An Expert Conversation with Laura Hahn-Segundo Collins, LCSW, The Athlete Psychotherapist
For student-athletes, the expectations can feel endless. Excel in the classroom. Perform at your best in competition. Show up for your teammates. Maintain friendships. Prepare for college or a career. Make your family proud. And somehow, find time to sleep, recover, and enjoy being a person.
It’s a lot to manage.
At New Frontiers, we regularly work with individuals navigating competing responsibilities and expectations. Prioritization is an essential executive functioning skill, but knowing what needs to get done doesn’t always make deciding what comes first any easier.
For athletes, there’s an additional layer: performance, identity, and the pressure to succeed can make even ordinary decisions feel consequential.
To explore this intersection, I connected with Laura Hahn-Segundo Collins, LCSW, a psychotherapist known as The Athlete Psychotherapist. A former elite gymnast and NCAA Division I diver, Laura brings more than 20 years of clinical experience and a personal understanding of high-performance environments to her work with athletes and high achievers.
We discussed why athletes struggle with prioritization, how expectations influence decision-making, and what athletes, parents, and coaches can do to create a healthier relationship with achievement.
Why Prioritization Is Hard for Athletes
Casey: Athletes are often praised for their discipline, organization, and ability to manage demanding schedules. So why can prioritization be particularly challenging for them?
Laura: I think we first need to recognize that being disciplined and being able to prioritize aren’t necessarily the same thing.
Many athletes are incredibly good at following a schedule, meeting expectations, and pushing themselves to achieve. But that doesn’t necessarily mean they’ve had opportunities to decide what matters most to them.
From a young age, athletes may have their schedules organized by adults: coaches, parents, teachers, and trainers. Their days can be structured around practices, competitions, schoolwork, and performance goals.
The challenge comes when everything is presented as equally important.
Get good grades. Make the starting lineup. Train harder. Be a leader. Get recruited. Build your résumé. Don’t let anyone down.
At some point, we need to ask: Whose priorities are these? And where does the athlete get to have a voice?
Prioritization isn’t just about deciding what task comes first. It’s also about understanding your needs, values, limitations, and what you’re willing or able to give your energy to.
When Athletes Feel They Have to Excel at Everything
Casey: That’s an interesting distinction. At New Frontiers, we often help clients develop systems for managing responsibilities. But what happens when an athlete feels they need to excel at everything?
Laura: That’s where I think we need to look beyond time management and consider the athlete’s relationship with achievement.
Some athletes grow up learning, directly or indirectly, that their value is connected to how well they perform.
They might begin to believe that being a good athlete means never disappointing anyone, never falling behind, and always giving 100 percent.
So when they’re faced with competing priorities, choosing one thing over another can bring up guilt, anxiety, or fear.
Imagine a student-athlete who has an important exam tomorrow but also feels pressure to attend an optional training session.
On paper, the decision might seem straightforward. But emotionally, that athlete may be thinking:
- Will my coach think I’m not committed?
- Will I lose my position?
- Am I letting my teammates down?
- What if taking a break means I’m falling behind?
Suddenly, we’re not just talking about organizing a calendar. We’re talking about belonging, self-worth, and fear of disappointing others.
That’s important because sometimes what looks like poor prioritization is actually an athlete struggling to feel safe making a choice.
Telling the Difference Between Important and Urgent
Casey: How can athletes begin distinguishing between what’s truly important and what simply feels urgent?
Laura: I encourage athletes to become curious about their decision-making.
Before asking, “What do I need to get done?” I might ask, “What is making this feel so important right now?”
Is it a deadline? A personal goal? Someone else’s expectation? Fear of consequences? Or something they genuinely value?
Those are very different motivations.
I also think athletes benefit from recognizing that priorities can change depending on the season of life they’re in.
During finals week, academics may need more attention. During competition season, training demands might increase. During injury recovery, rehabilitation, sleep, and emotional well-being may become central.
And sometimes, the priority needs to be spending time with friends, family, or simply doing something enjoyable outside of sport.
You can care about many things without giving all of them equal attention all the time.
It’s not a lack of commitment here. It’s all about learning how to make thoughtful choices.
Where Executive Functioning and Mental Health Meet
Casey: Executive functioning involves planning, flexibility, emotional regulation, and self-monitoring. How do those skills intersect with the mental health challenges athletes experience?
Laura: They’re closely connected, but I think it’s important not to assume every difficulty with planning or follow-through is an executive functioning problem.
An athlete might have excellent organizational skills and still struggle to make decisions because they’re overwhelmed, exhausted, anxious, or afraid of failing.
Likewise, an athlete who struggles with executive functioning may benefit tremendously from practical systems, coaching, and structure.
We need to understand the whole person.
For example, if an athlete consistently stays up late completing schoolwork after practice, we could work on scheduling, breaking assignments into manageable steps, or preparing ahead.
Those are useful strategies.
But we should also be asking: Is this athlete’s schedule realistic? Are they getting enough sleep? Do they have any downtime? Are they afraid to say no? What expectations are coming from the adults around them?
Sometimes the solution is developing a new skill. Sometimes it’s changing the environment. Often, it’s both.
