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Most of the leadership training that team captains receive at the collegiate level consists of either receiving a list of books or articles about leadership or a list of responsibilities that they must do with little or no guidance or instruction. Still others will focus on this reading and/or responsibilities with active discussion in the off-season, yet when it matters the most, during the competitive season, time spent on leadership instruction and follow-ups becomes an afterthought at best. Due to the supposed benefits of improved leadership for sport teams, a leadership development intervention program was developed and applied to two NCAA Division I teams who were successful enough to make it to the NCAA National Championships in their sport. Program effectiveness was determined by the teams meeting not only their seasonal goals but exceeding the primary objectives of the leadership development program set by the leadership consultant and coaching staffs, in addition to the favorable feedback provided by the team to the captains during/after the season, and semistructured interviews of the captains postseason.

This case study involves the progression from a cognitive-behavioral, psychological skills training approach with a rugby football player experiencing adjustment and mood disorder to a psychodynamic and interpersonal engagement with the client using themes from Buddhist psychotherapy. The study charts the development of the psychologist’s understanding of his relationships with clients and with his supervisor. We present a study of three people (i.e., the client, the psychologist, the supervisor) and how their stories and interpersonal interactions are interwoven from a Buddhist-psychodynamic perspective. We examine the influences of the dominant White culture on the male psychologist’s perceptions contrasted with the client’s background as a Pacific Islander. In addition, we present a projective test, which was central to the unfolding of this case study, designed for use with athletes. This case study is a confessional tale (Sparkes, 2002) told in the first-person from the psychologist’s viewpoint.

Expectations regarding pain tolerance are imbedded in the culture of sport, and bear heavily on pain and injury management. The athlete’s experience of pain is an encounter with core issues in the ethos of sport. As such, pain behavior not only influences performance but also is seen as defining character. This case study looks at the pain experience of a track and field athlete over a several-hour period from initial injury to stabilization, blending the perspective of athlete and sport psychologist. As the injury experience evolved, a complex set of interacting biological, psychological and social factors came into play, which alternately facilitated and inhibited the pain experience and which influenced action taken in response to pain.

This study explored whether a meridian-based intervention termed the Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) could reduce Type I ‘yips’ symptoms. EFT was applied to a single figure handicap golfer in an attempt to overcome the performance decrements the player had suffered. The participant underwent four 2-hr sessions of EFT. The EFT involved the stimulation of various acupuncture points on the body. The appropriate acupuncture points were tapped while the participant was tuned into the perceived psychological causes (significant life event) associated with his ‘yips’ experience. Dependent variables included: visual inspection of the ‘yips’, putting success rate and motion analysis data. Improvements in ‘yips’ symptoms occurred across all dependent measures. Social validation data also illustrated that these improvements transferred to the competitive situation on the golf course. It is possible that significant life events may be a causal factor in the ‘yips’ experience and that EFT may be an effective treatment for the ‘yips’ condition.

This case study of an elite judo player recovering from injury provides an exemplification of a practitioner’s Professional Judgment and Decision Making (PJDM) using a ‘reflection-in-action research’ methodology. The process of “reflection-in-action” Schön (1991) and in particular the concept of ‘framing’ offer insight into how professionals think in action. These concepts assisted the practitioner in organizing, clarifying and conceptualizing the client’s issues and forming intentions for impact. This case study exemplifies the influence of practitioner PJDM on implementation at multiple levels of practice including planning the overall program of support, designing specific interventions to aid client recovery and moment-to-moment in-situ decision making session-by session. It is suggested that consideration of practitioner PJDM should be a strong feature of case study reporting and that this approach carries the potential to extend our use of case studies within applied sport psychology practice.

In this paper, we examine a case of “real life” ethical decision-making in sport psychology that occurred in the context of a symposium on sexual transgressions in sport, conducted during a recent professional conference. We use autoethnography (Ellis, 2004), an emergent qualitative methodology combining both literary and ethnographic techniques. In this case study, we analyze the unique perspectives of three key participants to make sense of what happened, why it happened, and how we can avoid similar instances in the future. We theorize and politicize the larger master narratives, which revolved around power, space, time, and symbolic violence. We conclude with recommendations for our sport psychology colleagues related to ethical decision-making, organizational planning of conferences, and being an ally to survivors of sexual abuse.

This article addresses the challenging conundrum of when to offer psychotherapy versus mental skills training. To highlight aspects of this dilemma, we describe actual cases that illustrate different ways in which clients present and practitioners may respond: (1) mental skills training shifting to therapy; (2) therapeutic work shifting to mental skills training; (3) simultaneous work between two practitioners; or (4) alternating services from the same practitioner. A variety of intervention methods are used based on a number of theoretical orientations and perspectives. The article concludes with some recommendations that may assist the performance-oriented practitioner in decision-making regarding the delicate balance between therapy and mental skills training. Suggestions relate specifically to the nature of the referral, the client’s preferences, the practitioner’s perspective and skill sets, a continuous process of appraisal and adaptation, and the central importance of the athlete-practitioner relationship.