ABSTRACT
I begin this chapter with a story that captures the earliest moments in my work with professional boxers. My initial hope when transitioning to practice at the professional level was to work with a National Hockey League (NHL) team. In fact, I went through two rounds of interviews with an NHL team, meeting first the owner and then the general manager. Though these people told me that I had something to offer their team, they questioned my ability to work with ice-hockey athletes based on whether I could play golf with them during their recreation time. My response, arrogant upon reflection, was that golf is irrelevant to sport psychology consulting – that is, unless you are working with golfers. I expanded and tried to make my case that especially when athletes and teams aspire to lengthen their season through post-season play, shortened off-season activities would not exclude me from entering into the context. Beyond being arrogant, and perhaps overstating my position, what I failed to understand is that each sport has its own sub-culture and entry points (Schinke & McGannon, 2014) – I failed miserably. Sport psychology consultants must become one with the cultures and sub-culture in which they work or risk extinction and obsolescence in the applied realm (Martens, 1987; Ryba, Stambulova, Si, & Schinke, 2013).
