Dr. Craig Wrisberg is the man who makes the clutch counseling plays for UT athletes.

UT's sports psychologist teaches athletes not to think

by Joe Sullivan

Stimulating thought is the essence of what a university is all about. But one UT professor has made a career out of imparting a very different credo.

"The less you think the better," says Craig Wrisberg, professor of sports psychology, in summing up the mindset he's tried to instill in a generation of UT athletes who've sought his counseling. His focus is, of course, on enhancing their performance on the field or court or links. While he believes, "The psychological skills involved are applicable to a lot of other situations in life," he's quick to add that he's talking about "skills to maximize performance in front of an audience."

Still, it's hard to imagine Peyton Manning starting his snap count without giving intensive thought to sizing up the defense—or golfers not pondering their club selection and point of aim. Wrisberg agrees that mental preparation is important, but adds that, "Once the action starts, the thinking stops."

His admonition against thinking is primarily directed at getting rid of distraction or negative thought. "An athlete's attention space can only handle a very few things. And if you're thinking as you step to the free-throw line that the game is on the line and people will be mad at me if I miss, then you're probably going to miss."

If all of this sounds obvious, you may be asking why it takes a Ph.D. to get across something so simple. And what does a 52-year-old professor whose athletic activity (except for playing tennis) ended when he left high school know about high pressure collegiate athletics anyhow?

Seated in his small, spartan office in UT's Health, Physical Education, and Recreation Building, the lanky, ruddy Wrisberg acknowledges that simplicity is the essence of his message, but he stresses that getting it across is much easier said than done.

Coaches who tell their players to relax or not to worry are part of the problem, in his view. "When a coach yells out, 'Don't worry about it, just relax,' the player gets it in his head that coach thinks I'm uptight, and that makes him even tighter," Wrisberg says.

The solution, he contends, is to fill the mind with a simple, positive mental picture of the ball going in the basket or between the uprights or down the fairway or whatever the task at hand. "If I view the task as something that I've done thousands of times before, I could do it in my sleep. I can see it for what it is—a jump shot in a basketball game rather than the huge shot I have to have to win this game...The best players are thinking only about the ball going in the basket, whereas the lesser ones feel threatened and afraid of missing."

A native of St. Louis, Wrisberg got his doctorate from the University of Michigan and joined the UT faculty in 1977. While the field of sports psychology had its origins in the 1920s, Wrisberg pioneered it at UT and has built a program that now includes nine doctoral students.

Aside from working with a few basketball players when his tennis playing buddy, Don Devoe, was UT's coach in the 1980s, Wrisberg's involvement with UT athletics is more recent. "In 1991, Mike DePalmer, the former tennis group coach went to [Athletics Director] Doug Dickey and said we need to get this sports psychology thing on a more formalized basis. So we entered into a consulting agreement for my services plus two graduate assistants." One of the assistants is presently assigned to the men's golf team and the other to women's basketball.

"Pat Summitt is very big on sports psychology," Wrisberg says. "When it's crunch time, and she is calling a time out with 10 seconds left and Tennessee is down by one, if you're in that huddle, she'll tell you, Joe, to block out that other team's forward. Period. Craig, I want you set a pick on that guard #12. And, I'm thinking, 'Hey, I can do that,' and so are you. There's no doubt, no hesitancy, no big deal."

Wrisberg has a very different view of former men's basketball coach Kevin O'Neill, who was notorious for his tirades, especially at practice.

"After one practice where he was particularly abusive, he asked me what I thought, and I said, 'When someone does something well, let them know just as intensively as when someone does something wrong.' He'd say jokingly that, 'I need you more than my players do,' but his habits were too ingrained for him to change them very much.

"What a coach thinks of his players is maybe the most important thing in their lives, and you could see it in O'Neill's teams. Intensity is very important on defense, and you can get intensity to increase by challenging and berating players. But what stunk about O'Neill's teams? Their offense. Shooting is not about playing harder."

Athletes generally seek out Wrisberg on their own rather than at the direction of their coaches, and that's the way he wants it. "When I had athletes who were told to come see me by their coach, the sessions weren't very good. A player has got to be very committed to the process in order for it to work." The process typically consists of one-hour counseling sessions weekly throughout a three- to four-month season.

One set of players who've beaten a path to Wrisberg's door has been Tennessee's kickers. Former place-kicker John Becksvoort and punter Tom Hutton both worked with him intensively, and place-kicker Jeff Hall sought him out this fall.

"Jeff said, 'On extra points, I feel fine; on kick-offs, I feel fine; but on field goals, I don't feel completely ready.' I said, 'Tell me about field goals,' and he said, 'Well, I'm standing on the sideline, and the referee blows the whistle to put the ball into play, and now the clock starts...25, 24, 23...and Coach Fulmer calls for the field goal team...19, 18, 17...and we're running onto the field, and now I've got to mark my steps off and get it all together. Sometimes, we don't have a lot of time. What can we do about that?' And he comes up with a solution: 'Every down when we get inside the 50, I need to look at where they place the ball and imagine where that field goal would go.' o, whenever Fulmer says, 'Field goal team,' Halls goes in with the kick already in his mind. He'll take his steps and let it out. That's preparation. Jeff's not rushed anymore."

One kicker who didn't seek out Wrisberg early on is star-crossed freshman punter, David Leaverton. Many Vol fans have excruciating memories of Leaverton's three successive shanked punts that very nearly cost Tennessee the UCLA game and cost Leaverton his starting job. But according to Wrisberg, Leaverton scarcely remembers them at all.

"After that center snap sailed by him for a safety while he was trying to call time out, all he could think about [when called upon to punt] was, 'Oh gosh, I'm going out here again. I had better not shank this. I can't shank this.' But if that's what you are thinking about, instead of what you are going to do, yes you can.

"So when David came in we talked about the difference between worry thinking and good thinking. Worry thinking is about wishing you weren't out there. Good thinking is about knowing what I want to do, expecting it to go the way I want...Before it's all over, he may become the best punter that's ever been at UT."

High-profile football players and baseball greats like Todd Helton are by no means the only ilk of UT athletes who've come to Wrisberg for counseling. He's also worked with shot-putters, pole-vaulters, long-distance runners, and women volleyball players, among others.

Doesn't he need to know something about an event or a sport in order to be effective? "Well, it certainly gives you credibility earlier, but I know the nuances of sports and I understand what performance under pressure is all about. Like I'm working right now with Aaron Ausmus who was the NCAA shot-put champion last year, and I've never thrown a shot in my life. But Aaron knows what he needs to do, and so he helps me understand what is demanded of him. And then we talk about some things mentally he might add to his training to put him in a better position to do that."

Wrisberg doesn't have a private practice and doesn't, as a rule, work with anyone other than his graduate students and UT athletes. But there are some notable exceptions. Perhaps the most notable is Chris Woodruff, who last summer became the first Knoxvillian ever to win a major professional tennis championship (the Canadian Open). Wrisberg's office is a port of call whenever Woodruff makes it home from the pro tennis circuit, and his parents believe the sports psychologist has made a major contribution to their son's success.

"Chris is high-strung, and he's had a tendency to worry and to get distracted. We've talked a lot about what 'Chris Woodruff tennis' is and what he's not. It's not about who's watching his match and what they will think of him, or his ranking or what the score is. It is about playing one point at a time, watching the seams [of the ball] on every shot, and having high expectations about where the ball is going. I like the way he's settled down, and assuming he can put his physical problems [including hernia surgery last week] behind him, I think he's prepared to have a great year in 1998."

How about some advice for tennis hackers like this journalist? "Just watch the seams and have fun," Wrisberg says.