Sports Performance Support for Athletes, Coaches & Teams in MICHIGAN
Building confidence that can survive contact with reality
At Hive Wellness Collective, we help athletes, coaches, parents, and teams understand what is happening underneath performance struggles and build mental skills that work in the actual moments they need them.
Sports have a very efficient way of finding every complicated thing you believe about failure, approval, control, belonging, and whether you are still good enough after a bad performance.
Fun little activity we have built entire identities, scholarship opportunities, careers, family schedules, and emotional ecosystems around.
Athletes are expected to perform highly technical skills under pressure while being watched, evaluated, compared, corrected, ranked, recorded, recruited, and occasionally discussed by people online who have never met them but nevertheless have several thoughts.
Then, when their body tightens, their confidence disappears, or their brain starts supervising every movement, we tell them to stop overthinking and relax.
Excellent. Surely they had not considered that.
At Hive Wellness Collective, we support middle-school, high-school, collegiate, competitive adult, and elite athletes, along with coaches, parents, teams, clubs, schools, and athletic organizations.
We help people understand what is happening underneath performance struggles and build mental skills that work when the pressure is real. Not just when they are sitting calmly in an office explaining what they should have done, but when the game is happening, people are watching, and their brain has decided now would be a wonderful time to question every ability they have ever possessed.
When talent is not the problem
You can be incredibly talented and still perform like you are trying not to get caught being imperfect.
You can know exactly what to do and be completely unable to access it when the pressure hits. You can spend years developing a skill only to have your brain interrupt at the worst possible moment with several urgent questions about your mechanics, your future, your coach’s facial expression, and whether everyone has secretly realized you are a fraud.
That is not necessarily a lack of preparation. It is not automatically laziness, weakness, poor motivation, or an insufficient desire to win.
Sometimes it is anxiety.
Sometimes it is perfectionism.
Sometimes it is ADHD, burnout, shame, fear of disappointing people, or a nervous system that has learned to interpret mistakes as actual danger.
Sometimes the athlete is not afraid of losing. They are afraid of what losing will mean about them.
That distinction matters.
We support athletes who are dealing with performance anxiety, overthinking, perfectionism, confidence issues, emotional regulation, difficulty recovering after mistakes, injury-related fear, burnout, loss of motivation, focus challenges, changing roles, team conflict, coach or parent pressure, and the exhausting experience of letting every practice, game, score, and coach interaction decide how they feel about themselves.
For athletes who know they are capable of more than what is showing up
Maybe you perform well in practice and become a distant relative of yourself during competition.
Maybe you play cautiously because making a mistake feels more dangerous than taking a risk.
Maybe one bad play changes your entire body language.
Maybe your confidence depends on what happened five minutes ago.
Maybe you are constantly checking your coach’s reactions, comparing yourself to teammates, or wondering whether your position is safe.
Maybe you are playing well and still enjoying absolutely none of it because success has only raised the standard for what you must do next.
Or maybe you are struggling and everyone keeps reminding you how talented you are, which is somehow meant to be encouraging but mostly makes you feel worse because yes, thank you, you are also aware this is not what you are capable of.
We help athletes:
Understand what happens in their body and brain under pressure
Manage performance anxiety without waiting for it to disappear
Stay present when their thoughts start sprinting into the future
Recover after mistakes without losing the rest of the competition to them
Build confidence that can survive an imperfect performance
Improve focus and emotional regulation
Work through fear of failure and perfectionism
Receive feedback without turning it into a complete psychological autopsy
Rebuild trust in their body after an injury
Navigate playing-time changes, cuts, recruiting, transfers, coaching changes, and transitions
Separate “I performed badly” from “I am bad”
Reconnect with what they actually value about their sport
We are not trying to make athletes care less.
We are helping them care without every outcome deciding who they are.
The mistake is over, but their brain has chosen to renew it for another season
Some athletes make a mistake and move on.
Others make a mistake, replay it during the next play, revisit it in the car, analyze it in the shower, and schedule a special encore presentation for 2:00 a.m.
By morning, one bad performance has become evidence that they are getting worse, letting everyone down, losing their position, ruining their future, and possibly bringing shame upon their family for generations.
This sounds dramatic because it is dramatic. It is also incredibly common.
