The leadership
role he assumed in his family when his father entered the service may be
why the Detroit native is a confident leader on the basketball court. And
that may be the reason why, during a game in the 1995-96 season, and in
front of a crowd that booed him every time he touched the ball, Ed Norvell
practically took it upon himself to try to lead Kent to an upset win against
the No. 1 team in the conference.
Sometimes it's hard, Lance Hansen says. Sometimes
it's hard putting on your Kent State football uniform - going through the
same routine every day - working hard when really there is nothing to show
for it on the scoreboard at the end of most games. Sometimes it's hard
when your team, just 10-63-1 in the 1990s, always is being ridiculed by
the public - even by those within your own school.
But Hansen, who played in his final game last
season for Kent, finds a way to look at the situation in a positive way.
In
this game, there is no ball. Really, there
is no way to score. The biggest battle in this game is the one deep within
yourself. In cross country, the battle is about finding the strength deep
inside yourself to succeed - to cross the finish line in that certain amount
of time.
Kent State cross country runner Brad Hunt experiences
the battle within himself. The way to be a successful runner, Hunt says,
has to do with "listening to your body."
When members of the Kent State women's
volleyball team stepped into their home floor of the Memorial Athletic
and Convocation Center in the 1996 season, they felt unbeatable.
It wasn't until the 14th match that they were
beaten in their own building during the 1996 season. They finished the
season 13-1 at home and yet struggled through a 3-8 record on the road.
There really isn't an answer for this, says Robert
E. Stadulis, an associate professor in the School of Exercise, Leisure
and Sport at Kent.
One
fact is for certain, however. The players
at least thought they believed in themselves.
"We just dare teams to come in here and
beat us on our own floor," junior Angela Snow said after the Flashes
beat Toledo last season in the M.A.C. Center.
These Kent State athletes have something in common.
All of them have experienced situations in athletics that showed the important
relationship between an athlete's mental capability and how he is able
to deal with certain factors associated with his or her sport.
Stadulis, 53, who has studied topics in sports
psychology for about 20 years, says he still is amazed by this phenomenon.
"What fascinates me and is becoming more
and more obvious is how strongly related the mind and body are," he
says. "We haven't even begun to scratch the surface in terms of what
the relationship is."
By looking at how he carried himself on the court,
it was hard to understand that Ed Norvell was just a freshman then. What
would happen in Kent's game at Eastern Michigan in the first round of the
Mid-American Conference tournament last year only would strengthen that
confusion.
Early
in the first half, Eastern Michigan guard
Earl Boykins was accidentally flipped over the back of Kent guard Nate
Reinking. Pushing ensued, and Norvell came to Reinking's defense. The Eastern
crowd noticed this. They would not forget.
"(Some Eastern players) started to get on
Nate," Norvell says. "My team is my family. Nate - he plays
for Kent. It's us against them, and I wanted to prove them wrong."
Soon after the incident, Norvell was booed with
every touch of the ball by the boisterous Eagles crowd. But the 6-foot
guard seemed to feed off the crowd's hostility. He went on to score 23
points, one point shy of his career mark, while shooting nine of 15 from
the floor.
The Flashes, however, lost to the more-talented
Eagles, 96-81.
"When the crowd is against me, it makes
me go up to another level," Norvell says. "It's just that pit
bull in me that comes out. It's time to make a stand."
What
Stadulis has found from his studies on crowds
is that "the better you are, or the more skilled you are, the more
a crowd will affect you positively."
"That's individual differences," Stadulis
says. "In (Norvell's) particular case, he would argue that he had
the skills to pull it off. Somebody else might try to do the same things
that they weren't capable of doing and end up actually performing poorly.
"In (Norvell's) case, what the crowd may
have done is raise his level of arousal to a more optimal level,"
Stadulis says.
Kimberly Schimmel, an assistant professor in
Kent's School of Exercise, Leisure and Sport, does much of her studies
on the sociological aspect of sports.
"In this case, it seems Ed responded pretty
well to (the crowd's boos) and perhaps maybe that's what he needed,"
Schimmel says. "On the road, playing away from your school - a lot
of athletes need a little bit more to get them to an arousal state."
Although he knew it would be a "challenge"
when he signed to play at Kent State, Lance Hansen, a wide receiver, still
thought there would be a time when his team would unite and achieve success.
He thought it would be during his senior year. Instead, what he'll remember
is a 2-9 record.
But
amid all the negatives that afflicted the
Kent football team, Hansen went into every game and ended every game with
a positive outlook.
"I'll go into a game against anybody, and
I have that attitude that we're going to win this game," Hansen says.
"That's where your mental toughness comes in.
"If I give 100 percent on every play and
play every down like it's my last down, I have absolutely no regrets."
Hansen, who has been bothered by a long list
of nagging injuries during his Kent career, hopes future employers will
see all he has gone through as a football player and be impressed by his
perseverance.
