Michael Phelps steps up to the block. Nadal Federer lines up to take his serve. Usain Bolt places his feet in the blocks. Each one of these amazing athletes has spent months upon months preparing, and anticipating this one moment. They have spent countless hours training, but what athletes do the day of the race? Or the day of the competition?

There is a diverse group of athletes at Community High school, and each one of them has something different that they do for good luck before a competition. Some student athletes have superstitions that they have acquired when they were just learning how to play their sport, and they still do them religiously to this day.

Bobby Coulter is a senior at Community High School. He has been playing hockey since he was seven years old. As a freshman, he made Huron’s varsity hockey team. He plays goalie, and now he is  the starter. Since freshman year Coulter has followed the same routine before each game he plays.  “I eat the same meal before every game, exactly three hours before the game”. Coulter said. “I eat pasta, and chicken fettuccine, and I always put everything on the right side first.”  Every tradition has to have a point where it develops, but it’s hard to trace it back. Coulter said “Freshman year I started doing it and every time I did it I played well, so I just kept doing it.”

Claire Fendrick, a junior at Community, plays volleyball at Skyline High school. This is her fifth year playing the sport and her third year playing for Skyline. She plays middle blocker and outside hitter. Fendrick has multiple routines she does to prepare for a volleyball game. She said “before the start of every set I go around in a circle and I have to give a high five to every one of my teammates. The last person I high five I have to jump really high.  The other thing I have to do is, I always have to put my left sock and my left shoe on first. If I put my right shoe on first, then we will lose. The last one is, if one of my teammates are serving then I can’t look at them or they will miss, so I always just look straight ahead”. Fendrick’s superstition developed in multiple different ways “I got the high-fiving from my club team, because we would always do that before a game. The shoe thing, I just developed because I’m left footed, so it was a habit to put my left stuff on first. Then one day I put on my right stuff on first, and we lost, so from then on I’ve put on my left shoes first before every game. And the serving one, I actually believe that every time I watched the server (from my team) they would miss, so I just kept going with it”.

Kids everywhere have different superstitions that they carry around, and think that they do them for good luck, but have these ever been proven to really work? The placebo effect usually refers to when a person is feeling ill and their doctor prescribes a medicine to supposedly “cure” you. There are different kinds of placebo medicines, some may not have any active ingredients, some may just contain sugar. Essentially these pills contain no active ingredients, but because the recipient believes that they will be therapeutic, the patient is cured. The same kind of idea applies to the superstitions all these athletes have. A certain meal before the game, or looking a certain way

when someone serves, has no magical powers, but if the person believes it will work, it usually proves to be successful. It’s all in the athlete’s head. A certain routine will focus them, and get them ready to perform.

Playing a sport is so much more than practicing and training. An athlete’s head has to be in the right place, or everything they worked for could slip away from them. There are hundreds of other superstitions athletes have, and ways for them to prepare before a big game, match, or meet.