Michael Jordan wore his University of North Carolina practice shorts under his Chicago Bulls shorts every game. Serena Williams didn’t wash her socks during her winning streak in a tournament. Wayne Gretzky drank his beverages in the same order in between hockey periods.
What do all these great athletes have in common? They all have sports superstitions.
The history of superstitions is deeply rooted in ancient religious beliefs. For example, early Christians wanted to influence survival outcomes by practicing rituals such as throwing salt over your shoulder or avoiding looking into broken glass. Both of these superstitions were thought to ward off the devil.
Overtime, however, they have evolved into rituals athletes depend on for success in the sports world. For many athletes, their superstitions are also ritualistic.
Portsmouth High School athletes Raegan and Emery Lawton, both juniors, are two prime examples of this. The University of Pennsylvania lacrosse commits have quite the complex routine they execute before every game they play.
To prepare themselves for a game, the twins do their handshake and chest bump as well as complete a specific stick work pattern. These rituals began in their freshman year and if they don’t do either of these, neither of them feel ready for the game.
“If the stick work wasn’t complete before the game, we’d be so cooked,” Raegan Lawton said.
After asking her more about why she felt this way, she said “If I don’t do one of my routines, I feel like that’s the reason I played badly.”
Many athletes such as these two associate certain tasks with success. If the rituals have worked for them in the past, they are more likely to do it again.
This even extends to coaches and fans. Timothy Hoply, who is a long-time coach of the baseball team at PHS, ate the same steak and cheese sandwich during the team’s winning streak.
In psychology, the phenomenon that convinces people they perform better when they execute a certain task is called operant conditioning.
According to University of Northern Iowa professor of psychology, Carolyn Hildebrandt, operant conditioning is the belief that behaviors are influenced by consequences. Positive reinforcements like having a pre-game ritual encourages athletes by adding a reward, which is success.
This confidence strengthens people’s belief in their abilities and helps them approach difficult tasks as something to be mastered rather than avoided.
Based on the National Library of Medicine, the main part of the brain associated with superstitions is the medial temporal lobe located in the hippocampus. This part of the brain controls memory, learning and reinforcement.
“If it works you remember it, but if it doesn’t, you don’t remember which is why people associate [success] with whatever their ritual or superstition is,” said Michelle Wheeler, a psychology and social studies teacher at PHS.
Some superstitions are less ritualistic and more of associating an object with success.
For example, Chef Pino, the bass fishing coach and the culinary teacher at PHS, said bringing a banana on a boat is bad luck and this superstition was then brought over into the fishing industry.
“Bananas are historically bad to bring on a boat. The old time sailors didn’t want to be on the boats with bananas because they would bring tropical pests,” said Pino.
Do you have any sports superstitions you would like us to cover? If so, please contact [email protected].
