Sport psychology has been widely used in sport to enhance sports performance and as such can serve as a good beacon of importance of psychological profession. The beginnings of sport psychology come from two different origins, in the western countries it started out as a mostly research field and went less into applied work with athletes. In the eastern part of the world, especially during the Cold war period, sport was used as means of promotion of a country and as such, all possible means were used to improve athletic promotion. One of those fields was also transference of psychological techniques into athletic performance. Over the years with consistent spreading of knowledge and increased mobility of both people and knowledge, sport psychology has developed into a strong field, which is developed in both a practical manner as well as the research field.
This area can also develop through one interesting aspect - athletes, coaches, sports managers and other people involved in sport, are very willing to tell, that they are working with sport psychologists. Many fields of psychology, a lot of them from the clinical aspect, have to face a public stigma, as people are not always willing to say that they are seeing a psychologist, as mental health issues are often something, that people are not very willing to discuss.
In sport though, seeing a sport psychologist is often considered an advantage and athletes often say that working with a sport psychologist has helped them achieve better results. This is why sports psychology can be used to promote psychological profession and surely one of the reasons, why sport psychology is developing quickly - many sport psychologists today use techniques and approaches, widely used in third wave of psychotherapy, based on mindfulness, acceptance and commitment, promoting above all psychological flexibility.