Setting goals allows people to predict long-term effects and gain motivation for short term hopes. High level business owner’s, best-known athletes and anyone successful has had a goal to get to where they are at. Be it with their coach or on their own, athletes are often prompted to set goals for the upcoming season.

Whether it is team goals or personal goals, athletes tend to work harder when they are prevalent on the team. Many high school teams have the same goals, like scoring a certain amount of goals or beating a certain team.  The stakes are all the same, or at least similar in many aspects.

“[Setting goals] helps me motivate myself to achieve the goal which makes me better overall,” senior cross country runner Tristan Baze said.

Although team goals are always a good thing to have, setting personal goals can be the deciding factor to achieve that one season everyone strives to have. Sport psychologists say that even though many players tend to focus their goals on winning, they should not because they can not control it, instead focus on improving skills and achieving a specific one, according to humankinetics.com.

“You make goals so you can have something to work towards and gives you a reason to play the game,” junior softball player Ally Rigsby.

Many students will learn throughout their high school career how to set a SMART goal, or defined by topacheivement.com, a specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and timely goal. Coaches have players use this strategy, for it is the smart way of setting goals.

“The importance of setting goals is that it creates a mental imagine in your head of what you want to achieve,” cross country player Cameron Meyers said. “I go back to other times I’ve felt accomplished and recreate that feeling. I want that to happen again and that encourages me.”

Being the best you can be is a simple task, but what really pushes an athlete to the next level is setting the goal to be better. Pushing yourself is what really makes the difference in performance on and off the field.