The Psychology of College Baseball's Best

James Madison junior outfielder Kellen Kulbacki didn't do too much to earn co-national player of the year - only led Division-I in homers with 24 and RBI with 75, while hitting .464. In addition to his normal training regimen with the JMU team, Kulbacki has been regularly attending sessions with Dr. Wendy Borlabi, a sport psychologist the school makes available to its athletes. After visiting her regularly since 2005, Kulbacki says "the things I accomplished, I couldn't believe it almost," and credits Borlabi with much of his improvement on offense from his freshman to sophomore years.

Read the rest of the Richmond Times-Dispatch article here.

Red Sox Psychology

As the major league season is now in full swing, countless players are working their way through the minor league system, all with one dream in mind - making it, someday, to the bigs. In addition to hard work, practice, and passion for the game, minor leaguers for the Red Sox now have another ally in their quest - a sport psychologist. Bob Tewksbury, retired pitcher with 110 career wins and a 3.92 ERA under his belt, is hard at work in his third season as psychologist for the entire Sox farm system. One of Tewksbury's goals is challenging misconceptions about sport psychology, saying that "the industry name is ‘mental skills’ or ‘performance enhancement’ or whatever. I’d like to say it pertains to psychology, and I think it’s important for people to know that because I think there’s a stigma to psychology in general. The things that the players experience are totally normal. Throughout society people have issues that are totally normal, so I want to try to get away from that."

Read more on Tewksbury's efforts here.