Andy Gillham owns and operates Ludus Consulting LLC (www.ludusconsulting.biz) focusing on performance enhancement for his clients. More specifically, Dr. Gillham works primarily with coaches and athletic administrators on improving systematic coach evaluation and providing targeted coach and program professional development opportunities. His Ph.D. is in Education with a major of sport and exercise psychology from the University of Idaho and has a B.S. in Fitness and a M.S. in Human Performance from University Wisconsin-LaCrosse.  He has been a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist through the National Strength and Conditioning Association since 2003 and is a certified consultant through the Association for Applied Sport Psychology. Dr. Gillham has helped athletes, coaches, administrators and business executives in Canada and the United States improve their performance.  Dr. Gillham works across competitive levels ranging from youth through professional levels for both coaches and athletes. In addition to his applied work, Dr. Gillham has published 12 peer-reviewed academic journal articles and has been an invited author for 12 more papers. He is also an Editorial Board member for two international coaching journals: International Journal of Sports Science & Coaching and International Sport Coaching Journal where he also serves as Section Editor for Resource Reviews.

Earlynn Lauer, MS, is a doctoral student and graduate teaching associate in the Sport Psychology/Motor Behavior program in the Department of Kinesiology, Recreation, & Sport Studies at The University of Tennessee. She is a certified tennis instructor through the Professional Tennis Registry, and her research interests focus on working with youth sport psychology professionals and coaches to integrate mental skills training in youth sports. In Fall 2017, she will be starting a position of Assistant Professor in Sport Psychology and Wellness at Western Illinois University. http://journals.humankinetics.com/doi/abs/10.1123/iscj.2016-0078

Dr Jennifer Cumming is a Reader in Sport and Exercise Psychology from the University of Birmingham (UK) and is a Chartered Psychologist and Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society.  She is also a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (HEA) after completing a Post Graduate Certificate in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education in 2010 was awarded the 2012 Excellence in Teaching Award from the University of Birmingham.  Prior to this, she was received her PhD in Kinesiology from the University of Western Ontario in 2001 and her MA from the University of Ottawa in 1999.    Dr Cumming’s current research focuses on community-based approaches to developing practical and culturally-tailored interventions for athletes and, more recently, individuals who are traditionally considered ‘harder to reach’.  She is interested in how individuals learn to effectively regulate their thoughts, feelings, and behaviours with mental skills training, and determine the impact of self-regulation (or dysregulation) on performance, health, and well-being.  Whereas sport psychology customarily focuses on mental skills as a regulatory capacity that athletes use in competitive and non-competitive situations, she more broadly uses this knowledge to support health-related quality of life in communities that are more challenging to engage, such as homeless adolescents.    Dr Cumming is the Primary Investigator of large funded study (2014-2020) to co-develop, co-implement, and co-evaluate the Mental Skills Training for Life™ programme as part of community-based participatory action research with a large supported housing service.  She was nominated for the University of Birmingham’s Founders’ Award for Excellence in Policy Advancement in 2015 and Enterprising Birmingham’s Most Innovative Collaboration award in 2017.  Her work has also been recognised as good practice by Public Health England and is being used to inform interventions for preventing and reducing homelessness in the UK.  She has published over 80 peer-reviewed papers and is the current co-editor of Imagination, Cognition and Personality. 

“Drive on”: The relationship between psychological variables and effective squad leadership. By Gilson, Todd A.; Dix, Melissa A.; Lochbaum, Marc Military Psychology, Vol 29(1), Jan 2017, 58-67. Abstract The U.S. Reserve Officer Training Program (ROTC) conducts systematic assessments of cadets’ leadership abilities during field training exercises (FTX) to assess their leadership abilities. While cadets in ROTC programs learn specific tactical operation procedures to augment FTX performances, much less is known about the relationship between psychological variables and squad leadership performance. To this end, 220 cadets completed self-efficacy, psychological flexibility, and grit questionnaires, which were then compared to FTX performance scores. Results underscored that only self-efficacy was significantly related to cadets’ squad leadership ability. Furthermore, prior service in the U.S. Army had no effect on the performance score one attained, highlighting an interesting paradox. Therefore, while self-efficacy can be cultivated through prior experiences, it seems more prudent to educate ROTC cadets on how to apply psychological skills to bolster self-efficacy in preparation for upcoming challenging leadership experiences. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved) http://psycnet.apa.org/index.cfm?fa=buy.optionToBuy&id=2016-46137-001 Todd Gilson serves as the Director for University Honors at Northern Illinois University. In this role, Todd oversees an Honors Program with over 1,000 students from all six undergraduate colleges at NIU. Todd's line of research focuses on applying the core sport psychology principles of self-efficacy and leadership development to NCAA collegiate athletes and US Army ROTC cadets, which has resulted in over 30 peer-reviewed publications in such outlets as: Journal of Applied Sport Psychology, Military Psychology, and Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research. Professionally, Todd also serves as the Secretary-Treasurer for the Association for Applied Sport Psychology (AASP). http://cedu.niu.edu/knpe/about/faculty-and-instructors/gilson-todd.shtml Twitter: @ToddAGilson https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Todd_Gilson2  

