Don’t D-III teams want to win?

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I posted this on our D3hoops blog already, but thought I would run it past the football readers. Some misguided sports psychologist studied a soccer team and a tennis team and came to the following conclusion:

Division I athletes wanted to win, but those playing in Division III wanted to make friends.

I think all of us here know that’s not true. Thankfully, Division III has a sports psychologist of its own: St. Thomas men’s basketball assistant coach John Tauer. He wrote a response to this blog:

The majority of Division III athletes I have coached or coached against are highly motivated by many factors, not just making friends. one of those factors is competition — individuals and teams in Division III work incredibly hard. Division III athletes are not on athletic scholarships. As a result, they may actually have higher levels of intrinsic motivation than their Division I and II counterparts.

While this is certainly preaching to the choir, I still think it’s worth passing along. I think it’s important to highlight and debunk every misconception about Division III athletics, every time possible.

Dr. Reiss then posted another column attempting to explain away his mischaracterization of Division III by, in part, blaming the blog format which requires him to write a teaser.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/who-we-are/200911/intrinsic-motivation-is-multifaceted

(Never mind that the mischaracterization was also repeated in the blog post itself, which has no such format restriction.)

3 thoughts on “Don’t D-III teams want to win?”

  1. I would’ve thought D1 athletes would have been less geared toward winning and more about individual showboating.

    It takes a team to win, and I believe there’s more of a “team first” mentality on the D3 level than there is in major college ball.

  2. And, I couldn’t help but notice that Dr. Reiss is bringing this line of thinking right into the Grizzlies’ den for a conference next year at Franklin College. Good luck with that.

  3. Washington and Jefferson (9-1) walloped everyone except Thomas More, to whom they lost, 14-7. Seems kind of ridiculous to find teams with two losses in Pool B and C getting the nod over the Presidents.

    Wold have included this in later posts, but could not log in (yes, am registered!

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