Season 6 Episodes 5 & 6 of the Chasing MacNaughton Podcast from Tech Hockey Guide; Destigmatize and Getting Ready For The Haters. This week, in Episode 5 Tim Braun, Rob Gilreath and Matt Cavender sat down with the Assistant Athletic Director of Counseling and Sport Psychology at Michigan Tech, Sarah Dowd. In this episode they discussed Sarah’s role at Michigan Tech, how therapy, counseling and sport psychology impacts student athletes at the college level and what Michigan Tech is doing to help its student athletes thrive in their mental health. In Episode 6, the guys regrouped without Sarah and discussed the CCHA preseason polls and awards, the Rhett Pitlick transfer news and the USCHO preseason poll.
Sport Psychology at Michigan Tech
The conversation with Sarah was largely driven by listener questions. The conversation started with Sarah talking about her educational background, how she ended up coming to work at Michigan Tech and what has changed with her role and new title. Sarah talked about recently completing some more specific expertise training and working with Michigan Tech to recognize the need to increase the in-house mental health services to athletes rather than outsourcing the services. Sarah talked about the various spectrum of issues she helps athletes overcome which included the clinical side of mental health such as anxiety, depression and grief to the sport psychology side such as goal setting and self talk routine.
Tim asked how the sports psychology field has evolved over the last 20 years. Sarah talked about the field changing quite a bit and said it’s still making big changes. She talked about an ever increasing number of hires at Universities, but did say there was still work to do to ensure that mental health professionals had the best tools possible to assist the athletes. Sarah talked about the buy-in from the athletes and how they don’t have to be in crisis to use mental health services. Throughout the episode she consistently made the point of needing to destigmatize the use of mental health services. Rob asked if there was a trickle down effect of professional athletes being more open about their mental health struggles. Sarah though there was, because the lower level athletes all looked up to the professionals and seeing the professionals open up has the effect of humanizing them.
Halfway through the episode, Rob had Sarah define a couple terms she’d been using frequently. Sarah talked about imagery being a mental rehearsal which allows athletes to see changes they’d like to make in the mind. She said this allows them to perform the brain mechanisms of improving without the physical fatigue of increased ice time. The other term was self-talk. Sarah said this can look different for each athlete and helps them get in the right mindset for high level performance.
Next, Sarah talked about strategies for mental recovery. She talked about athletes recharging their mental batteries being crucial for longevity. She also talked about the importance of an athlete finding a pocket within their sport that they find fun as not having fun has an impact on an athlete’s mental well being. Rob speculated that an athlete’s “fun level” may be affected by how the season is going.
Another listener question asked Sarah about the importance of family and a support system to the athletes and whether she directly works with an athletes family members. Sarah said she didn’t since all of the athletes are adults and so have confidentiality rules around what she can discuss with family members. She talked about all humans needing support, but how that support occurs being different for each person.
Tim asked Sarah about the services Michigan Tech offers and whether they’re provided in different languages due to the wide diversity of athlete background. Sarah talked about Michigan Tech contracting with a third party service which does offer services in different languages, identities and backgrounds. She said this services is available to the entire campus population 24/7.
At the end of Sarah’s time, she brought up the Michigan Tech Huskies Give Program. You can find out more about this program here.
Poll season
Once Sarah left, the guys turned their attention to the CCHA preseason polls and awards. Matt started things off with a rant about St. Thomas being ranked so high in the polls, which he disagrees with. The guys discussed how many points some of the CCHA teams are returning and Tim thought that St. Thomas looked pretty good on paper to begin the season. The guys discussed the recent news that former Minnesota Gopher Rhett Pitlick transferred to Minnesota State after failing to sign an NHL deal. Matt thought this move put Minnesota State as the new favorite to win the CCHA. Tim talked about some of the struggles Pitlick may have playing in a defensive heavy league like the CCHA. Circling back to the polls, Tim talked about the only certainties within the league being Northern Michigan and Ferris State finishing at the bottom of the standings. Tim predicted that either Lake Superior State or Bowling Green will have home ice in the CCHA playoffs as a result of their schedules and playing Northern Michigan and Ferris State four times each.
The guys changed their focus to the CCHA preseason player awards. The guys speculated how things would have changed if the Pitlick news had dropped before ballots were submitted. Tim struggled to think of which forward would have been dropped in favor of Pitlick. Matt thought this season would be a make or break year for St. Thomas head coach Rico Blasi and Rob thought that it bodes well for Michigan Tech having two players on the coaches and media preseason awards poll.
To end the episode, the guys discussed the USCHO national preseason poll. Tim expressed frustration that there was no CCHA or Atlantic Hockey team in the Top 20 given that usually polls reflect the top 16 teams to finish the previous season. Matt expressed similar frustrations at Minnesota Duluth and Northeastern being ranked, as well as St. Thomas being ranked ahead of Michigan Tech. The guys talked about why no CCHA team was ranked and came to the conclusion it was due to a lack of clear consensus #1 team in the league.
Cut for time
This week’s cut time for Patrons is approximately 15 minutes long. There was a discussion on differences in mental health services for individual sport athletes versus team sport athletes. Sarah talked about helping athletes building resiliency. Sarah talked about the effect social media has on the athletes at Michigan Tech. Matt derailed the podcast looking up schedules of various CCHA teams. Tim talked about playing a cricket game on his phone. The guys talked about needing hockey back in their lives and some current happenings in the NFL.
Learn More
For additional information and more episode liner notes, check out our episode overview on Tech Hockey Guide. To make sure we can afford all our fancy equipment we purchased for the podcast and the THG website in general, please check out our Patreon page and consider joining. Patrons at our Black Level or above receive an authentic MTU jersey patch and access to extra podcast content including extended versions of our other episodes. This week’s extended version is about 108minutes.
RAW AUDIO: This post is for patrons at the Silver Level ($25/ mo) or above which includes unedited audio and usually drops the night the podcast is recorded.
RAW VIDEO: This post is for patrons at the Gold Level ($10/mo) or above which includes unedited video and usually drops the morning after the podcast is recorded.
EXTENDED AUDIO: This post is for patrons at the Black Level ($5/mo) or above which includes extended audio content and usually drops the night after or 2nd morning after the podcast is recorded.
Mitch’s Misfits Amazon wishlist is still having items added as we figure it out, but you can take a look by clicking here and a reminder, if you rate the Podcast 5-stars, we’ll read your review on the podcast. Thanks again to our sponsors: Arcadia Insurance Group and Aaron Pieltia, Fiebke Dental in downtown Rhinelander, Wis. and Livonia Technical Services, and Psychobob on Whatnot.
Check out Tech Leadership 4.0: Leading in a Technologically Driven World and The Power of Deduction: Failure Modes & Effects Analysis for Design: Second Edition written by our very own Old Dog, Mike Anleitner
Follow us on twitter at ChasingMacPod. Join our Discord server for discussions covering Michigan Tech hockey and more. You can submit questions through our email address, ChasingMac@techhockeyguide.com. Don’t forget to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Please rate and review to help us reach more people, and tell your friends. Please check out Jonathan Zamaites’ series previews every Friday, Mike Anleitner’s Old Dog in Texas column every Wednesday, Zach Aufdemberge’s Analytics With Augie and Nathaniel Brose’s nationwide hockey columns. Also, keep an eye out for new recruiting articles that Nathan Cima writes. As always, special thanks to our patron saint Doc McResin for his generous donation to get this thing running, we hope you enjoy. Also, thanks to The Thank You Notes for all the bumpers in today’s episode. If you like what you hear, check them out at thethankyounotes.bandcamp.com.
