Matt Hamilton | Beijing 2022 Olympic Profile
Team USA curler speaks about being part of the gold-medal winning Team Schuster, explains how important mental health is in Olympic sports, and shares why he leaned on USA Curling Sports Pyschologist Dr. Carly Anderson to help him through some of the tough points during the pandemic.
Video Transcript
[MUSIC PLAYING]
MATT HAMILTON: My name is Matt Hamilton. In 2018, I was fortunate enough to get hot at the Olympics and win a gold medal. So the road to Beijing is quite a different one than the road to Pyeongchang. I definitely had a more restricted practice time, due to the current COVID climate, you could call it.
So sports-- like, in our sport is massive because it's such a mental game. It's a long game. Like, the 10-end games can be up to three hours long. So, like, trying to keep that mental focus can be really challenging.
Carly made herself very available to us during COVID, which, obviously, a lot of people were struggling with some mental health issues. Me, personally, I'm very much a social butterfly. So not having the ability to, like, see people and be around people, I, you know, definitely dipped a little bit.
Probably I got a little anxious, and I've never really felt anxious about anything before. And Carly was a great kind of crutch to lean on and get some good feedback on how to deal with some of those things.