Telling an athlete to “shake it off” does not teach them how to recover.
Telling them to be confident does not explain what to do when confidence is nowhere to be found.
Telling them to stop thinking about the mistake tends to create the fascinating psychological experience of thinking about it significantly more.
We help athletes build the ability to notice what is happening, regulate the physical stress response, redirect attention, recover after mistakes, and return to the moment without requiring themselves to suddenly feel amazing first.
The goal is not to become an athlete who never gets nervous, frustrated, embarrassed, or disappointed. That athlete does not exist and honestly sounds a little unsettling.
The goal is to become an athlete who can feel those things without handing them control of the rest of the game.
Confidence that can survive contact with reality
A lot of what gets called confidence is actually reassurance built on favorable conditions.
The athlete feels confident when they are starting, winning, performing well, receiving praise, hitting their numbers, and getting the exact facial expressions they hoped to see from the adults in attendance.
Then they struggle, and the confidence is immediately reported missing.
Real confidence is not believing you will always perform well. It is trusting that you can respond when you do not.
It is knowing you can miss and take the next shot. Strike out and return to the plate. Have a rough race without deciding your training was meaningless. Receive hard feedback without interpreting it as evidence that you never belonged at this level.
It is being able to have an off day without calling an emergency meeting about your entire future.
We help athletes build confidence that is grounded in something more durable than the last score, statistic, ranking, lineup, comment, or performance.
Because if confidence only exists when everything is going well, it is not confidence.
It is favorable weather.
What sports performance support at Hive can help with
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Practice looks great. Warmups look great. Then competition starts and suddenly the athlete is tight, hesitant, rushing, freezing, nauseous, unable to breathe normally, or thinking so hard about what they are doing that they can no longer do it naturally. We help athletes understand why that shift happens and develop a plan for responding when it does.
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Sometimes a rough stretch becomes self-perpetuating. The athlete starts searching for what is wrong, changing everything, analyzing every result, and performing with the desperate energy of someone trying to prove they are not currently in a slump. We help interrupt that cycle and rebuild a steadier relationship with performance.
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Some athletes are not struggling because they lack ambition. They are struggling because anything short of exceptional feels unacceptable. They become cautious, avoid risks, obsess over small errors, or work themselves into the ground trying to prevent the possibility of being disappointed in themselves. We help athletes pursue high standards without becoming emotionally hostage to them.
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Sports involve remembering instructions, organizing equipment, managing schedules, shifting attention, controlling impulses, processing feedback, and staying engaged during approximately four million transitions. We help athletes with ADHD develop tools that fit the demands of their sport instead of repeatedly receiving the groundbreaking suggestion that they should “be more focused.”
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Some athletes explode. Some disappear. Some argue, cry, become sarcastic, stop communicating, or decide the entire day is ruined. We help athletes recognize what is happening before the reaction takes over and find ways to move through intense emotion without ignoring it or handing it the car keys.
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Physical rehabilitation does not automatically address grief, isolation, fear of reinjury, lost momentum, or the unnerving experience of no longer trusting the body that used to feel automatic. We support athletes throughout recovery and return, including the part that exists between “you are cleared” and “you actually feel ready.”
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Recruiting, scholarship decisions, transfers, coaching changes, graduation, retirement, and leaving competitive sports can bring excitement, grief, uncertainty, and a truly unreasonable number of decisions. We help athletes navigate what comes next, especially when the question is no longer only “Where will I play?” but also “Who am I if this changes?”
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Being benched, cut, redshirted, moved to a different position, passed over, or asked to take on a new role can affect far more than minutes on the field. We help athletes process what changed, communicate effectively, decide what is within their control, and move forward without letting one decision become the final word on their ability.
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Coaches are asked to motivate different personalities, deliver difficult feedback, manage conflict, communicate with families, notice when someone is struggling, and make decisions people will absolutely take personally. We provide consultation and practical support for coaches who want to lead effectively without becoming either emotionally unavailable or available to everyone at all times.
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A team may need help with communication, leadership, trust, conflict, role clarity, or recovering after a difficult season or major change. We create customized workshops and team support around what is actually happening instead of arriving with a generic presentation with a bunch of stock images of people high-fiving on mountains and hoping the word “resilience” fixes it.
