Pioneer Valley Youth Sports and Fitness Institute

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Pre-game Rituals and Superstitions

With the fall sports in full swing, high school, college and professional teams across the country participate in pre-game rituals and superstitions. Whether a matter of myth, religion, personal experience, or preexisting tradition pre-game rituals and superstitions have been a part of athletics for many years.  It appears that these practices and beliefs are conducted to rid of any hexes, bring good fortune, luck, performance, and proper mindset when athletes take to the field of play.  Day in and day out, night after night, athletes believe in the same pre-game rituals and superstitions.  However, at times, it seems as though little regard is placed on the effectiveness of these rituals and superstitions with actual sport performance, nor do these rituals and superstitions potentially correspond with an individual’s personality of being able to control a situation. 

There are plenty of unique, familiar superstitions and rituals in the sports world such as, the Sports Illustrated athletes and teams that had been proudly displayed on the world renowned sports magazine cover had a 37.2 % chance of falling victim to bad losses or lousy performances, declines in performances, post-season failure, blunder or bad play, injury and in some cases death. Sacred “do nots”, such as mentioning to a pitcher that a no-hitter was in progress was bad. If a pitcher hears the words “no-hitter”, the spell will be broken and the no-hitter lost, or act of crossing the baseball bats is sure to bring bad luck. Todd Williams, a national cross-country champion runner in 1991, discussed his superstition, “I wore the hat backward in ‘91 because it was windy and I didn’t want it to blow off. Now I’ll probably always wear it at the cross-country finals. And I’ll wear it backwards no matter what the weather”.

Research indicates that although both males and females participate in pre-game rituals and superstitions females have often shown to be more superstitious than males.  The literature also suggested to a positive correlation with age and amount of ritual use, the older an individual was the more exposure to sport superstitions and rituals.

As formulated by Professor Graham Neil, “Superstitions is a belief that one’s fate is in the hands of unknown external powers governed by forces which one can’t control.  Professors Neil, Watson and Tharpe have also provided various operational definitions when they depicted superstitions as psychological mechanisms, which allow an athlete to cope with the stressors that a competitive situation may provide, in turn allowing the athlete to perform under pressure.  Other pieces of literature have applied an athlete’s feeling of uncertainty when discussing the elements of chance and how this may detract from an athlete’s confidence.  In order to control that feeling of uncertainty an athlete would apply superstitious behavior to regain confidence and readiness in an otherwise uncontrollable and threatening situation.  Professor Neil suggested, athletes will use superstitious behavior as a response to success or failure.  “Win stay-lose shift...as long as you are winning, stay with your current behavior, but as soon as you lose, shift to another behavior”.

A psychological concept of our personality, locus of causality, may have provoked individuals to unconsciously adhere to superstitions and rituals. Locus of causality has been the magnitude to which one believes he or she is placed with the responsibility of the behavioral outcomes.  The individual sees the outcome to be internal, believing their behavior persuaded the outcome, or external, outcomes are attributed to outside forces such as, fate, luck, and other people.

Whether superstitions and pre-game rituals actually have a direct impact on the actual performance of the athlete has yet to be determined.  It could be argued that because superstitions and pre-game rituals may elicit a feeling of relaxation and calmness for the athlete, therefore, superstitions and pre-game rituals affect athletic performance.  On the other hand, superstitions and pre-game rituals are external in nature, and by no means do outside forces such as these beliefs and practices have an impact on the outcome of an event.  I believe that superstitions and pre-game rituals act as a psychological mechanism to facilitate optimal arousal for an individual and/or team for competition and/or activity. 

Len Haggerty, MA, CSCS, YFS –Level 1 is a Sports Performance Coach operating STRIDES Performance & Wellness, Inc. in Northampton, MA. They provide an experience for youths, athletes, and adults of all ages and abilities to discover their potential. You may contact Len Haggerty at len@strideshpi.net.