I think Gillard has a good take on this with her global promotion of resilience training and mentoring. I'm not sure team sport provides that kind of therapy given the amount of "tough" guys in Rugby, footy, politics, etc who have revealed their anxiety situations.
Courage is defined by observers without the benefit of telepathy. Nobody can predict how many hits to confidence it takes to send a individual's mind spiralling, but there are tools to partially absorb the impacts.
