Most coaches will tell you the game is at least 50 percent mental. When I ask how they train that part daily, the answer usually stops there. Confidence, refocusing, resilience, self belief. These are skills. There is a science behind them and they get built with reps, the same as a jump shot.

I came to this through basketball. Coaching and playing, I kept seeing the same thing. Players were not falling short because of physical skill. Something was going on in their head. I could add more training and more reps and it still would not fix it. So I went and studied the part nobody was training.

I am a Certified Mental Performance Consultant, which is the standard in this field. It takes a graduate degree, hundreds of mentored hours with athletes, and a certification exam. Mine is a master's in Applied Sport and Performance Psychology from Dominican University of California. I work with athletes from middle school through the pros. High school and college is my favorite range, because that is when players want to get better and want to learn. Start at fourteen and by college you are years ahead of everyone else in how you handle the game.