The Games Behind the Game
Best in Sports: Tootsie Pops, lucky songs, and Al Pacino mean success for women’s soccer
In the slide show above, varsity soccer players Liz Speck (CAS’09) and Farrell McClernon (SMG’10) let us in on their secrets for winning.
Boston University had its share of big sports winners this past year, and BU Today covered it all. We had stories about athletes breaking records, winning trophies, even going pro. But many of our favorite sports stories are quieter, smaller in a way, more inward, about personalities and quirks and challenges that don’t usually make headlines. Those are the ones we thought we’d return to this week: remarkable athletes in more intimate contexts.
While most sports require physical fitness and technical skill, every sport requires mental focus. Whether it involves pushing your body to the limit in the final stretch of a sprint or maintaining the composure necessary to make that last gasp game-winning shot, sports are as much a contest of the mind as they are of the body. Yet we rarely hear about the mental regimens that athletes use to maintain mental and emotional focus.
Here we learn the pregame routines of two women’s varsity soccer players, Liz Speck (CAS’09) and Farrell McClernon (SMG’10), and listen to them talk about why they are crucial to peak performance.
Edward A. Brown can be reached at ebrown@bu.edu.
This story originally ran September 22, 2008.
Comments & Discussion
Boston University moderates comments to facilitate an informed, substantive, civil conversation. Abusive, profane, self-promotional, misleading, incoherent or off-topic comments will be rejected. Moderators are staffed during regular business hours (EST) and can only accept comments written in English. Statistics or facts must include a citation or a link to the citation.