Meeting Recap - 10/18/2023 Doug Chadwick, Mental Skills Development

 

Doug Chadwick has an impressive bio and gave a very insightful talk this morning! We learned about his unique journey to the field of sport psychology, ways to get back in the moment, and how to learn from failure.Doug serves as the director of mental skills development for the Colorado Rockies Baseball Club. He designs the curriculum, facilitates the mental skills education, and teaches the Rockies major league and minor league players and staff about the mental skills necessary for optimal performance under pressure.Doug’s responsibilities cover hundreds of professional athletes and include seven professional teams in the United States and two in Latin America.Doug earned his BS in management and systems engineering from the United States Military Academy (West Point) where he was also a multi-year letterman and starter on a nationally ranked Army football team. He was commissioned as a field artillery officer and served in the Army for over 20 years before retiring as a faculty member at West Point. While serving in the Army, Doug earned his MA in applied economics from the University of  Oklahoma as well as an MSc degree in kinesiology and sport psychology from Cal State Fullerton, where he was named the department’s Outstanding Graduate Student. He is also a graduate of the U.S. Army’s Command and General Staff College. Between two combat tours in Iraq, Chadwick served as an instructor of applied performance psychology as well as the deputy director of West Point’s Center for Enhanced Performance, where he helped to develop an Army-wide program to improve mental skills and soldier performance in combat. After completing his PhD at the IHE, Doug returned to West Point as the director of the Center for Enhanced Performance, a comprehensive student services center, and retired as an assistant professor.