Anuja Wickramasingha - 14 Mar 2024

How Team Sports Boost Mental Wellbeing in Teens

Art: Teenage Mindset, Artist: Team Sports

Before moving on to the topic, let me ask you two questions:

What is the most important asset for a teenager: a healthy bank account or a well-maintained mindset?

How do you rate the statement "Mental wellbeing is important for a stress-free life" out of ten?

Once you've been asked those two questions, you may think about your teenage period and your mindset at that time. And, if you are thinking about it, now is the perfect time to get into the topic.

It's the teenage mindset that drives our lives for the next few decades. Being the initial point of our healthy mental life, the teenage mindset could stem from traumatic experiences or develop due to various external influences, which the teenage mind may struggle to resist. However, the initial level of a teenage mentality will affect your future mental well-being. So it's crucial to prioritize safeguarding your mental health as a teenager, and guardians should also prioritize the mental health of their teenagers. In this case, team sports are one of the most suitable resources for anyone trying to build character.

While sports are not solely for character building, they can significantly contribute to personal growth. So when we discuss sports mainly focusing on team sports, we can find out how team sports could be helpful in mental wellbeing.

Physical Health

Physical health always affects mental health making it an unavoidable physical health factor. With team sports, you could improve your strength, flexibility, and cardiovascular health as well. These physical factors will make a physically fit character who can face his adult phase with more confidence.

Social Connections

To blend properly with the society as teenagers, your social connections must be enhanced. You must try to understand how to deal with society. It is true that it's not easy to identify various kinds of people. But team sports will teach you how to interact with others, while making you aware what a team is. You will know how to build up connections and how to make friends. At the end of the day, you can't achieve just an individual win in team sports without the help of your teammates. There is not much different to your social life as well. There are lots of teamwork and social connections around that you need to move on with your life. Identify how things are going and be ready to adapt. You should be able to do that with concentrating on effective communication.

Emotional Regulation

Sports are not only about wins; they also consist of defeats as well. Team sports are a great way to develop resilience, as they prepare you to handle the emotions of both victory and defeat, providing a fantastic training ground for emotional regulation. Teens navigate the highs of victory and the lows of defeat alongside teammates, fostering empathy and resilience.  Learning to manage frustration during a close game or channel pre-game jitters into focused energy are valuable skills that translate into academic and social settings. Team sports also create a safe space to practice healthy expressions of emotions, like celebrating a teammate's success or voicing disappointment constructively. Through these experiences, teens develop the emotional intelligence needed to navigate the complexities of adolescence and beyond.

Self-Esteem and Confidence

Confidence is the key for both social life and sports. So you should always try to be positive and face any problem with confidence. Develop strategies to build up self-esteem and always try to face challenges instead of avoiding them. Achieving your goals should be one of your main tasks and it will lead to your career success in both sports and personal life. Teenage team sports experiences will teach you how to build up your confidence.

Goal Setting

Confidence is not enough; you should identify your goals precisely. Identifying what you need to achieve and then you can make a strategic plan to reach your goal. If you don't have a good plan, your opposition will get you down. Increasing your analyzing skills and pre-planning skills are very important for your personal life.

Discipline

This is the most crucial aspect. As a young teenager, you have hot blood, and that gets you in the middle of heated situations. In team sports, discipline is the most important factor. Always try to respect your opposition because respecting others doesn't make you a loser; it teaches you to be patient in crucial situations.

Empathy

Teenagers' minds can change in any direction. Here, we can create a mindset with empathy. Teenagers are always seeking attention but some children do not get enough. After ages, they try to find that missed attention from somewhere. Team sports could bring you that missed attention also. It will reduce your social phobia and improve impulse control.

So in conclusion, team sports could help teenagers to improve mental wellbeing. Here, confidence, social connection, emotional resilience, physical health, emotional regulations, and various factors will lead a teenager to a life with a healthy mental status. Team sports could provide with teens with good personalities to the society, and they'll always try to change the world to a better place. You may experience losing during your sporting events, but they will ultimately guide you toward success.