Perceptions

One thing that becomes blatantly obvious when playing sport is how everyone has an a pre-conceived perception tagged to them. “He’s a fighter!” they say before the game starts, “Her defense is awesome but she doesn’t have much of an attack!” “He’s always so relaxed on court.” How often do you see these kinds of phrases used when describing your next opponent, not after you’ve played them, but before? These pre-conceived roles that you’ve assigned them have a massive bearing on how the match gets played and as such a massive bearing on the result. This article is going to go through how that is two-fold as these pre-conceptions will interfere not just in how you play them but how they play themselves.

I’m going to use myself as a case study. Within Beach Volleyball in Australia I’ve been known now for a while as one of the fastest players on court and as such a tough player to get the ball down against. Now, for those of you that don’t know, the sport is supposed to be won with the side-out game, that is, you should win the point when your opposition is serving (opposite to tennis). Therefore when we are serving my first play is always defense, which is where I worry people. As such it is amazing how often I win points because the opposition are worried that I will pick them up and as such try a bit too hard to play the perfect shot and make a mistake! I have won many matches that way; it’s not that I actually made the defensive play but that the opposition were expecting me to and as such made a mistake. Did I actually do anything to win it? No, but the perception of me did.

As I said though this perception can be two-fold. I know that I expect to get everything up and do get caught labeling myself as a specialist defender. I am that confident that I can make a defensive play that I sometimes don’t do well enough in my own attacking game, not siding-out enough myself. Why? The answer is that I know I can win plenty of points off my serve; as such I can afford to make more mistakes in attack. Is that a conscious thing? Definitely not, but it is apparent at a sub-conscious level. As such at the top level opponents always know they’ll have a fight on their hands against me but I’ve given them an in; “his defense is awesome but we’ll get some cheap points on his attack so we have a chance.” Pre-conceived idea about my game; yes, yet ask most players in the Australian Tour and that is what they’d say, even if they haven’t played me.

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