How to Help an Athlete Manage Pre-Game Anxiety

Nerves before a big game are normal — even useful. A certain amount of pre-competition anxiety sharpens focus and gets the body ready to perform. But for a lot of athletes, that useful edge tips over into something that hurts more than it helps: racing thoughts, nausea, tight muscles, or a mind that goes blank right when it needs to be sharpest.

Understanding the difference, and knowing what actually helps, makes a real difference in how an athlete experiences competition.

Why Pre-Game Anxiety Happens

Pre-game anxiety is the body's stress response doing its job a little too well. The same adrenaline that sharpens reflexes and quickens reaction time can, past a certain point, start working against performance instead of for it — flooding the body with tension, narrowing focus in unhelpful ways, and making it hard to access skills the athlete has drilled a thousand times in practice.

Athletes who tend toward perfectionism or who've had a bad outing in the past are especially prone to this spiral, because the anxiety isn't just about the game in front of them — it's about avoiding a repeat of what went wrong before.

Signs It's Becoming a Problem

A little pre-game anxiety is expected. It's worth addressing more directly when it:

• Shows up days before competition instead of just beforehand

• Causes physical symptoms severe enough to affect sleep, eating, or focus at school

• Leads to avoidance — skipping practices, "forgetting" gear, or looking for reasons to sit out

• Gets worse over the season instead of easing as the athlete gains experience

Strategies That Help

• Reframe the physical sensations. A racing heart before competition and a racing heart from excitement are physiologically identical. Athletes who learn to interpret those sensations as readiness rather than danger often perform better than those trying to suppress or eliminate the feeling entirely.

• Build a consistent pre-competition routine. Predictability calms the nervous system. A short, repeatable routine — whether it's a specific warm-up sequence, a breathing pattern, or a few minutes of visualization — gives the brain something familiar to anchor to when everything else feels high-stakes.

• Practice controlled breathing before it's needed. Slow, extended exhales activate the body's calming response, but this only works reliably in the moment if it's been practiced regularly beforehand, not attempted for the first time in the locker room.

• Separate performance from self-worth. This is often the deeper work underneath the surface-level nerves. When a bad game doesn't threaten an athlete's sense of who they are, the pressure of any single competition naturally shrinks.

When to Bring in Support

Some pre-game anxiety responds well to strategies an athlete or parent can implement on their own. But when anxiety is intense, persistent, or tangled up with broader anxiety patterns that show up outside of sport too, working with someone trained in both the mental performance side and clinical anxiety treatment tends to get better, faster results than either approach alone.

At Journey Counseling Center, our sports psychology and mental performance coaching sessions are led by Madeline Roseke, LPC, EdD, whose doctorate in sport and performance psychology focused specifically on how athletes manage pressure and anxiety. She works with athletes throughout Edmond and Oklahoma City, in person or by teletherapy, to build mental skills that hold up under real competition pressure.

If pre-game anxiety is affecting your athlete's ability to compete or enjoy their sport, get in touch to talk through next steps.