§ 01
Aisha is fourteen and plays club soccer. She is fast, creative on the ball, and one of the best passers in her age group. She also throws up before every competitive match.
Her parents tried visualization. Her club hired a sports psychologist who taught breathing techniques. Her coach moved her to a lower-pressure position. Nothing worked — because nothing was addressing the actual source.
Aisha does not have an anxiety disorder. She has an adversity history (Barrier 1) that primed her nervous system for threat detection, an emotional vocabulary (Barrier 2) too narrow to differentiate between excitement and dread, and a motivation structure (Barrier 4) that has shifted from playing because she loves the game to playing because her parents have invested $8,000 this year. The anxiety is not the problem. It is the alarm system telling her that three deeper barriers are unaddressed.
24-item assessment treating competitive anxiety as an emergent phenomenon — arising from the interaction of emotional intelligence, coping style, motivation, adversity history, and autonomy rather than as an isolated condition. HRV · EDA · SLEEP
Anxiety as Emergent Signal CAS-24 traces anxiety to its upstream sources
B1 Adversity B2 Emotion B3 Coping B4 Motivation B5 Autonomy
Traditional: treat the symptom SportsFlow: trace the source Breathing, visualization, medication Full battery reveals upstream barriers
Fig. 1 — Competitive anxiety is the output of deeper barrier interactions
§ 02
Li et al.'s 2026 Bayesian meta-analysis compared eleven interventions for competitive anxiety across 147 studies and found that no single intervention works for everyone. CBT outperformed relaxation for athletes with low EI. Mindfulness was most effective for avoidance copers. ACT showed the strongest results for autonomy deficits. The optimal intervention depends entirely on the athlete's barrier profile.
For adolescents, this matters even more. Patel et al. (2019) found that untreated competitive anxiety in athletes aged 13 to 17 predicted clinical anxiety disorders in early adulthood at twice the rate of non-athletes. The athletic context does not cause anxiety; it amplifies whatever psychological vulnerabilities are already present. The traditional approach — breathing techniques, visualization, maybe a beta-blocker — treats the symptom. It is the equivalent of taping over the check engine light. The anxiety is information. It is the nervous system saying that something upstream is unresolved.
"The question is not 'how do I manage my anxiety?' The question is 'what is my anxiety trying to tell me?' The answer is always in Barriers 1 through 5." — SportsFlow Research, Foundations Series
§ 03
The CAS-24 profiles anxiety's relationship to the other five barriers. It asks not "how anxious are you?" but "what conditions produce your anxiety, and what is the pattern of escalation?"
For Aisha, the CAS-24 functions as a diagnostic router. Combined with the full EPAB battery and AFP- 60, it reveals which upstream barriers are feeding the anxiety — and which interventions will actually work. Breathing techniques are fine as a coping bridge. But they are not the treatment.
Biometric data adds temporal precision. Pre-competition HRV patterns over 72 hours, sleep disruption, and real-time EDA during warm-up create a physiological timeline of how anxiety builds for each individual. When the profile says "this athlete's anxiety is rooted in adversity" and HRV suppression begins three days before competition — not three hours — the coach has a map for where the work actually needs to happen.
See Your Barriers. Start Your Work. SportsFlow’s psychometric battery and continuous biometric monitoring give young athletes and their coaches the visibility they need to address what has always been invisible.
[1] Li, C. et al. (2026). Bayesian meta-analysis of interventions for competitive anxiety. Psychology of Sport and Exercise.
[2] Patel, D. R. et al. (2019). Sport-related anxiety in young athletes. Journal of Pediatric Health Care, 33(5), 561–568.
[3] Martens, R. et al. (1990). Competitive Anxiety in Sport. Human Kinetics.
[4] Hardy, L. et al. (1996). Understanding Psychological Preparation for Sport. Wiley.
[5] Smith, R. E. et al. (2006). Measurement of sport performance anxiety. Journal of Sport & Exercise Psychology, 28(4), 479– 501.
[6] Hanton, S. et al. (2008). Coping with competition stress. International Review of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 1(1), 74– 93.