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Parents may need help responding to a struggling athlete, navigating concerns with a coach, supporting recovery from injury, recognizing when stress has become something more, or figuring out what to say after a difficult performance besides every thought currently fighting to leave their mouth. We help parents support the athlete and protect the relationship.
When your sport is more than an extracurricular
For college, elite, and higher-level athletes, the stakes can be much bigger than the result of a single game.
Your sport may be connected to your education, scholarship, finances, relationships, daily schedule, future plans, identity, and sense of belonging. You may have spent most of your life building toward an opportunity that now feels like it could disappear if you stop performing.
A bad game is not always just a bad game when roster positions, rankings, scholarships, recruiting, contracts, or your future in the sport may be involved.
The pressure is real. Pretending it should not affect you because you are mentally tough does not make it less real. It just makes you less likely to tell anyone when it does.
College and higher-level athletes may be navigating:
Going from being one of the best athletes in their hometown to being surrounded by people who were also the best
Competing for playing time and roster positions
Scholarship pressure
Recruiting and transfer decisions
Redshirting
Coaching changes
Increased training demands
Performance slumps
Injury and return-to-play anxiety
Public criticism and social-media attention
Balancing training, travel, academics, work, relationships, sleep, recovery, and the occasional attempt to be a normal person
Fear that asking for help will affect how coaches or teammates see them
Losing interest in a sport that has shaped their entire identity
Deciding whether to continue competing
Preparing for life after sports when every previous version of the future included them
We help higher-level athletes manage pressure without minimizing it, strengthen the mental skills that support performance, and build an identity capable of surviving changes in how, where, or whether they compete.
Because being serious about your sport should not require pretending you are unaffected by it. We can help you stay all-in without letting the pressure, expectations, and uncertainty take all of you with them.
The athlete is a person even when that is administratively inconvenient
Sports do not occur in a sealed psychological container.
The athlete with ADHD does not leave their executive-functioning challenges in the parking lot. The athlete with anxiety does not become mysteriously anxiety-free when competition begins. The athlete dealing with depression, grief, trauma, family stress, relationship concerns, school pressure, or identity questions carries those experiences into practice because that is generally how being a whole person works.
Sometimes the presenting concern is performance anxiety and the work stays focused there.
Sometimes a “confidence problem” turns out to be a much larger struggle with worth, belonging, perfectionism, or fear.
Sometimes an athlete who appears unmotivated is burned out.
Sometimes the athlete everyone describes as angry is actually ashamed.
Sometimes the athlete who says they do not care has simply discovered that pretending not to care hurts less than caring this much.
And sometimes the environment is part of the problem.
We are not going to teach an athlete to breathe their way into tolerating humiliation, harassment, discrimination, abuse, or a culture that treats fear as evidence of effective coaching. Emotional regulation is a skill. It is not permission for adults to behave however they want.
At Hive, we can work on the mental side of performance while still seeing the entire athlete. Their brain, body, relationships, identity, history, environment, and the life happening outside of the sport all matter.
Injury is not just a body problem
An injury can take away an athlete’s routine, independence, community, stress relief, role, confidence, and primary source of identity in one deeply rude little package. Everyone else may be focused on healing the body. We help with the grief, anxiety, anger, isolation, and terrifying question underneath it all: What if I come back and I’m not the same?
Everyone may be focused on when the body will be ready to return while the athlete is privately wondering whether they will ever trust it again.
Injury recovery can include:
Fear of reinjury
Anxiety about falling behind
Grief over missed opportunities
Isolation from teammates
Loss of identity
Frustration with the recovery timeline
Pressure to return
Fear of losing a roster position or scholarship
Difficulty trusting the injured body part
Feeling physically cleared but mentally nowhere near ready
Returning to competition and expecting to immediately perform like nothing happened
At Hive, we help athletes work through the grief, frustration, fear of falling behind, and anxiety about returning because “medically cleared” and “mentally ready” are not always the same date.
Support for coaches who are managing an entire collection of nervous systems
Coaching would be substantially easier if athletes were interchangeable units who received feedback identically, responded to the same motivation, learned at the same pace, and arrived at practice free of emotions, families, personalities, stress, learning differences, and opinions.
