HOW DOES AN ATHLETE deal with losing confidence in the sport they play at the highest level?
Professional cricket player Simon Mackin knows all about it, after having a split second of doubt in his cricket skills that lead to 2 years rebuilding his confidence and mental resilience.
Simon delivered an online guest lecture to students at the Carlton College of Sport about his sporting career and discussed his new project, GRITFULL, designed to educate junior athletes about their maintaining their mental wellbeing.
Growing up in country WA Simon fell into professional cricket, resulting in a playing career with the Western Australia cricket team.
“I loved my job. I was playing for WA and eventually my goal was to play at the highest level as a fast bowler for Australia,” Mackin said.
“Then came one game against Victoria at the WACA, where I didn’t know where the ball was going, and I felt like I had forgotten how to play. It’s like if I was an accountant and suddenly forgot how numbers work.”
“After that incident, every time I drove into the WACA I’d get sweaty palms and get really anxious. Ay my lowest point, I was playing a game where I tried to get injured, so I didn’t have to play cricket anymore and get into the rehab group,” he said.
“It was at this stage that I knew I needed to reach out, so I talked to the Club psychologist and the Player Development Manager. They gave me advice and strategies for how to manage my anxiety. It took me a good 2 years to overcome this feeling because my confidence was gone.”
“Once I changed my mindset to accept that it happened and it was in the past, my bowling came back and I was positive again in my cricket,” Mackin said.
In 2020, Mackin moved over to Melbourne to continue his cricket career with the Victorian cricket team while also taking up a coaching role at the Melbourne University Cricket Club.
He is also now focussing on GRITFULL, a project with fellow cricket players Ashton Turner and Cameron Bancroft, that aims to promote gratitude, resilience, integrity and togetherness to young athletes.
“We realised that we could use our stories and other athletes to inspire junior athletes and give them greater understanding of how to build a foundation of mental health for anything associated with school or sport,” Mackin said.
The GRITFULL Junior Sports Wellbeing Program teaches athletes strategies to promote positive wellbeing and skills to manage stress and anxiety by using journals and face-to-face wellbeing sessions.
“We really want to create greater awareness in the community and in school sport about managing your own mental health to be resilient, which will hopefully give kids a foundation to cope with things when sport, or life, gets tough.”
Learn more about GRITFULL here.