Field Hockey
  • Posted on Wednesday, July 23, 2008
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Mind games matter for U.S. field hockey team

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In the age of high-tech equipment and nutritional supplements, many feel the greatest advantages in sports can still be found in something athletes have known about all along — the mental part of the game.

It was Yogi Berra who once said, "Baseball is 90 percent mental, the other half is physical."

Now more than ever, athletes from all sports are turning to people like Colleen Hacker to improve that 90 percent — and it's paying off.

Hacker, a former field hockey and soccer coach and now a professor at Pacific Lutheran University, has been the mental skills coach for the U.S. women's field hockey team for the past year and a half. In April, the team earned a spot in the 2008 Olympics with a 3-1 win over Belgium at a world Olympic qualifier in Russia.

It will be the Americans' first Olympic appearance since 1996, and the first time they have qualified for the Olympics since 1984, when the U.S. took home the bronze medal. (Since the 1996 Games were in Atlanta, the host U.S. didn't have to qualify).

Read the complete story at thenewstribune.com

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