Unfortunately, teams remain heavily populated by people.
One athlete needs direct feedback. Another hears the same feedback as confirmation that they are a disappointment. One athlete appears calm because they are regulated. Another appears calm because they have left the building psychologically. One athlete needs help slowing down. Another has been playing so carefully that they can barely move.
The athlete who looks uncoachable may be embarrassed.
The athlete who looks lazy may be burned out or afraid to try fully.
The athlete who seems not to listen may have ADHD.
The athlete who becomes angry after mistakes may have no idea how to manage the shame underneath the anger.
Understanding what is underneath behavior does not mean removing accountability.
It means responding to the actual problem instead of repeatedly applying more pressure and wondering why the athlete is getting worse.
We help coaches strengthen communication, give more usable feedback, understand anxiety and ADHD, navigate perfectionism and emotional regulation, address team conflict, recognize mental-health concerns, communicate with parents, and create accountability without making shame the entire player-development model.
We also support the coach.
Because leading a team means carrying strategy, development, performance, playing time, injuries, relationships, expectations, organizational pressure, and the emotional climate of a group of people who may interpret the same sentence in 14 different ways.
Coaches are often expected to manage all of that while remaining endlessly composed, motivational, available, decisive, and somehow unaffected by losing.
No wonder everyone is doing so well. We can help with that.
Team culture is not what you put on the t-shirt
Every team values respect, accountability, hard work, trust, and family when someone is designing the preseason graphics.
The actual culture appears when the team is losing, a player makes a costly mistake, someone loses their starting position, teammates are angry with each other, the coach is frustrated, and the parents have created a side group chat.
That is when you find out whether accountability means learning or humiliation.
Whether “family” includes people who are struggling.
Whether athletes can speak honestly before a problem becomes an explosion.
Whether mistakes are treated as part of development or evidence that somebody has personally betrayed the organization.
Hive works with teams, schools, clubs, coaching staffs, and athletic organizations on the human systems that influence performance:
Communication
Trust
Leadership
Emotional regulation
Team cohesion
Conflict and repair
Confidence under pressure
Recovery after mistakes
Motivation and burnout
Healthy accountability
Supporting neurodivergent athletes
Mental-health awareness
Recognizing when someone needs additional support
We are not interested in delivering one inspirational workshop, taking a group photo, and pretending the culture has been transformed.
Culture is what gets reinforced after the workshop, especially when everyone is tired, stressed, losing, and no longer particularly interested in personal growth.
We help teams build skills they can continue using after we leave.
A brief note for sports parents who would do anything for their kid
We know you care.
You have spent the money, driven the miles, rearranged the calendar, washed the uniform at an hour when no laundry should be happening, packed enough snacks to survive a mild apocalypse, and sat outside in weather that strongly suggested the event should have been canceled.
You are invested because your child is invested.
The problem is that care and anxiety sometimes leave the house wearing the same outfit.
You want to help your athlete improve, so you point out what went wrong. You want them to feel confident, so you explain what they need to do differently. You want to protect them, so you analyze the coach, teammates, playing time, officiating, and injustice of the entire system before everyone has left the parking lot.
Meanwhile, your athlete already knows how the game went.
They participated.
We help parents support confidence, respond after difficult performances, recognize anxiety and burnout, navigate injuries and changing roles, understand when their athlete needs more help, and keep the parent-child relationship from becoming one extremely long conversation about performance.
Your athlete should know that your connection is not something they can lose with a bad game.
That will help them more than anything you can explain on the drive home.
What sports performance support at Hive can look like
Hive provides sports-performance and mental-health support for middle-school, high-school, collegiate, competitive adult, and elite athletes, as well as coaches, parents, teams, schools, clubs, and athletic organizations.
Depending on what is happening and who needs support, services may include:
Individual therapy for athletes
Parent consultation
Coach consultation
Coaching-staff education
Team workshops
Leadership development
Small-group programming
Customized services for teams, schools, clubs, and organizations
Sometimes the struggle stays mostly inside the sport: performance anxiety, overthinking, confidence that disappears the second something goes wrong, difficulty focusing, or one mistake somehow being allowed to ruin the next six plays.
