Cornelia has been working with our team since just after the 2006 Olympics. As a member of the past three US Women's Ice Hockey Olympic teams, I've had experience working with sports psychologists. Cornelia's way of doing sports psychology is unique and for the first time in my athletic career I've grown and changed for the better as a person. Cornelia helps you learn about yourself. The great thing is, though, she doesn't force you to change. I'm a quiet and shy person and Cornelia made it possible for me to find ways to learn about myself and grow. For the first time in my life I feel comfortable being myself. As a result, Cornelia taught me how to find my potential both on and off the ice. When you're more comfortable with who you are and with your teammates, it has a powerful effect on the way you play your sport: you pass more easily, you're more comfortable on the ice, you're more settled and calm in your body.
Cornelia taught us that you have to feel safe, seen, met, and heard. I feel all those things when she listens to me. I never feel as though she's diagnosing or judging me, but rather that she's listening deeply and reflecting with me. As a result, I feel more free in her presence and therefore more able to grow into the person I know I am.
In addition to her individual work with me, Cornelia is in charge of all our team building sessions. Over the past three years, she's created sacred space for our team to share freely and openly and after a while we learned we could actually trust it. Slowly we were able to open up more. Our team has learned to share feelings we would normally only share with close family and friends. I've always wanted to be open with people and now I feel I'm much more at ease. It's still hard for me, but I'm so much more comfortable with myself and with my teammates now.
We've learned how to be in healthy relationships with one another and as a result our team has learned what trust, respect, and honesty really mean. For the first time in my life, I didn't fear that what I said to my teammates in a group meeting would go somewhere. Cornelia always knew what we needed as individuals and as a group and how to pace the work. At the beginning she knew she needed to build trust and then as the months and years progressed she knew she could challenge us more. The biggest thing she's done for us--and the hardest thing to do on any team--is to build trust. Without trust you can't grow and change. I now know that you have to be able to do the deep inner work in order to reach your potential.
In our team meetings, Cornelia is willing to show vulnerability as an authority figure and that ends up making us all feel like it's OK to be vulnerable too. She models that it's OK to feel uncertain or awkward or unsure. She's willing to admit when she makes mistakes and so now, as a team, we're more willing to forgive one another and ourselves. Ultimately, all this work translates perfectly to our on-ice performance. She's taught us to recognize when our egos are talking and then to put that kind of arrogant or negative self-talk on a cloud and let them float away.
