Twelve athletes and four coaches traveled to St. Joe’s for tips to improve mental toughness and performance

By Sadie Sevigny, Sports Writer

Sept. 27, 2024

SANFORD, Maine — On Wednesday, Sept. 25, 12 female athletes along with four female coaches attended the Female Leadership Conference at St. Joseph’s College.

This conference, operated by the non-profit, “Strong Girls United”, focused on ways for female athletes to expand their leadership on their team. They were joined by many other high schools across the state.

The conference started with founder Lani Silverside, Founder & Executive Director of SG United Foundation, who spoke on her experience as an athlete and coach. She highlighted how sport psychology and mental training changed the way she viewed pressure and improved her performance.

Athletes were then separated from coaches to complete a fun exercise which focused on working together as a group to finish a scavenger hunt. This helped groups focus on being inclusive and having good communication, especially when it came to trying to complete the objectives.

At the same time, coaches were taken into a lecture hall to hear speaker Brooklyn Renay of “One Trusted Adult”. Renay, a former D1 athlete-turned teacher/coach-turned administrator, is now a motivational speaker on adult-student trust, boundaries, and professional connection.

After lunch, a keynote speaker discussed overcoming adversity and injury through mental health training and sport psychology. Attendees learned breathing techniques, strategies to increase mental toughness, and mental health strategies to bring back to their teams and share with not only their teammates, but their classmates as well. Mental toughness, health, and sport psychology have shown a direct correlation to increased performance.

Big takeaways from this trip for the athletes to bring back to their teams include “Five-finger breathing”, positive self talk strategies, and changing perspective to “I Will” instead of just “Maybe”, because mental toughness is the key to success in athletics.

Sanford Athletics looks to sending more female athletes to this event next year.