Whether you’re on a recreational team, playing for your school, your state, or even your country, sports are supposed to be fun. The hard part is competing with the other athletes during tryouts. Once you make the team, remember to just have fun and enjoy yourself because there are plenty of other people out there who would love to take your spot. In order to have fun, however, you need to learn to play with confidence.

Confidence is a feeling of self-assurance arising from one’s appreciation of one’s own abilities or qualities. Whatever your job is on the team, perform that task to the best of your abilities and know that whatever you are doing will work out just fine. It is a proven fact that athletes with high self-confidence or sports confidence think, act, and talk confidently. They do not focus on doubts about their ability or negative “what-ifs” of competition. They play in the moment – enjoying their sport, their abilities, and the exhilaration of competition.

Self-confidence can give an average athlete or team the courage and focus to defeat a stronger opponent. Self-confidence can motivate you to attempt and accomplish the impossible. Likewise, lacking self-confidence, an athlete or team will consistently perform way below their potential. Low self-confidence can kill an athlete’s enjoyment of the sport and turn him/her into a dropout statistic. There’s nothing wrong with attempting something, regardless of how you look when doing it, where you are, or the crowd – just do it. Attempting something whether you succeed or fail lets you know that it can be done, thus boosting your self-confidence.

Self-confidence can be achieved in more ways than one, but for sports there are only a few. One of the main ways to build confidence is to not fear failure. If you try to play the game with a perfectionist mindset, your spirits will get crushed when you miss or mess up. It’s best to not have that mindset at all and to just do your best. Nothing bad comes from doing your absolute best. Whether you win or lose, as long as you played your hardest you won something in the end, confidence. Playing at your full potential allows you to use your skills to the best of your ability. One of the most important ways to build confidence is to practice. “Practice makes perfect,” as the old saying goes. If you practice enough there will be no need to panic or be anxious when you’re in the game. When you’re in the game, you should be playing off of muscle memory… things should just flow when you’re out there.

Kylle Gaspay is a starting point/shooting guard for the boys’ varsity basketball team. As an athlete in the program for four years now, it’s safe to assume that he has dealt with high and low self-confidence in basketball. According to Kylle, confidence is, “the belief within yourself to do whatever you desire.”  He believes it is important to have confidence in sports and says it is easy to play confidently at certain times. Kylle also says that at other times, he has personally suffered from lack of confidence, and thinks that the team does too, since wins don’t come naturally. After a tough, 2-point loss to Eastern Tech on January 27, Kylle said “…mainly I feel at the lowest of lows in confidence right now.”

The amount of confidence people have varies from person to person and so does the way people acquire the confidence. One thing is certain though, in sports you have to play confidently in order to perform well. Once you make the team, it’s up to you about how you want your season to be. Have fun, play hard, and most importantly – play with confidence.