Campus America connects experiences from Chile and Spain in challenges of sports psychology

The current state of sports psychology and its future prospects in Chile and Spain were the focus of the seminar "Body, Mind, and Culture: Transatlantic Dialogues on Sports Psychology between Chile and the Canary Islands," held today, October 23, in the Audiovisual Room of the Faculty of Psychology and Speech Therapy at the University of La Laguna. The event, part of the Campus América program, brought together research and intervention experiences in grassroots sports, training, and high-performance sports, with a focus on emotional management and the well-being of athletes.

Coordinated by Professor Francisco Batista Espinosa, Professor of Developmental and Educational Psychology at the University of La Laguna (ULL), the seminar fostered an exchange among professionals, researchers, and students on the challenges of a discipline that influences both performance and responses to pressure and demanding situations. The cultural dimension of sport was also integrated, allowing for a comparison of different contexts and shared needs between the Canary Islands and Chile.

During the presentation of the seminar, Batista highlighted the usefulness of these spaces to get away from daily activity and share knowledge among professionals who usually carry out their work in different institutions and environments. 

Following the opening remarks, Alexi Ponce Hernández, sports psychologist and academic director of the International Diploma in Psychological Skills Applied to Sport at Adolfo Ibáñez University, began his presentation. Alexi Ponce described his work as a psychologist at the CAR, Chile's High-Performance Center, located in the National Stadium Park in Santiago, and part of the National Sports Institute (IND), where he has worked with elite athletes since 2002. In his presentation, he reviewed the evolution of the understanding of sport and the role of sports psychology in Chile over the last two decades.

She also addressed the tensions between competitive demands and the athlete's holistic development, highlighting the risk of valuing them solely based on their results and interpreting their need for psychological support as a lack of motivation or weakness. Drawing on her experience at the High-Performance Center (CAR) in Chile, she presented a professional support model that integrates sports psychology, psychiatry, neuroscience, and the prevention of bullying against athletes. She also emphasized the need to expand access to these services beyond urban centers and to adapt intervention models to the cultural characteristics of each context.

Ponce also addressed the educational dimension of sport: "Sport doesn't educate on its own; it requires intentionality," he explained, emphasizing the responsibility of coaches and psychologists in creating environments that foster personal development and positive relationships. He went on to contrast practices aimed at cultivating skills like resilience and empathy with those that use performance as the sole criterion and can lead to psychological abuse, discrimination, and abandonment. From this perspective, he advocated for professional training that goes beyond technical instruction and incorporates human development.

After the break, the seminar continued with a round table moderated by Batista, in which Ponce himself participated; Marcela Herrera Garin, linked to the University of Vic; Bárbara Macarena Díaz Cortés, a Chilean sports psychologist residing in Tenerife; Antonio Rodríguez Hernández, from the Department of Developmental and Educational Psychology of the ULL; and Roberto Ruiz Barquín, from the Autonomous University of Madrid, who participated online.

The panel shared perspectives on the development of sport psychology in Chile and Spain, its areas of application, and the challenges it faces. The participants' experiences allowed them to connect their work with athletes at different stages, from initiation and training to high-level competition.

This seminar has been part of the academic content of the fifth edition of Campus America, with Chile as the guest country, and has contributed to the dialogue between the ULL and professionals and institutions of the American continent around the challenges of psychology applied to sport.