Background

More than ever, competitive sports teams are including activities and interventions designed to increase their well-being. However, improving well-being at the team level requires time and it remains to be seen if a team’s well-being can be intentionally improved over the short time span during which interscholastic and intercollegiate teams are together. 

Aims

Our presentation highlights enhanced competitive sport team mental fitness, resiliency, and overall psychological well-being through data driven targeted interventions.

Method

A purposive sample consisting of two interscholastic and two intercollegiate teams in the mid-Atlantic region of the United States over the course of the 2022-2023 sport seasons participated in our study. Each academic level included a control and an experimental team. All teams completed two questionnaires, the sports mental fitness and resiliency inventory (MFRI-S) and the sports positive leadership inventory (PLI-S) at the beginning and end of the study. The questionnaires assess the extent to which mental fitness, resiliency, and positive leadership practices are present in the daily operations of a sports team.

Additionally bi-weekly interventions were designed to target each experimental team’s strengths and areas highlighted as warranting further development and support based on questionnaire results. Focus groups were conducted with both control and experimental teams at the end of the study to better understand the impact the interventions had on the experimental teams and its members.  

Results

Preliminary results suggest that collective or team well-being along with individual well-being and a heightened awareness of mental fitness and resiliency practices resulted from the interventions, along with a transfer to environments other than the sports teams.

Conclusion

We conclude that competitive sport team mental fitness, resiliency, and overall psychological well-being are improved through data driven targeted interventions within the brevity of the interscholastic and intercollegiate sport seasons. Further research is ongoing to confirm and generalize these results and their possible impact on the team’s competitive results.