Other times, sports are simply where anxiety, ADHD, depression, trauma, grief, burnout, injury, or identity concerns become impossible to keep neatly contained.
And sometimes it is all connected because the athlete who shows up to compete is the same human being navigating everything else.
You do not need to figure out whether this is a performance issue, a mental-health issue, or an emotionally inconvenient combination of both before reaching out.
Tell us what is happening, what you are noticing, and where things feel stuck. We will help you make sense of it and figure out what kind of support actually fits.
We are not trying to make athletes care less
caring is not the problem.
The problem is when an athlete cannot make a mistake without questioning their worth. When a coach cannot give feedback without triggering shame. When a parent’s support begins to feel like evaluation. When a team values mental toughness but has no language for what to do when someone is actually struggling.
Sports can build confidence, belonging, discipline, connection, leadership, and joy.
They can also make a young person believe their body is a project, rest is weakness, pain is irrelevant, approval must be earned, and their value changes every time the scoreboard does.
Both things can be true.
The answer is not to remove competition, expectations, discomfort, or challenge. Those things can be incredibly valuable.
The answer is to stop pretending athletes, coaches, and families should automatically know how to navigate all of it without support.
Sports performance support in Ann Arbor and online throughout Michigan
Hive Wellness Collective provides sports performance therapy and mental-health support for youth, high-school, collegiate, competitive adult, and elite athletes in Ann Arbor, Dexter, and surrounding Michigan communities. Virtual therapy is also available to athletes located throughout Michigan when clinically appropriate.
We also provide customized consultation, education, and programming for coaches, parents, teams, schools, clubs, and athletic organizations. Support may focus on performance anxiety, mental blocks, ADHD, perfectionism, injury recovery, athletic burnout, team communication, leadership, or any of the other very human things that tend to show up when people care deeply and perform publicly.
Individual therapy may be covered by insurance when services are medically necessary and provided by a Hive clinician who participates with the athlete’s insurance plan. Coach consultation, team workshops, staff education, and organizational programming are typically private-pay services customized around the needs of the people involved.
Not sure whether you need individual therapy, parent support, coach consultation, or help for an entire team? That is completely fine. Tell us what is happening, and we will help you understand the options without requiring you to earn an advanced degree in mental-health services, insurance coverage, and sports programming first.
Frequently
Asked
Questions
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Sports performance therapy addresses the mental and emotional factors that affect how an athlete prepares, competes, recovers, and experiences their sport.
That may include performance anxiety, perfectionism, confidence, attention, emotional regulation, fear of failure, injury recovery, burnout, athletic identity, team dynamics, or difficulty moving forward after mistakes.
In other words, we work with the part nobody can see but everyone definitely notices when it starts running the show.
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Hive supports middle-school, high-school, collegiate, competitive adult, and elite athletes. We also work with parents, coaches, teams, schools, clubs, and athletic organizations.
You do not need to be an elite athlete, have a diagnosis, or be in a full performance crisis. Some people reach out because something is clearly wrong. Others simply recognize that working harder has stopped being the answer.Whether you choose to meet with us virtually or in-person, you can expect the same high-quality care and personalized support from our experienced clinicians.
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Yes. We support college athletes navigating performance pressure, scholarship expectations, competition for playing time, injuries, redshirting, transfers, coaching changes, academic demands, burnout, athletic identity, and the adjustment from being one of the best athletes at home to joining a team full of people who were also the best.
College sports can affect an athlete’s education, finances, relationships, future plans, and sense of self. We take that pressure seriously without treating the athlete like they should be grateful enough to become emotionally invincible.
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Yes! We support middle-school and high-school athletes across sports and competitive levels.
Care is tailored to the athlete’s age, developmental needs, goals, and family situation. Parents may be involved when appropriate, but the work still needs to feel like support for the athlete, not a secret meeting of adults developing additional ways for them to improve.
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No. Athletes do not need to wait until they are having panic attacks, considering quitting, or dreading every competition before receiving support.
Sports performance work can also help athletes strengthen focus, prepare for higher levels of competition, manage growing expectations, improve recovery after mistakes, develop healthier routines, and build mental skills before everything becomes a whole situation.
Preventive support is allowed and encouraged here.
