Dr. Katie Peterson on Mental Health in Sports and the Unique Pressures Female Hockey Players Face
Dr. Katie Peterson leveraged her own experiences during a championship career to help support the next generation of women succeed in achieving their hockey dreams.
It was only a matter of time before Katie Peterson laced up the skates and started playing hockey. After all, her older brother took an interest in the sport, and she wanted to be just like her two older siblings. Before you knew it, all three siblings were involved, and the rest is history, as they say.
“One of the first pictures I have in hockey gear,” Katie said, “I’m like two standing underneath the island overhang in my brother’s gear. It’s super cute, and ever since then, I just wanted to be like them and got into it.”
Our full conversation is available on YouTube here.
Growing up in Rochester, Minnesota, playing on both girls' and boys' teams, and having the opportunity to socialize and connect with friends, Katie never would have imagined the career she would wind up having: an NCAA champion turned successful sports psychologist. But it’s those very experiences, from junior through her collegiate years at the University of Minnesota, that have helped guide her and become an important way for her to connect meaningfully with her clients.
Those experiences also helped Katie understand the importance of the mental side of the game, which is often overlooked but is incredibly important to address and support. In particular, she mentioned her undefeated senior season in 2013 as a really important moment in her understanding of how the mental side of the game can impact a player’s performance on the ice.
“If one line wasn’t performing exactly how they wanted to, the rest of the team picked it up,” she recalled. “And the way the whole team supported each other from the first line all the way through the fourth. Everybody had a role, and everybody leaned into that role and supported each other, and everyone could feel that value from top to bottom.” And it was during that collegiate career that she was first introduced to sports psychology.
As a player, Katie is quick to point out that she was not one of the top players on the team, which resulted in limited playing time and raised questions for her about who she was and how she could contribute to the team's success. Discovering and leaning into the mental side of the game earlier in her career, as she said, “could have been really beneficial.”
Then came the shift for Katie from being an athlete on the ice to helping athletes achieve their own success on the ice, a career change that was likely living dormant since her time in youth hockey.
“I’ve always naturally tended to be somebody that people would go to if things are happening,” Katie said. “But finding this space really weaves in all my interests in terms of an active lifestyle, taking care of our bodies, and accomplishing goals in that way, while also being able to have the psychology side of it felt like a natural fit.”
Now in her post-playing career, Katie continues to focus on providing tools for the next generation of female hockey players, whether through her work with the Girls and Women’s Hockey Academy or her own practice with Achieve Performance Psychology. Part of that work involves highlighting, and thus understanding, some of the mental challenges that female hockey players face today, including:
social pressures, including social media
fear of making mistakes and disappointing teammates, coaches, parents
fitting in and finding your place
One of the many ways Katie connects with her clients, beyond just a shared experience, is her focus on meeting players where they are.
“If you’re someone who has the foundations for confidence, then we don’t need to start there,” Katie explained. “We can build on what kind of scaffolding and the foundation that you already have. If we don’t find out where people are at and start there, I think you can be on separate pages, and I just don’t find that to be effective.”
When it comes to practical advice on how to deal with the mental side of hockey, and quite frankly, life, Katie also shares some advice:
Identify areas that aren’t focused on production to see your impact
Check in on your body: “Where am I at physically? How is my breathing? Is my body tense?”
What are the things that you do when you’re playing at your best: “Are you talking between shifts? How are you interacting with teammates?”
After the journey, from those early days trying to be just like her older brothers to a championship collegiate career, to her post-playing career, what keeps Dr. Katie Peterson inspired?
“I describe it as watching or seeing some of my athletes do really cool things, or win a big game, or accomplish a goal they set is the cool part,” she said. “But then hearing them talk about it and being able to describe how it went or what felt good about it to them is the inspiring part.”
In sports, it’s easy to become enamoured by the big-time goals and the game-saving stops, but the work that an athlete puts into that success starts behind the scenes. And it’s with the help of people like Dr. Katie Peterson that those athletes see and truly understand their self-worth, impact, and growth. And it’s through that work, and these conversations, that the mental side of sports loses its stigma and becomes a much safer, more open and supportive conversation.
Our full conversation is available on YouTube here.