work perspective is that if you’re a better person, you’ll be a better athlete. If you can evaluate your strengths and weaknesses, your values and behavior, you will increase the chances that you will become not only a superior athlete, but be able to use your athletic experience as a training ground to take on the world that is awaiting you.” WHAT IS THE FUTURE? As more is understood about the pressures studentathletes are under and the toll such pressures can inflict, social workers are an asset to enhancing athletic performance at every level — professional, college and high school. Social workers’ skills in seeing the whole person and focusing on their strengths, supporting change in them and their environment and being a change-agent in their lives help student-athletes personally and professionally. For Harden, the future is a soonto-be-published book, Control the Controllables. “The book contains core lessons and helps to examine and conquer self-defeating behaviors, so that individuals can become committed to becoming happy and healthy. The goal of the book is to make people experts on themselves.”
ONGOING · Summer 2016 · 7