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Yes. Performance anxiety can cause racing thoughts, nausea, muscle tension, hesitation, rushing, freezing, difficulty breathing, loss of focus, or the sudden inability to access skills the athlete performs reliably in practice.
We help athletes understand what happens in their brain and body under pressure and develop practical strategies for responding. The goal is not to eliminate every nerve. It is to help the athlete perform without needing to feel perfectly calm first.
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Yes. ADHD can affect attention, working memory, emotional regulation, organization, transitions, impulse control, processing feedback, and consistency.
We help athletes develop strategies that fit their brain, sport, and environment. Because “focus more” is not a strategy, even when someone says it louder from across the field.
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Yes. An injury can affect far more than physical ability. Athletes may experience grief, isolation, fear of reinjury, loss of confidence, frustration, changes in team connection, concern about losing their position, and uncertainty about who they are when they cannot compete.
We support athletes throughout injury recovery and return to play, including the gap between being medically cleared and actually feeling ready.
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Sometimes the work is primarily focused on performance concerns such as competition anxiety, confidence, focus, or recovering after mistakes.
Other times, sports are where anxiety, ADHD, depression, trauma, grief, burnout, family stress, or identity concerns become especially visible. In those situations, therapy may address both athletic performance and the athlete’s broader mental health.
You do not need to determine which category applies before contacting us. Tell us what is happening, and we will help you figure out what kind of support fits.
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Yes. Hive provides support and consultation for coaches who want to improve communication, give more effective feedback, understand different athlete needs, navigate conflict, recognize mental-health concerns, reduce burnout, and build healthier team environments.
You can hold high standards, address problems directly, and still treat athletes like people. These concepts are allowed to coexist.
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Yes. We create customized sports performance and mental-health workshops for teams, coaching staffs, schools, clubs, and athletic organizations.
Programming may focus on performance anxiety, communication, leadership, recovering after mistakes, healthy accountability, team connection, burnout, injury, neurodivergent athletes, or recognizing when someone needs additional support.
We tailor the content to what is actually happening. We do not arrive with one generic presentation, say “resilience” 14 times, and declare the culture repaired.
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Yes. We support parents who want to help an athlete manage pressure, disappointment, anxiety, injury, burnout, playing-time changes, coach concerns, or a shifting relationship with their sport.
We can also help parents understand what to say after hard performances, when to step in, when to step back, and how to keep the drive home from becoming an unauthorized performance review.
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Therapy is confidential, with limited exceptions required by law or necessary for safety.
For minor athletes, parent involvement depends on the athlete’s age, clinical needs, treatment goals, and applicable legal and ethical requirements. We work to involve parents in ways that support care while still protecting the trust athletes need to speak honestly.
Information is not shared with coaches, teams, schools, or athletic organizations without appropriate authorization, except where disclosure is legally required.
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When clinically appropriate and properly authorized, coordination may be possible. This can be especially helpful during injury recovery, return to play, school transitions, or situations involving multiple members of an athlete’s support team.
Before sharing information, we will discuss what may be communicated, with whom, and why. “Everyone should probably know everything” is not our privacy policy.
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Individual therapy may be covered when services are medically necessary, the athlete’s plan includes behavioral-health benefits, and the clinician participates with that insurance plan. Coverage, deductibles, copays, and provider participation vary.
Team workshops, coach consultation, staff education, and organizational programming are generally customized private-pay services.
Our team is happy to help explain the available options.
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Yes. Virtual individual therapy may be available to athletes located anywhere in Michigan when telehealth is clinically appropriate.
In-person sports performance therapy is available through Hive Wellness Collective in the Ann Arbor and Dexter area.
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The first appointment is an opportunity to talk about what is happening, how it affects sports and life outside of sports, what has already been tried, and what the athlete wants to change.
The provider may ask about performance patterns, mental health, relationships, school or work, injuries, team dynamics, stress, and relevant history. Nobody is expected to arrive with a perfectly organized explanation. “I know I can do this, but something keeps getting in the way” is plenty to begin with.
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Contact Hive and tell us who needs support, what you are noticing, whether you are looking for individual or organizational services, and whether you prefer in-person or virtual care.
You do not need to select the perfect service or correctly diagnose the situation first. We will help determine the next step and connect you with the most appropriate option.