How Parents and Coaches Can Help
Casey: Let’s talk about parents and coaches. How can they help athletes learn to prioritize without adding to the pressure?
Laura: One of the most helpful things adults can do is create opportunities for athletes to think for themselves.
Instead of immediately telling an athlete what they should prioritize, we can ask questions:
- “What feels most important to you this week?”
- “What are you worried might happen if you choose one thing over another?”
- “What support would make this more manageable?”
- “What might you need to let go of right now?”
These questions encourage self-awareness, communication, and decision-making.
I also think adults need to examine the messages they’re sending.
We can’t tell athletes that mental health matters and then praise them only when they push through exhaustion, sacrifice sleep, or perform despite being overwhelmed.
And we shouldn’t assume that an athlete who needs rest lacks discipline.
Parents and coaches have an opportunity to model healthy boundaries, flexibility, and recovery.
The goal isn’t to remove expectations. It’s to create an environment where athletes can learn, grow, make mistakes, and communicate their needs without feeling that their worth is at stake.
Practical Prioritization Strategies for Athletes
Casey: For an athlete who feels overwhelmed by competing responsibilities, what are some practical strategies they can start using?
Laura: I’d suggest beginning with a few simple practices.
1. Identify your priorities, not just your obligations.
Write down everything competing for your attention. Then consider which responsibilities are essential, which can be adjusted, and which might be expectations you’ve taken on without questioning.
2. Check your capacity.
Look at your week realistically. Include school, training, commuting, meals, sleep, recovery, relationships, and downtime.
If your schedule only works when everything goes perfectly, it probably needs adjusting.
3. Practice flexible prioritization.
Ask yourself, “What needs my attention most today?” rather than assuming everything deserves the same effort every day.
4. Communicate before reaching a breaking point.
Athletes can practice having conversations with coaches, teachers, parents, or teammates when responsibilities conflict.
Asking for support or clarification is an essential skill – NOT a weakness!
5. Make room for being a person.
I can’t emphasize this enough. Athletes need relationships, interests, rest, and experiences outside of sport. Things that have nothing to do with their performance.
Those parts of life aren’t distractions from development. They’re actually part of healthy development.
And finally, I’d encourage athletes to reflect on how they’re feeling, not just what they’re accomplishing.
What Athletes Should Know About Success
Casey: What’s one thing you wish more athletes understood about success and prioritization?
Laura: That you don’t have to excel at everything to be successful, and you don’t have to earn your right to rest.
Athletes often learn to measure progress through results: times, scores, rankings, statistics, grades, and achievements.
But development is so much bigger than that.
Learning to recognize your limits, communicate your needs, make thoughtful decisions, recover from disappointment, and maintain relationships are also meaningful accomplishments.
I often encourage athletes to think about who they’re becoming, not just what they’re achieving.
Because eventually, sport will change. Heck, one day, your time as a competitive athlete will end. Your role will change. Your responsibilities will change.
The ability to understand yourself and make decisions that align with your values will serve you long after the competition ends.
Bringing It Together: Prioritization as a Whole-Person Skill
One of my biggest takeaways from this conversation is that helping athletes prioritize requires more than handing them a planner or teaching them to manage their time.
Those tools matter. But so do the emotional and environmental factors influencing how athletes make decisions.
At New Frontiers, we view executive functioning as a set of skills that can be developed through self-awareness, personalized strategies, and consistent practice.
Laura’s perspective adds an important dimension: athletes also need opportunities to explore why certain responsibilities feel so difficult to manage or step away from.
A student-athlete who struggles to balance school, sport, and relationships may benefit from learning how to plan ahead, evaluate competing demands, and adjust expectations. They may also need reassurance that their value isn’t determined by how much they accomplish.
Ultimately, the goal isn’t to help athletes do everything.
It’s to help them make intentional decisions about what matters, develop the skills to follow through, and recognize that their well-being deserves a place among their priorities.
A Quick Prioritization Check-In for Athletes
Before starting your next busy week, consider these five questions:
- What are my three most important priorities this week?
- Which expectations are mine, and which come from others?
- Where might I need flexibility, support, or a conversation?
- Have I made enough room for sleep, recovery, and connection?
- If I can’t accomplish everything, how will I decide what matters most?
These questions won’t eliminate competing demands, but they can help make those demands more manageable and your decisions more intentional.
About the Expert
Laura Hahn-Segundo Collins, LCSW, known as The Athlete Psychotherapist, is a former elite gymnast, NCAA Division I diver, and psychotherapist with more than 20 years of clinical experience. Through her private practice, Laura HS Collins LCSW PLLC, she supports athletes and high-performing individuals ages 17 and older, integrating psychodynamic psychotherapy, trauma-informed care, mindfulness, and whole-person development. She also provides consultation and education to clinicians, coaches, and athletic programs.
Learn more at lcollinslcsw.com.
About New Frontiers
New Frontiers provides individualized executive function coaching to help students, adults, and professionals strengthen skills including planning, prioritization, organization, and self-management.
Learn more at nfil.net.
This article is intended for educational purposes and is not a substitute for individualized mental health care.
