I'm heading into my Master's in Sport & Exercise Psychology, and one thing keeps coming up talking to youth athletes and their parents: skill and conditioning coaches are everywhere, but almost nobody is training the mental side — especially for 13-18 year olds who are just starting to feel real competitive pressure for the first time.

A few patterns I keep seeing:

1. Performance anxiety gets mistaken for lack of talent. A kid chokes in a big moment and the conclusion is "they're not clutch" — when really nobody ever taught them how to regulate arousal before competition. That's a trainable skill, not a fixed trait.

1. Parents don't know what to say. "Just relax" or "don't think about it" are the two most common (and least helpful) things said to an anxious athlete before a game. Telling someone not to think about something is one of the most reliable ways to make them think about it more.

1. The gap shows up most in individual sports. Golf, tennis, swimming, gymnastics — anywhere there's no teammate to hide behind and a lot of dead time to think, anxiety compounds fast.

The good news: this is coachable. Breath-based arousal regulation, pre-performance routines, and reframing self-talk are all skills, not personality traits — and they respond fast to the right training, usually faster than most physical skills do.

I'm building out a coaching practice for exactly this — competitive youth athletes who are talented but get in their own way when it matters. If that's your kid, or you coach kids like this, happy to talk shop.