Abstract
Stress occurs in response to uncontrollable and/or unpredictable stimuli and may ultimately impact athletic performance (Koolhaas et al., 2011; Guilliams & Edwards, 2010). Cortisol is a key stress hormone which regulates the body’s physiological response to stress (Thau et al., 2019). Evidence for a link between cortisol and athletic performance has been mixed, with some work suggesting that cortisol is negatively correlated with athletic performance (Doan et al., 2007; Siart et al., 2017) and other work indicating a positive association between cortisol and athletic performance (Passelergue et al., 1995; Crewther et al., 2011). In the current work, 26 youth hockey players (11-12 years old; 77% male) were recruited for an experiment investigating the impact of stress on athletic performance. We experimentally manipulated stress by having participants perform the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) and a control condition (TSST-C) on separate days (repeated measures design). After the experimental manipulation, athletes performed three stickhandling/skating drills on synthetic ice. Saliva samples were collected throughout the protocol to track changes in cortisol concentrations. As expected, we found that participants’ cortisol concentrations were higher after the stress exposure condition relative to the control condition. In addition, we found some evidence that stress exposure was associated with relatively poor performance on 1 of the 3 hockey drills. In summary, these preliminary findings revealed that stressful environments elevate cortisol levels in youth athletes, and this can have a negative impact on athletic performance.
