"Winning isn't everything; it's the only thing."
An exploratory description of Christian athletes’ perceptions of prayer in sport
Return to the book list for titles beginning with 'a'.
A Mixed methodological pilot study, Daniel R. Czech and Erin Bullet, International Journal of Sports Science and Coaching Volume 2, Number 1, 2007, Pp 49-56
A study of 19 American student athletes’ (aged 19-23) perceptions of prayer with a view to helping coaches understanding of the importance of prayer to their athletes.
An introductory study of the literature confirmed that prayer is common in sport and also identified 6 reasons why athletes might pray, with alleviating anxiety and stress probably the most common.
The main questions investigated in the study were:
What religious actions do elite Christian athletes deem important ?
What are the prayer effectiveness scores of elite Christian athletes ?
How do elite Christian athletes describe their prayer life in relation to sport?
There are tables of answers summarising the athletes’ answers covering 2 pages
17 of 19 athletes said that they prayed for safety, to play to the best of their ability and to give glory to God but not to win.
All athletes revealed that prayer intensity and frequency increased with the importance of the performance.
Coaches need to understand that during times of high anxiety, prayer for the religious athlete may be the best coping mechanism.
One particularly interesting finding was that the majority of athletes believed that most professional athletes who profess their faith after the game are hypocritical, not truthful and often acting one way on the field and another off it.
One of the researchers’ conclusions is that a larger sample covering different religions is necessary to confirm the findings but that the data provided sufficient evidence for coaches to be aware of the importance of prayer in the game preparation of athletes of faith. The authors suggest specific areas of research which would be worth further investigation.