. There are a good share of them who believe they can handle the stress, and some of them actually can. We've all seen what has happened to those who can't.

Boxer Mike Tyson couldn't handle the stress, his illicit avenues of getting stress relief were what got him put in prison and hounded out of the boxing profession. The same can be said for former baseball player Darryl Strawberry and former football player Leonard Marshall. These people couldn't handle it with or without relief.

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