From Barcelona to Tokyo: Counseling a High-Performance Center Through the Disruption Caused by COVID-19 Pandemic and the Postponed Games

Abstract

As part of a growing line of interventions, sports psychology practitioners focus on supporting organizations and their members to better cope with the demands of career transitions. The aim of this article is to share our experience of counseling a High-Performance Center through two concurrent non-normative transitions: the COVID-19 pandemic and the disruption to the Tokyo Olympic/Paralympic Games. We report our reflections on what it means to consult for an organization rather than for individuals, and what adaptation to a period of constantly changing circumstances means in and for an organization. We also describe the lessons learned and share our evaluation of strengths and points of improvement for future interventions.

Keywords:

• Counseling
• intervention
• non-normative transition
• pandemic
• sport organization

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank the members of the High-Performance Center for their generosity in sharing their stories.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by two research projects (Wylleman, 2021–2022, 2023–2024), “Athletes” and sports entourage’s longitudinal experiences on the disruption of the Olympic cycle Tokyo 2020’ funded by the IOC Olympic Studies Center (OSC). And by the project “HeDuCa: Healthy Dual Careers in Sport” RTI2018-095468-B100 of the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation, and Universities. Also, Rocío Zamora-Solé is a Ph.D. student at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) and has a grant FISDUR (2021 FI SDUR00307) from the Generalitat de Catalunya.