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"Unlike the football program [at Notre Dame], the Irsh hockey team is a more recent success story. For decades it skated bak and forth between varsity and club status, and in the early '80s Lefty's teams started to go sideways. Despite heralded recruits and stars... the Irish struggled. In 79-80, the team won 14 of its first 16 games, and the season was pregnant with promise. But things took a hairpin turn, with several lon losing streaks culminating in a final record of 18-19-1. The Irish then endured losing seasons of 18-20-1 and 13-21-2. Lefty was puzzled, and the seniors were left groping for any solution that might help them finish their college careers on a winning note. The co-captains of the team approached some of their psychology professors and explained the team's failure to fulfill the potential of its celebrated recruiting class. It was an inspired, if unusal, course of action... two of the psychologists, Charles Crowell and Chris Anderson, specialized in behavioral management within organizations.... After hearing the hockey players' lament, the professors - as psychologists do - asked the captains to engage in a bit of self-diagnosis. What was the team's biggest on-ice limitation? If the cocaptains could change one thing about the way the team played, what would it be? Their answer: Checking. The captains said that increasing legal body checks was critical to improving the team's performance. More checking would disrupt opponents more and create more opportunities for ND to regain control of the puck. This would lead to more Irish goals, which would lead to more victories.... the first step was to create a player feedback intervention. Each Monday following a weekend home game, the captains posted graphs in the locker room showing each player's hit rate... second, in the middle portion of the season, the researchers moved on to individualized goal setting. This intervention required meetings between the captains and each player during which the player was asked to come up with a challenging but achievable hitrate objective. This target was then added to each player's locker room graph in the form of a bold line, giving him a goal to aim for in each game (and to compare his performance to afterward). Finally, the researchers introduced performance-contingent praise. For the last two games of the season - a number increased to six in a follow-up study the next year - Coach Smith spent a few minutes during the pregame dinners lavishing public recognition on specific players based on their hit rates. Crowell, who's still a professor at ND, recalls that Lefty was "reluctant at first," but the coach played along. His praise was specific to the checking. It wasn't "great job out there" or "hell of a game." It was targeted praise for specific players whose stats indicated that they had been aggressive. "Great job on the boards, Number 68," or "Hell of a difference you made out there on the ice with those three checks in the third period." The effects of these interventions were impressive. They led to improved player performance, in the form of an overall 82 percent increase in hit rate. The Irish played more aggressively, but it was a controlled aggression: Researchers found no evidence of an increase in penalty minutes after any of the interventions; only clean hits were on the rise. Most importantly, the 81-82 Irish finish 23-15-2, giving their graduating seniors their first winning season. What helped turn ND hockey around? Concrete feedback. Specific goals tied to performance. And praise linked directly to increased effort." - Sam Sommers