Nick Holt is a Professor in the Faculty of Physical Education and Recreation at the University of Alberta, where he leads the Child & Adolescent Sport & Activity lab. He is interested in psychosocial aspects of youth sport and physical activity participation, and studies issues including parenting, peer interactions, coaching, and free play. He adopted a Positive Youth Development (PYD) perspective. He is currently leading a Canada-wide knowledge translation project. Links: PYDSportNET Twitter: @PYDsportNET Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/PYDSportNET/ Website: http://www.positivesport.ca/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVzZY6YC66M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsuckZK78rM  

Dr. Alyson Crozier researches in the area of health, exercise and sport psychology, with a specific interest in group dynamics and social influence. Specifically, she examines how the people that surround us, and ones perceptions of those people, influence ones thoughts, feelings, and behaviours in both sport and exercise settings. One area she is particularly interested in is how social norms (i.e., what behaviour most people engage in & what behaviours others approve of) relate to athlete effort and individual physical activity patterns. Alyson completed her Ph.D. at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, Canada in 2014, and is now a Lecturer at the University of South Australia in Adelaide, Australia.  If you have any further questions about her research, you can contact her at [email protected]

Eric M. Martin joined the faculty at Boise State University in 2016. He earned a Ph.D. in Kinesiology with a concentration in Psychosocial Aspects of Sport and Physical Activity from the Department of Kinesiology at Michigan State University. Through his work at Michigan State, Dr. Martin was involved in a variety of projects that have investigated positive youth development programs, parent attitudes toward sport, and youth perceptions of the sport environment and how these environments impact youth development. Dr. Martin’s primary research interests include the development and consequences of sport passion and how to best structure the youth sport environment to benefit all involved. His research has been published in a variety of journals including The Sport Psychologist, The Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, and The International Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology. In his spare time he enjoys playing and watching sports as well as spending time outdoors with his wife, Kristen, and son, Jamison. https://hs.boisestate.edu/kinesiology/eric-martin/

About Matt Cuccaro, Ed.M. Passionate about personal growth and the development of high performance team cultures, Matt has more than a decade of experience working with athletes, coaches, parents, businesses and educators on the mental aspects of elite performance. As a Performance Consultant with Telos Sport Psychology Coaching, Matt assists the development of individuals and teams from the junior level to the highest professional ranks through workshops, individual meetings, speaking engagements and publications. He currently leads programming at Sea Pines Resort, Smith Stearns Tennis Academy and the Junior Players Golf Academy. For nine years, he served as Director of Mental Training for Junior Sports Corporation (International Junior Golf Academy and Ivan Lendl International Junior Tennis Academy) in Hilton Head Island, South Carolina where numerous All-American student-athletes continue to emerge from the culture created under his guidance. Matt received his Master of Education from Boston University in Counseling/Sport Psychology and continues to be an active member of the Association of Applied Sport Psychology. Follow him on Twitter & Instagram: @MentalCoachMatt Reach him via e-mail: [email protected]

Guest: Betsy Shoenfelt Dr. Betsy Shoenfelt, University Distinguished Professor of Psychological Sciences at Western Kentucky University (WKU), is the director of the WKU Industrial-Organizational (I-O) Psychology Graduate Program. She received her Ph.D. in 1983 from LSU in I-O Psychology with minors in Sport Psychology and Statistics. She is a licensed I-O Psychologist, a Certified Consultant and Fellow with the Association for Applied Sport Psychology, and a member of the USOC Sport Psychology and Mental Skills Registry. Shoenfelt has 30+ years of consulting experience in business, industry, government, education, and sports. In sports, she works with teams and individually with coaches and athletes training mental skills, team building, and enabling performance excellence in volleyball, basketball, baseball, softball, soccer, swimming, and golf at the intercollegiate, Olympic, and professional levels.   Links:   Website: http://people.wku.edu/betsy.shoenfelt/   Research Gate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Betsy_Shoenfelt   Additional link:   http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/21520704.2016.1138264?journalCode=uspa20

Guest: Claudia Robazza Claudio Robazza is an Associate Professor of Methods and didactics of motor activities at the Faculty of Movement Sciences, University of Chieti, Italy. He earned a master degree in Physical Education, a master degree in Psychology, and a PhD in Sciences and Techniques of Physical Activities and Sports from the University Joseph Fourier, Grenoble, France. As a sport psychologist, he has been working with top level athletes of different sports, including golf, archery, modern pentathlon, rugby, and he is currently involved with the Italian shooting team. He has conducted field-based studies in physical education, motor learning, and sport performance domains, and his primary research interest is in the area of performance-related emotions, performance optimization, and motor learning. He has published numerous refereed journal articles, and is the author of several book chapters and books. He is also an associate editor of Psychology of Sport and Exercise, consulting editor of Sport, Exercise, and Performance Psychology, advisory board member of Sport Sciences for Health, and co-director of Giornale Italiano di Psicologia dello Sport (Italian Journal of Sport Psychology).   In the 2015, he received the Ema Geron Award from the FEPSAC (European Federation of Sport Psychology) in recognition of his exceptional national contribution to the development of sport and exercise psychology. In the same year, he also received the Diploma of Honour – Bronze Medal from the ISSF (International Shooting Sport Federation) in appreciation of his exceptional service to the shooting sports.   Links:   Email:  [email protected]   Website: http://www.queensu.ca/skhs/faculty-and-staff/faculty/luc-martin   Research Gate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Claudio_Robazza/publications   Additional link:   http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1469029212000532   https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27253427   http://journals.humankinetics.com/doi/abs/10.1123/tsp.2015-0035