---

BY HANNAH PURKEY

In print | Published March 24, 2011

So you want to win an NCAA basketball championship. It makes sense: the fame, the fortune, the really big trophy. Well, maybe not the fame and fortune part, but definitely the really big trophy. Plus it’s also the ultimate bragging rights. You started a foundation to feed orphaned children in developing nations during your four years at college?

Well, I conquered March madness and now have this really big trophy to show for it. Take that starving children.

Deciding to win is half of the battle, so you are already well on your way to the champagne shower. Feel free to pause reading and pat yourself on the back; you deserve it. What is the other half of the battle, you ask? Well, I’m told it has something to do with playing the game of basketball. This may be a problem, you say, as you have never actually been on a basketball court. Nonsense! We’re Swatties — something as silly as a lack of experience shouldn’t stop us from achieving our life goal, the really big trophy.

But just in case you haven’t quite perfected the physics equations necessary to master the game of basketball without ever having played before (those coefficients of friction are so hard to account for with so many different playing surfaces), here are some recently published scientific findings that, when applied to sports, may just help you in your pursuit of that trophy.

Be the little engine that could

Do you remember when you were in kindergarten, and you read (or someone read to you) that story about the annoyingly optimistic train? It was the one about the engine that overcame seemingly insurmountable odds with only willpower and by repeating “I-think-I-can, I-think-I-can.” It may have seemed schmaltzy at the time, but according to a new article in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, the way you perceive yourself really does affect your performance.

Participants taking a general knowledge test either did better or worse depending on whether they were implicitly exposed to perceptual, semantic or conceptual stimuli associated with being intelligent (did better) or stupid (did worse).

Researchers concluded from this that perception has a direct impact on performance. So instead of actually training in order to do well in sports, you just need to trick yourself into believing that you are already good at sports. Or, conversely, you could try and convince your opponents via subliminal messaging that they are bad at sports. If all else fails, the “I-think-I-can” worked for the little engine that could.

Write it out

In a recent blog post, New York Times columnist David Brooks highlighted a study published in Science about how participants asked to write down their feelings of stress before a big exam did significantly better than participants who did not undertake this task. This is perfect for Swatties. There are already writing classes, now we can have writing sports events as well. If you are about to take a free throw, just quickly run over to the sideline and jot down some of your thoughts first. It certainly couldn’t hurt your free throw percentage.

Celebrate like there’s no tomorrow

It turns out all of those ridiculous celebration dances are not just showing off; they are actually increasing a team’s chances of winning. An article published in the Journal of Sports Sciences last year claims that winning is in fact contagious, and that the more convincing a celebration, the more likely the team celebrating will win. Of course, if they are already celebrating they probably have made a good start towards winning, but that’s beside the point. Celebrating, even if you don’t really have anything to celebrate yet, will help you win. So go get your “Glee”-on and show off some team dances, preferably to Beyoncé music.

If all else fails, laugh

If, despite your best efforts, these bits of advice still don’t propel your team into the Final Four, then all you can do is laugh. As it turns out, this might also function as a last-ditch effort to succeed. According to a 2006 article in the Journal of Neuroscience, there is a neurological response to hearing laughter or a triumphant yell that makes the listener more likely to laugh as well. So if you are down and you just don’t think you have a chance of coming back, try laughing. Before you know it your teammates might be joining you, and, with a more positive attitude, you might just be able to pull off that last-second Hail Mary. Or, if not, at least you got a good laugh out of it.

I’m not saying these strategies will guarantee you that trophy you have your eye on, but they are a good place to start. Even if you don’t think you will be lacing up for this year’s NCAA tournament, be sure to watch those who do. Research published in the Journal of Consumer Research (last study, I promise) showed that people who had exerted self-control were more likely to exhibit angry behavior afterwards. So don’t listen to that little voice in your head; ditch the paper due tomorrow and instead tune in for the last few games of this year’s tournament.

Hannah is a senior. You can reach her at hpurkey1@swarthmore.edu.

---

« RETURN TO SPORTS

« PREV ARTICLE | NEXT ARTICLE »