To make your work meaningful, you need to align it with your true nature.

Portrait of Jenn Ireland, Mental Skills Coach at Expand Your Game

Hi, I'm Jenn:

Mental Skills Coach, 2023 season

Minnesota Aurora FC, USL W League

Mental Skills Coordinator, 2023 season

Berkshire Soccer Academy

Licenses ~ Certifications ~ Courses

Hello! I’m Jenn, USSF C Licensed youth soccer coach and Founder of Expand Your Game. I am passionate about helping young women find their voice and find their center. My personal mission is to help youth female athletes evolve by prioritizing their mental wellness, growing their resiliency and developing true, deep belief in themselves and their abilities so that they can stop holding themselves back, keeping themselves small, and being fully dependent on external validation for their confidence.

 

Why did I start Expand Your Game? Well, many of the tools that I have learned about and integrated into my life as an adult would have helped me IMMENSELY as a young person, and specifically as a young adult struggling with the pressure, expectations, and self-defeating mentalities that I was consistently dealing with, on the soccer field and off. I created the Expand Your Game community to help others apply lessons of personal growth and expansion within the context of being a female athlete, and counteract some of the negative impacts of high-pressure environments in a healthy striving way – so that they can THRIVE, not just survive. 

 

Unlike many of my colleagues in the coaching world, I do not have a collegiate or professional playing background. My soccer playing career never extended beyond a few years of club and high school soccer. While I used to keep quiet about this, I now embrace my story and realize that I am actually a better coach because of it. Through my countless hours of working to fill my knowledge gaps, I developed a strong interest in the tactical side of soccer – researching, watching, and analyzing the game, eagerly absorbing all of the details I was never taught. This tactical curiosity later turned into a curiosity about mental performance which has now become my passion and career.

 

As a coach, I work hard to create an environment for my soccer players that promotes a healthy relationship with the game and personal accountability, where players learn to embrace setbacks and mistakes as tools for growth. Players work to let go of trying to be perfect and trying to fit in, and instead cultivate their individuality and authenticity both as players and people. We create an environment where all are encouraged to lead and work for the collective, become supportive and encouraging teammates, while individually learning to celebrate themselves, have their own backs and find their voice. We practice centering and staying true to ourselves inside the sometimes toxic cultures and win-at-all-cost mentalities that dominate the competitive and elite youth soccer world that we are electing to be a part of.

 

While I am not a sports psychologist myself, or a medical professional in any way, I have found that my benefit to players is that I am able to take the science of mental performance skills and translate it into usable tools and strategies that players can easily understand and quickly put to use out on the field. 

 

Expand Your Game was born from the idea that maximizing potential and achieving peak performance comes through mental skills development as much, if not more, than from anywhere else. My goal with this work is to empower, impact, lead, and guide young women toward experiencing their own greatness on and off the soccer field. That is why I am here.

DISCLAIMER: I am not a sports psychologist or mental health professional and the information presented on this website is for informational purposes ONLY. I am not responsible for any actions taken or results derived from following anything read or viewed on this site. For my full disclaimer click here

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The Mindset Mastery Academy is THRILLED to welcome Hannah, Autumn and Alyssa as Mental Skills Coaches for Fall 2024.

Transform your game with one of these PRO PLAYERS as YOUR PERSONAL COACH!

Are you ready to GAIN a MENTAL EDGE &

Get ahead of everyone else!?

for female soccer players age 10-18