Assessing Current Mental Skills Levels of Netball Players for Collegiate Netball Players in Masvingo, Zimbabwe

The objective of the study was to determine the current levels of mental skills of netball players at tertiary institutions in Masvingo Province and use this information to develop an appropriate mental skills training program for the tertiary netball players in Zimbabwe. Quantitative method of data collection was used and a Test of Performance Strategies (TOPS), questionnaire was used to collect data in this study. Responses revealed the existence of moderate correlations between the TOPS sub-scales. Tertiary education netball players reported more use of most of the given psychological skills and strategies. Descriptive results for practice strategies sub-scales for goal setting mean and standard deviation for practice were (M=14.50, SD=2.53), while self-talk mean and standard deviation was (M=13.70, SD=2.72). For competition strategies sub-scales for goal setting, the mean and standard deviation was (M=14.22, SD=2.07) whilst that for self-talk was (M=14.38, SD=3.2). These results indicated that self-talk during practice games was significantly and positively correlated with the following variables of competition relaxation (r=0.49), competition goal setting (r=0.47), competition attentional control (r=0.47) and competition self-talk (r=0.62). The results also show that there was a strong and significant correlation that existed between self-talk during practice games and activation during competition games of (r=0.60). A moderate significant relationship was found between practice goal setting and competition goal setting (r=0.52), while a moderate significant relationship was also noted of competition relaxation (r=0.34), competition self-talk (r=0.32) and competition activation (r=0.40). The results also revealed that there was another moderate and significant correlation that existed during practice between automaticity and competition goal setting of (r=0.30), competition self-talk of (r=0.47), and competition activation of (r=0.39). Similarly, the results also showed that there was a significant and positive correlation between practice attentional control and competition goal setting of (r=0.38), competition relaxation of (r=0.54), and competition activation of (r=0.31). It was also noted that there was a moderate significant correlation between practice activation and competition relaxation of (r=0.33), competition self-talk of (r=0.38), and competition activation of (r=0.34). Finally, the results also revealed that there was a moderate significant correlation between practice relaxation and competition relaxation of (r=0.31), competition self-talk of (r=0.47) and competition activation of (r=0.41). The results showed that there were no significant differences in the mean scores of the practice games measurement strategies for the five institutions under study in this research. Thus, the lack of significant differences was noted for all variables because of the p value of p>0.05. Therefore, these results show that the measurements for the variables were statistically the same between the institutions used in this study. However, it is not very clear whether these athletes were high on goal setting during practice games or scored substantially high on self-talk use of mental skills in practice games. The findings helped to inform the researcher to get a deeper understanding of certain aspects of mental skills used by players and be a useful guide in the development of the mental skills training program.