Scholarly Sources:
- Ptacek, Taylor Jon. “The Relationship Between Superstition and Confidence in Sport” UND Scholarly Commons. May 2016. https://commons.und.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1744&context=thesesAccessed March 9th, 2020.
Description: This research paper used advanced metrics to decipher whether or not confidence is affected by superstition.
I like this paper a lot because I feel like this is bang on to what I am trying to prove with my feature story, being that I believe a superstition is a critical part to an athlete play and is further proof in this article. The article thus shows that there is a link between the two, but more specifically there is a serious link between superstition and confidence, and even more specifically, they found a strong correlation with the use of lucky charms. This may not really be important to my feature story but in general to know that there is at least a correlation between confidence and superstition is great.
2. Del Rosario, Danyel. “Superstition in Sport: A Phenomenological Study” Ithaca college Digital Commons. December 2017. https://digitalcommons.ithaca.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1391&context=ic_theses Accessed March 9th, 2020.
Description: This scholarly article talks about superstitions in a general sense, touching upon may different avenues.
This was a little broad in the sense that it spoke specifically spoke about superstitions, but I really appreciated some of the quotes from various players. I also liked the fact that they mentioned its important to decipher between which of the superstitions you or an athlete may be following are in fact useful and help provide success to the player rather than it actually being detrimental and bringing more harm than good. This kind of opened me up to the possibility that there are in fact “bad” superstitions per say, and that they may actually worsen performance rather than enhance it. This is definitely something that I can be using in my feature story.
Non-Scholarly Sources:
3. Clinton, Jared. “The NHL’s 10 Weirdest Rituals and Superstitions” The Hockey News. February 13th, 2015. https://thehockeynews.com/news/article/the-nhls-10-weirdest-rituals-and-superstitions Accessed March 9th, 2020.
Description: Gives an interesting list of some of the weirdest NHL superstitions.
For all of the years I have been watching hockey, I have never once realized that the famous playoff beards are actually a kind of superstition. This also extends to one of the oldest rituals of all time, the tossing of the octopus in Motown before games. After having read these two, I realized that I can use these hockey classics somewhere in my feature story. Going even further made me realize that there are certain teams that touch or choose not to touch the trophy before advancing to the cup finals.
4. Close, David. “Superstitious minds: The ‘rituals’ that obsess NHL stars” CNN. April 9th, 2019. https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/09/sport/nhl-superstition-ice-hockey-spt-intl/index.html Accessed March 9th, 2020.
Description: A general discussion inside the minds of NHL players and their superstitions.
I really liked this article because I think they bring up something that I want to talk about in my feature story. The article mentions that many NHL players are in fact embarrassed to admit that they have some sort of superstition. After reading this I feel like I should really be writing about this in my feature story, and even further just talk about the effects in may have on others in the room but as they said just the general attitude of the players towards superstitions.
Cultural/Artistic Artifacts:
5. Feature on Sportsnet. Found on Jens95 (YouTube) August 24th, 2017. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUpIGJ0olGI&t=101s Accessed March 9th, 2020.
It wasn’t a very long clip; however, I admired a specific part of the video which featured Sidney Crosby specifically. He had an amazing quote which I think I will use for my feature story and he said, “There’s probably a few that are borderline crazy, but I guess we’re all crazy in our own way”. This is such an amazing quote, and I feel like it really captures the idea that I’m trying to get at with my feature story. Considering he is such an iconic figure in the sport of hockey, I think I would like to use this at some point in my paper.
Experimental Research:
So, I have played hockey for quite a while now and I thought it would only make sense for me to speak about my personal experience dealing with superstitions. I do have some superstitions, but I am still not sure if they are in fact superstitions or just simply a routine. I always get dressed the same way, I always play specific music before games on a big speaker, and I always like to have my pregame coffee to get me going. Are these superstitions or routines? I’ll have to figure it out and maybe incorporate it into the paper based off of what I have learnt.
6. My hockey superstitions
Luca Caprio 