About Us
Image courtesy of EARCHPHOTO SPORTS
Doug Sweaney Herrick
Former Collegiate and Professional Soccer Player
Soccer Coach and Licensed Mental Health Therapist
Doug grew up playing a variety of sports, recognizing (as many boys do) the value of competitive sport for social connection. On the heels of change in schools, he found friends on an elementary school soccer team. One day he agreed to play goalkeeper, despite having very little experience in the position. His teammates and coaches took note of his performance and in goalkeeping he discovered a way of building a friend circle and a sense of purpose. He took this and ran with it. He joined a local select soccer team and started to organize his life around the sport. As a youth player, he had little awareness of the isolation, anxiety and perfectionism that goalkeeping often leads to. This was the start of a confusing dual reality. Soccer brought him a social network, external validation and a sense of purpose while also leaving him afraid of the inevitable mistakes that come with a high pressure position. Hypervigilance and self criticism became tools that improved his performance, leading to exciting opportunities to play in college and professionally.
At some point, this sport that had given him so much silently turned into something that was depleting him. Anxiety stole the fun of performance, and his unattainable expectations left him filled with dread of letting himself and his teammates down. Yet, soccer had become so much a part of his world that he didn’t know who he would be without it. The perfectionism that had driven his player development then started hurting his performance. The stress of games consumed the weeks and months leading up to them. With the help of his now wife, Christy, he closed the door on his playing career.
Not knowing what else to do, Doug took a role coaching goalkeepers. He was surprised to discover how much he recognized himself in the athletes he worked with, and found joy in connecting with players on a deeper level than keeping the ball out of the net. He has coached at the youth, collegiate and professional levels while going through graduate school to become a Licensed Mental Health Counselor. He continues to coach the goalkeepers at Seattle Reign FC’s youth academy and has a therapy private practice.
Christy Sweaney Herrick
Former DIII Cross Country and Track Athlete
Licensed Mental Health Therapist
As a kid, Christy loved to move and jumped at the chance to play any sport that sounded like fun from gymnastics to rock climbing to soccer. At the age of 10, Christy joined the local track club and discovered just how good it felt to run free. By the time she was in middle school she was being heralded as the next big distance running star in her highly competitive league. At first this attention was exciting and empowering, propelling her to qualify for the XC Club National Championships in 7th grade. To this day, she has distinct memories of this race, lining up in the cold of far away Illinois with hundreds of girls, being engulfed by the crowd once the gun went off, with one poor girl puking off the starting line right next to her due to nerves. This whole scene was so overwhelming and for the first time anxiety took over, preventing her from sinking into her body and running with freedom. After that race the attention from coaches and peers started to feel more like pressure, and anxiety about racing started to unpredictably rear its head impacting her performances and overall wellbeing. Her parents and coaches noticed her anxiety, but no one really seemed to know how to support her. On top of this, Christy experienced a significant plateau in performance when she hit puberty in early high school. No one in her sphere knew about or talked about this reality for young female athletes and she was left feeling profoundly confused. She still loved running and the wacky and wonderful community that came with it, but she hated how anxious it made her to complete and she was left with a nagging feeling that stuck with her throughout her high school and college career that something was wrong with her for not living up to the initial expectations everyone had of her.
After college, Christy was excited to leave the world of competitive running and explore athletics from a place of adventure. She pursued rock climbing, backpacking, snowboarding, and yoga and worked as a white water raft guide and wilderness therapy guide. As a raft guide she picked up a knee injury that continued to nag until she discovered 4 years later that she had in fact torn her ACL. During what is already a notoriously difficult recovery process she became mysteriously ill, eventually learning that she was suffering from chronic GI issues that left her profoundly deficient in B12 impacting her ability to build and maintain muscle and overall fitness. During this time, Christy lost her identity as an athlete, a painful and disorienting experience. As she began to recover physically, she also began to reflect on all her varied athletic experiences throughout her life. After losing what she once took for granted, she began to approach her body and her ability from a place of gratitude and joy allowing space for more than just her body to heal. Today she once again loves to run and no longer cares how fast.