Hi, my name is Aaron.
I’m a former athlete and coach who struggled with the mental side of sports. Since I stopped playing and coaching, I’ve learned and healed a lot, and now my mission is to use those lessons and experiences to help athletes and coaches embrace and solve the challenges that they face in their sports and daily lives.
By re-humanizing athletes and creating compassionate, joyful, intentional, and athlete-driven spaces, we can together access the potential - to uplift, unify, teach, and transform - that exists in sport.
My goal is to help the people involved in creating those spaces - coaches, administrators, parents, and of course the athletes themselves - learn the tools to actualize that potential.
Skills for sport. Tools for life.
In order to enable athletes to thrive, we must work to challenge and change the top-down, dehumanizing and transactional culture of sport. More than ever in today’s comparison-driven media environment, it is our mandate to re-humanize athletes, embrace their strengths, and help them create the internal conditions that allow them to grow and thrive through their sport experiences.
Sports have the power to change a place, a life, or a person; it is up to us to make sure that transformation is a positive one.
MY FIRST LOVE WAS BASKETBALL
I’ve been an athlete my whole life. I played every sport I could find, from t-ball and flag football to baseball, swimming, water polo, and skiing.
My first love, though, was basketball.
When I was a young kid growing up in Boston, my dad and a few of his friends split season tickets to the Celtics. I have vivid memories of the sounds, sights, and smells of the old Boston Garden, and the way the place literally vibrated with energy and excitement. I remember walking around courtside during pre-game shootaround and marveling at the sheer size and presence of the players. I’ve been hooked ever since.
When I was 8, my family moved to Oregon, and one of the things that helped me through that tough transition was playing sports. They provided structure, an outlet, and a place where being tall was an advantage rather than a discomfort. I played water polo and basketball in high school and college and then recreationally, and whatever time was left I spent on skis.
Looking back on my life as a multi-sport athlete - and later as a coach - I recognize a lot of strong positives in my experiences. I also see that there were a lot of things that could have been better, both in the sport environments and inside me.
Eventually, my questions about how to improve the sport experience for young athletes like I had been, and how to increase joy in sport while improving athlete mental health and performance, led me back to Boston for a Master’s degree in Positive Youth Development and Sport Psychology.
