Hi guys, I'm Amanda Zelechoski. I am a psychologist and a parent of a couple kids at the high school, and I have known some of you guys since you were very little. And Coach Marshall asked me to come and talk with you guys this week to get ready for your big game, and I'm very bummed that I could not be there in person. But it's because I'm in in Banff, Canada, at a conference, actually with a lot of colleagues who have expertise in some of the things that I wanted to talk to you about, and so it ended up being really great. That I was out here and could pull them in.
One of them, in particular, to give you a special message.
So before I turn it over to her,
I just wanted to talk to you a little bit about adversity and stress. So that's my area that I focus on in my work: is adversity and stress and trauma in some cases. And so that was why Coach Marshall wanted me to talk to you all about how the brain responds to adversity. And so I know that you are facing a big challenge this week, but I also know that you can do it, and that you have a whole community rallying around you. I wanted to share a little bit about what we know in the science about how the brain adapts to stress.
Right, you're facing a pretty stressful opponent this week,
But the good news is your brain is built to adapt to challenges. So there's this concept in neuroscience called neuroplasticity, right? And so this just means that every time you face something difficult. And you're able to stay focused under pressure, and you choose to keep going and try again. You're actually training your brain to handle adversity, so that it knows what to do the next time. All of these repetitive practices, again and again, going through plays, going through stressful experiences, help prepare your brain for big moments like this.
So stress or adversity doesn't have to be a signal to back down. It can actually be a signal to lock in. Like I've been here before. I know how this works.
But the reality is you've practiced for this, and you've seen this opponent before, so your brain's ready for this, right? Trust your training, control your responses, and just focus on the next play. That's neuroplasticity—it's your brain's ability to say, okay, that didn't go the way I wanted. But I know how to do this, and I'm going to do it right the next time, and I'm going to learn from this.
You don't have to win the game in a single moment, and that's the great news about sports, and particularly a sport like football. You just have to win the moment that you're in right now. Right? Think about this play. Pressure are these opportunities to prove how much you've grown, so you can keep thinking about next play. It's the next play. Every play we do again and again, but we do it together. And the togetherness and the connectedness is the other piece I wanted to emphasize,
That actually is really going to help you guys in this week's game and throughout your lives. To be honest,
We are lucky to be in a community like Valpo, where people show up for us and are there to cheer us on when we do well, but also to lift us up when we get knocked down. And so, let's hear from Megan now about what else some of the science teaches us about these processes.
All right. Hi, I'm Megan. I work at the Center for Healing and Justice through Sport, and I heard you all have a big playoff game coming. Knowing that you're at the end of your season, I think it's important to remember that everything you've been doing until now has actually been building your brain's capacity to take on new challenges. So every time you stretched yourself throughout the season, every time you tried something new, every time you took a risk and it didn't work out, or maybe it did. What you were doing was contributing to your brain's ability to take on new things,
And so maybe this team isn't totally new, but this situation is new, and you've done all the work so far this year to get ready to do that.
Okay, but like, are you just making this up, or is this based in science?
I am.
You never know with me, but in this case, it is absolutely based in science. There's a really cool. Model out there that helps you understand your brain called the neurosequential model, and basically what it tells us is that even though sometimes we think the way that we get better at challenges is by diving into the deep end first thing, what we actually know is that you have to take on these little challenges that build up over time, and your brain gets more. And more ready to take on new things,
To manage new stressful experiences in a way that,
You know, helps you deal with it because you've had all that practice.
So, does this work if you're just doing a sport by yourself, or does it matter if you have teammates?
Well, in this case, the beautiful thing about team sports is that.
Other people are the most protective thing for your brain, so they actually help in a couple of ways. They help you have a better experience, so the like highs of doing things together are higher. The lows are less low if you have great teammates. And there's two pieces of research that I really love that illustrate this, and I think they might be things that you can relate to. One is that they,
This I don't know why they thought this was the thing to do, but this research team decided we're going to figure out whether or not how much people enjoy eating chocolate.
And what they found through this research was that people enjoy eating chocolate, of course,
At whether they're by themselves or whether they're with another person. They enjoy it, but they actually enjoy it significantly more if they get to share that chocolate with someone else. Same chocolate, different experience when you get to do it with someone else. And I just love that for teams. I think that really speaks to how hard you're working for each other and why you want to do your best to leave it all out there with your teammates.
And they measured whether or not how how challenging the task looked to these athletes before before taking on the challenge.
And they they looked at the hill and thought it was more steep when they had to run it by themselves, and they thought it looked less steep when they were running it with a teammate. So I think the fact that you all are doing this together actually makes this challenge significantly more manageable.
So what happens? Like, what do we know about the brain if I make a mistake or a play doesn't go our way, and it's just feeling like this insurmountable challenge? What can I do, or what does my brain know how to do in that situation?
That's a really good question. I mean, I think the best thing you can do is rely on something that's comfortable, something that helps you feel like ready to do the next thing. I think if you can.
Go back to some kind of ritual. If you can cue yourself with some phrase that says like "next play," right? Focus on the next thing. What's next?
So I love that Megan shared with you the research about the climbing the mountain together, right? That we do better when we have somebody by our side, and I think it is not coincidental that I am looking out my window at the Canada Rocky Mountains, right? Thinking about this mountain you're going to climb together this week, that you've prepared for together, that you've trained together. So I think we both just want to leave you with, you know. If it's hard, if you're in those moments where you're struggling to do it for yourself,
Do it for your brother. We do better when we climb mountains together. It feels less overwhelming, and our brains are ready to adapt and be resilient when we have others there with us, lifting us up and on the journey with us.
So do it for each other. Do it for your coaches. Do it for your community, and let's go, Vikes!
All right, go Valpo Vikings! Beat Penn!
Photos courtesy of Palmer Photography.