We ask athletes to make good decisions under pressure before their brain is fully equipped to do so. Then we blame them when they go off track. That is not a character problem. The distance between an athlete’s potential and their actual path is almost never a talent problem. It is an environment and tools problem.

The long way around

I played and coached football across Argentina, Ireland, and Switzerland. In the 2025-2026 season I was part of the technical staff at Servette Chênois Féminin in Geneva, working as interpreter and assistant to the head coach. We won both the Swiss Cup and the League. I saw at close range what it costs when the person behind the performance is not taken care of, and what it looks like when they are.

Before that, I spent a season at Scoil Éanna in Cork, a primary school for children with mild mixed disabilities. I designed and ran a basketball programme for children with ASD, Down syndrome, and learning disabilities. By the end, two teams competed in an inter-school tournament. The competitive team won all three matches. A nine-year-old girl named Kate, who had never touched a basketball before January, told me afterward she had joined a training club.

That is when I understood what this kind of work can do.

I am at an early stage of that career, and I am deliberate about saying so. I am combining ongoing academic research with hands-on work, applying the technical and scientific knowledge I build along the way alongside what I have absorbed from years inside sport and education. My goal is to work with coaches, athletes, and young sportspeople who are genuinely interested in progressing — in their sport and in their lives — and to grow through that work myself. Not waiting until I have more credentials. Building through the doing.