A conversation with my good friend Wayne Hudson this week got me thinking.
We often hear that sport reveals character.
And I agree — it absolutely can.
Pressure has a wonderful way of showing us things about ourselves. How we respond to disappointment. How we treat others when things aren’t going our way. Whether we keep going when it gets hard.
But I’ve been wondering about another side of this.
Does sport always reveal our character — or can it sometimes teach us to hide it?
From a young age, athletes begin receiving messages about what a sportsperson should look like.
Do what the coach says.
Put the team first.
Don’t make mistakes.
Don’t show weakness.
Harden up.
Watch how the best players behave. Be more like them.
Some of these messages have real value. Sport requires resilience, discipline, courage and an ability to work alongside others.
But somewhere along the way, a young athlete can also begin learning:
Who I naturally am might not be enough here.
So, they adapt.
The quiet kid thinks they need to become louder.
The emotional kid learns to hide what they’re feeling.
The creative player becomes frightened of making mistakes.
The athlete who loves laughing and playing starts thinking being serious means being committed.
Slowly, often without anyone intending it, performance becomes attached to a version of themselves they believe sport wants them to be.
And I wonder what that costs.
Because these changes rarely happen overnight.
They’re tiny adjustments made over months and years. An athlete learns what gets approval, what doesn’t, when to speak, when to stay quiet and which parts of themselves seem to fit.
And because it happens so gradually, they may not even notice they’re moving further away from who they naturally are.
Neither might anyone else.
Not the coach. Teammates. Sometimes not even the people who know them best at home.
There doesn’t have to be anyone at fault. Much of it can be completely unintentional.
Interestingly, psychology supports the importance of young people feeling some ownership over who they are and what they do.
Psychologists Edward Deci and Richard Ryan have spent decades studying this. Their work points to three things we all need — some choice and ownership, to feel capable, and to feel like we belong.
Research with young people also suggests that when they experience that freedom and ownership, they’re more likely to feel like their true selves.
That makes sense to me.
Because surely some of our greatest performances happen when we’re free?
Think about an environment where you feel completely yourself.
With family. Close mates. At work. At the beach. Playing music. Wherever it might be.
You’re not wondering what others think.
You’re simply you.
Your thinking becomes clearer. Your instincts are available. You’re present.
Which sounds remarkably similar to the state athletes spend years trying to access.
We call it flow.
Playing freely. Trusting instinct.
Being immersed in the moment.
Expressing rather than protecting.
Yet sometimes the very sporting environment trying to create high performance can unintentionally make that state harder to reach.
An athlete can’t be completely free while simultaneously wondering:
What does the coach want me to do?
What happens if I make a mistake?
What will Mum or Dad say afterwards?
Am I letting everyone down?
That’s a lot of noise to carry into a moment requiring instinct.
I’ve spent a lifetime around sport — first as a player, then as a professional coach and now working with athletes and their families.
Increasingly I’m curious whether developing athletes is always about adding more to them.
More instruction. More information. More expectations.
Or whether sometimes it’s about helping them remove some of what they’ve accumulated that isn’t really them.
That doesn’t mean removing standards, discipline or team values.
It means creating those things without requiring conformity of personality.
Imagine saying to a young athlete:
We don’t need you to become somebody else to succeed here. We want to help you discover who you are when you’re at your best.
What does your confidence look like?
How do you respond to pressure?
What allows you to compete freely?
Who are you when you’re not trying to prove anything?
Maybe sport doesn’t automatically reveal our true character.
Maybe the environment — and the coaches, parents and teammates within it — plays a huge part in whether that genuine character is encouraged to come out or unintentionally gets pushed further away.
And perhaps when athletes finally feel free enough to be themselves, that’s when we get to see what they’re truly capable of.
They stop performing a version of themselves.
And finally, they’re free to play.