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Team Communication in Sports

Team communication is important for sports teams to be effective. Members must communicate, especially to convey messages, which can result in persuasion, evaluation, information transfer, motivation, and problem solving. Effective teams display more consistent communication patterns and use frequent planning statements. In various sports like baseball, basketball, and soccer, teammates communicate strategies non-verbally through signals, plays, and targets to coordinate and implement team strategies. Decision-making is also fundamental in sports and requires processing information under pressure to make good decisions that help performance. Collective and individual decision-making by players is important for team success.

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dhwani
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88 views

Team Communication in Sports

Team communication is important for sports teams to be effective. Members must communicate, especially to convey messages, which can result in persuasion, evaluation, information transfer, motivation, and problem solving. Effective teams display more consistent communication patterns and use frequent planning statements. In various sports like baseball, basketball, and soccer, teammates communicate strategies non-verbally through signals, plays, and targets to coordinate and implement team strategies. Decision-making is also fundamental in sports and requires processing information under pressure to make good decisions that help performance. Collective and individual decision-making by players is important for team success.

Uploaded by

dhwani
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Team Communication in Sports

The contemporary viewpoint is that teams, more than individuals, can find more
solutions to problems evoked during competition. To become effective, the members
of the team must communicate, particularly when participants wish to convey a
message. Communication processes can result in persuasion, evaluation,
information transfer, motivation, and problem solving. Besides, communication may
carry more than one function at the same time. Communication patterns (e.g., how
do members of the team respond to each other’s message) are found to
discriminate between more effective and less effective teams. Effective sport
teams tend to (a) display more consistent types of communication, and (b) use
frequent planning statements.

In baseball, the pitcher and catcher communicate


through a series of hand signals what pitch will
be thrown. At the same time, the shortstop and
second baseman can communicate who will protect the second base. In
basketball, the playmaker communicates to the rest of the teammates which play will
be performed, to slow down, or to speed
up the tempo of the game. Finally, soccer teammates communicate a particular
target to a player who executes a corner kick. It follows that team
members in sports communicate with each other to achieve better solutions to
challenges posed by the opposing team players, and in so doing are
better positioned to coordinate and implement team strategies among
themselves.

Communication could be of two types verbal or non-verbal. Communication is very necessary during
sports. Communication is between players in team sports and in single sports communication is a
key between coach and the player. But communication can’t possibly be verbal during the game,
that is why it’s necessary to strengthen their non-verbal communication and to create a deeper
understanding between players. Many sports are characterized by constantly
changing locations and time constraints. In sport such as basketball, soccer, and field hockey,
players change locations and the ball moves at speed
from one player to another. Under such circumstances, members of the team often rely on
both overt and covert communication in an attempt
to increase team coordination and performance.

Decision making

Decision making (DM) is the cognitive operation of selecting a response from a range of
available responses in circumstances where an action is needed. DM usually takes place
while interacting with either the external environment or
internal desires and requirements. Decisions may be
made by an individual or a group, which mediates between the environment and the
behavior or
performance. DM can operate slowly under conditions that lack environmental constrai
nts and demands but must be fast under circumstances of pressure, stress, or temporal
constraints. When
circumstances permit, the brain processes the information needed for DM intentionally
through a perceptual–cognitive linkage.

Competitive sport events are laden with social


and emotional stressors. Information processing
under pressure may be affected in that attention is narrowed, which inhibits recog
nition and selection of essential environment cues. In
turn, the cognitive system has limited resources
to establish visual and meaningful patterns and
prime a response. Instead, the cognitive system
becomes overloaded with interfering thoughts,
and attempts to control emotions are accompanied by declined self-efficacy. Under such
stressful conditions, DM is expected to suffer because of the inability to prime and
trigger the appropriate response, and this, in turn, is likely to result in
performance decline. Existing evidence supports the notion that the quality of DM
depends on how pressure is appraised and interpreted and what
coping strategies and self-regulation are applied by the athlete in an effort to maintain the
operating efficiency of the perceptual–cognitive system

Decision-making is a fundamental element of any sport, especially open,


fast, dynamic team sports such as volleyball, football, soccer, rugby, and
basketball. In order to succeed in winning any game and competition at
national and international level in all individual and team sports there is a
need to reconsider all success factors in order to make a better decision to
win. At the elite level, coaches and athletes appear to consistently make
good decisions in situations that are highly temporally constrained. Similarly,
athletes should be encouraged to make a decision by evaluating options and being allowed to make
mistakes and purposely inspect these mistakes so that it does not occur in the future.

Athletes who have the ability to create truly great performances on the field or in a race have one very
important skill in common. They are excellent decision makers – instead of letting things happen,

In team sports though there is an opportunity for collective decision making it is still necessary for
players to be vigilant and take their individual decisions also.

Activity set up

Requirements for following activity will be –

At least two teams with approximately five players each

30 cue cards with different activities written on each card folded and placed in a bowl.

A white board or a score board to mark the scores of all the teams.

A referee to look after the score and the match.


stopwatch

Activity Organization

To play this activity every team should hold approximately five players. Every team should decide a
captain and collectively decide a name for their team. The captain will have to decide an order in
which each player performs. The first player will pick a cue card from the bowl. Each cue card will
describe a particular location (for example: Garden, Swimming pool). First person will be given 15
seconds, he\she will have to act any activity describing the location without using verbal speech or
drawing, only by the actions of hand (for example: if the cue card has the location garden the player
can show an activity of jogging, running etc). after 15 seconds are up next member will join the first
player but he is not allowed to see the cue card. He will just have to assume the location and act
some activity related to it. This will continue till the last player. All the players will keep enacting the
activity till the end. After all players have performed the opposition will have to pick any random
player and ask him what activity they are performing and which location it is. If the player said the
right location and an activity is also related to the location, the team get 10 points. But if the player
fails to contemplate the right location they receive no points. You can conduct about 4 rounds in this
particular activity.

Activity debriefing

As we highlighted in the beginning main point of this game was to invoke a better non-verbal
communication amongst the members of the team and also independent decision making. So as we
observe the activity in the beginning the team members had to select a captain with collective
understanding. Understanding is always a key potential for the better harmony of the team.

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