After many years battling for mainstream recognition, sports psychology is now seeing an increase in demand from teams and athletes in many different areas. Andrew Jacobs, a psychologist with 27 years experience, was one of the pioneers of the sports psychology movement, kansascity.com states. It was his "passion" but in the early 1980s many athletes and their coaches did not see the need to care for the mind as much as the body. Mr Jacobs started out on $5 a week helping track athletes but as he and others like him began to show the benefits of the discipline, demand for sports psychologists grew. After stints with the US Olympic team, the Chicago White Sox minor league program and the Kansas City Comets, he was appointed to Major League Baseball's Kansas City Royals. He said the key to his work is understanding the individual personalities of the sports stars he works with. "My job here is to be of assistance to the players and coaches to help them mentally deal with whatever it is they have to deal with, whether it's a personal issue or a professional issue," he said. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, psychologists held 166,000 jobs in the US in 2006.  |