Sports Psychology Practice Creates Buzz

by “Stretch” DeTrooth

Youth sports has become big business these days. Select baseball and softball has seen massive growth over the past 10-15 years. It’s not only baseball and softball, select or travel soccer has grown significantly. Currently, select volleyball is seeing huge growth in our area.

Participating in these select or travel sports is very expensive. You have to purchase the equipment and uniforms, and you have to travel to practices and tournaments each week. Some weekends, you have to travel out of state or hours away from home, and you may have to get a hotel room for one or two nights. Some teams pay their coaches, so that’s an added expense. Tournament directors are making big money from tournaments as well. Parents are having to dole out money constantly it seems, and someone is benefiting financially at every step of the way.

In addition, many parents pay for specialized coaching or training for their kids. Many parents pay for hitting lessons for their sons and/or daughters, and some parents pay for pitching lessons as well. Recently, speed and agility training has become a necessity for some parents and kids also.

Until now, one area that has remained untouched in select youth sports is sports psychology. Sports psychology is popular in pro sports and college sports. Many teams or individual players use the services of sports psychologists. Nick Saban was ahead of the curve, and he started using sports psychologists with his Alabama teams years ago.

Valley psychologist, Nick Bryant, has been practicing for 20 years. About five years ago, he shifted to sports psychology, and his practice, Pinnacle Sports Psychology, has taken off since then. He currently works for multiple high school, community college and NAIA teams. Now, he’s going to offer his services to select ball teams, individual players, parents, and coaches.

Bryant said, “I’m very excited about this new line of business for my firm. Everyone seems to be making money in the travel sports ecosystem, so we’re going to jump in and carve out a niche for sports psychology. In my opinion, our services are needed in a big way. I’ve attended some select baseball and softball tournaments, and the players, parents, coaches, and umpires could all benefit from our services.”

Bryant said, “Players, coaches, and parents can all benefit from our services, and they’ll all benefit in different ways. We do a great job with visualization success training with the players; you have to visualize yourself being successful. The main focus for coaches is balance; you have to manage and balance everything (unfocused players, bad players, crazy parents, mad parents, etc). With parents, our main focus is empathy. They have to think about putting themselves in other peoples’ shoes (their kids, their kids’ coach, the umpires, etc.)”

People that I have spoken with are excited about Pinnacle Sports Psychology. One baseball dad said, “I hope Pinnacle can help my son block out all the noise from the parents. He gets flustered and nervous when games get tight, and he starts to listen to the crowd and his performance suffers. I’m hoping he can get mental training to help with this.”

One softball coach said, “I really hope Pinnacle can help my pitcher with mental toughness. She’s basically the only pitcher I have, and I realize we play multiple games every weekend. She often complains about her arm, but I think it’s in her head. She really needs some mental toughness training so she can power through.”

An umpire I talked with said, “I am so glad Pinnacle is doing this. You have no idea what we go through as umpires. It can be brutal. I’m excited about the empathy training they do. People need to realize umpires are humans too, and we have feelings. We hear all the negative comments about us. We put up a front and act like we don’t hear things, but you can’t block it all out. I really look forward to this (tearing up).”

Pinnacle Sports Psychology will start counseling and training in January before the spring season kicks off. You can contact them now to reserve sessions for your team or your kids. This is a new frontier in select/travel ball, and it will be interesting to see how it goes.