"I made the commitment and signed the dotted
line back in '93," Hansen says. "If I didn't want the challenge,
I would have gone to Louisville or Minnesota and sat the bench for a couple
of years. I chose to come here and try to play my freshman year. That's
what I wanted."
When
describing the Kent football team, Schimmel
used the phrase "culture of losing" to describe why the struggling
team ends up on the losing side of a close game. The team may be locked
in on negative past experiences that prevent it from winning now.
"They don't have histories of past success,"
Schimmel says. "They don't have those things to draw on that provide
them with that feeling like, 'Yeah, we will win this.' It's a very difficult
thing to break out of."
Stadulis has talked to some of Kent's football
players in the past about how they dealt with losing.
"They all had different approaches,"
he says. "For some, it was business. They were here to get an education
- they really believed in the student athlete idea. They saw it as a job.
Other people try all sorts of different approaches - the idea of trying
to get away from it - don't think football.
Kent State cross country runner Brad Hunt gets
right to the point when he talks about how a runner must approach a race.
"Cross country is not like other sports
where you have time to do whatever," Hunt says. "In 25 to 30
minutes, it's over. If you fall asleep, the pack will pull away real quick."
That
is why it is important that runners find ways
to remain focused before and during a race.
Hunt says the night before a race: "You
think about the competition and the main guy to look out for. You focus
on your own race - how fast you need to go out. You feel what the race
is going to be like and where you need to be at in certain times in the
race."
Hunt wrote a paper in his psychology of motivation
class on arousal. And he said it's something that can relate to running.
A runner must know when to be excited and when to relax.
"You have to know what point is mentally
best for you," Hunt said. "You've got five miles before the
race is over - four miles until the real race begins, the sprinting - so
you have to be on the lower side of the spectrum as far as arousal is concerned."
Stadulis says research shows runners use two
kinds of styles of thinking during a race - disassociation and association.
With the disassociation style, the
athlete tries to forget about the sport. Instead, Stadulis says, the athlete
may think about pleasant scenes like a flowing river or a sunset.
"From a pain point of view or from a psychological
momentum perspective, you think of things where you want to relax,"
Stadulis says.
"The association style really focuses on
what you're doing - perhaps the relaxing of a muscle."
In one of its best seasons ever, the Kent State
volleyball team finished third in the MAC with a 10-7 record. It seemed
to gain momentum with every home match that it played.
"Just the feeling we get when we play at
home - it has to do with confidence," sophomore Becky Neglia said
after a win over Ohio University last season.
The Flashes came within one win of having a perfect
14-0 home mark. That streak was ruined in the last home match of the season
against conference champion Miami (OH) in five games.
Former Kent head coach Kevin Renshler says he
never talked with his team about its successes playing at home.
The
reason why the Flashes were so successful
in their own building is a bit of a mystery, Stadulis says.
"Really, when you think about it, why should
volleyball have that much of an advantage at home?" Stadulis asks.
"It's probably psychological - maybe you jump a little harder or higher.
You hit those spikes a little harder or accurately."
Schimmel cited how, in collegiate women's sports,
the home-court advantage seems to become "even bigger," since
few fans will travel with a team to an away site.
"So it is really just your people there
cheering for you," Schimmel says, "and the team that comes in
has virtually no voices behind them."
Kent finished the 1996 season with a 3-8 road
mark. In five of those losses, the Flashes took their opponents to the
fifth game before losing.
"My judgment is that they lost so many five-game
matches on the road," Stadulis says. "If they would have won
one of those tough matches earlier on, that might have been psychologically
all they needed to make themselves believe they could win that fifth game."
Stadulis
says that some of the volleyball players may
think about their road failures consciously.
"They may be thinking, 'We better win in
four, because if we get to that fifth game, we're in trouble,'" Stadulis
says. "Things do have a habit of repeating themselves, not because
of their own level of play or their physical capabilities, but more than
likely because of their psychological awareness of the situation.
"The best predictor of skill performance
is what we call self efficacy - the belief that someone has in their ability
to perform."
As researchers search for answers into the mind-body
relationship and how that is related to athletics, one can only marvel
at what already has been found.
"If you get somebody to imagine or mentally
practice the healing process," Stadulis explains, "you get them
to see that knee that's been blown out and surgically repaired, and you
spend time on that, you have image therapy. Studies show that you heal
faster. It's focusing in and imagining the healing process."
Stadulis is amazed about how humans are able
to perform a bodily task and be totally unaware of it.
"There is some fascinating research with
shooters," Stadulis says. "They are able to stop their heart
right before they pull the trigger. They want complete relaxation and control,
and their heart actually stops.
"Here, people have developed that ability
without even being aware of it. That's what fascinates me."
Brian Richesson is a senior newspaper journalism
major and the sports editor of the Daily Kent Stater. He also is a broomball
guru.
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