- I am currently in the Health Science program.
- A) I wondered what made me believe that putting my equipment on a certain way, or taping my stick exactly the same way, or even my specific choice of music on hockey game days would make me play better?
B) What exactly is it about a sport superstition that makes athletes and professionals of all sports make them believe they will play better.
C) Superstitions are nonsense
3. I grew up loving sports but hockey in particular, and so I feel as though it something I’ve always been exposed to and been wanting to research and put into words for a while now.
4. I hope to learn a little more about the scientific aspect of things, like what exactly is it about the superstition that has this massive effect on athletes? I also would love to hear about all of the bizarre superstitions around the world.
5. I feel like some athletes need this as much as they need food in some cases, and I feel like that needs to be brought to life about just how important these superstitions may be.
6. My feature story will most likely be under the big idea class.
7. Anyone who wants to learn more about superstitions and maybe anyone who can relate to having a superstition and who would want to learn more about it.
8. I want people to understand just how critical some superstitions can be to some people and just how much they would suffer without them.
9. The Athletic. I follow hockey very closely, and so out of all of the journalism sites out there, the athletic is really pushing superior to the others, with writers in every mainstream sport. It’s a terrific website that I feel would capture every sport into one article, and man, I would absolutely love to be on The Athletic!
10. Ok so, I’m happy this question was included because I don’t have a clear idea of where I want to take this so hopefully you can help me out with this part of it. There are so many things that I can talk about with superstitions and I’ll just rant off a couple so that hopefully I can narrow them down to a couple that make the most sense. So firstly, I want to address exactly what a superstition is, then maybe into some examples of what they could be. I then would like to bring into my paper some real-life athletes who have spoken about their superstitions and maybe get to understand the source of their superstitions and what makes them to adamant about following them or maybe even the consequences of what It would be like without them. I would then love to go into the scientific aspect of it a little bit, and that’s great because I can relate it to my program of study all at the same time. This would hopefully help me answer what exactly a player feels when following or when not following their superstitions and give the scientific explanation as to why it’s so effective. In smaller sections I would maybe like to highlight the misconceptions of superstitions by people who don’t believe them and think their nonsense. Lastly, I would possibly to compare superstitions with rituals and OCD and see what the difference is between the three. Hopefully you can direct me into either adding more topics or fixing my already existing ones!
Article #1: https://lhslance.org/2013/features/why-do-athletes-have-superstitions/
Article #2: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20120327-why-do-we-have-superstitions
Article #3: https://believeperform.com/the-power-of-superstitions-and-rituals-in-sport/
Luca Caprio 