Meet Erin Harkey, LMSW — Former D1 Athlete, Licensed Therapist
Erin Harkey brings something most sport performance counselors can’t: she has lived the experience she treats. As a former Division I athlete, Erin knows what it’s like to perform under pressure, to face a slump you can’t explain, to carry the weight of a team’s expectations, and to wonder whether the person you are off the field is as capable as the one you are on it.
That firsthand perspective shapes everything about how she works with athletes. She doesn’t need it explained. She’s been there.
As a Licensed Master Social Worker with specialized training in sport performance counseling, Erin brings clinical rigor to what many coaches and programs treat as a soft skill. The mental game is trainable. It responds to the right kind of work. And the athletes who invest in it consistently outperform those who don’t.
Erin works with athletes in person at ADAPT Network’s Columbus, GA office and via telehealth — which means the work doesn’t have to stop during travel, off-season relocations, or college transitions.
What Sport Performance Counseling Addresses
Performance Anxiety
Pre-game nerves that go beyond normal excitement. Fear of failure that tightens your mechanics. The inability to perform in games the way you perform in practice. Choking under pressure despite knowing exactly what to do.
Performance anxiety is one of the most common and most treatable challenges athletes face — and one of the most frequently left unaddressed. Erin works with athletes to understand the anxiety response, interrupt it in real time, and build the mental routines that allow them to compete from a place of confidence rather than fear.
Mental Blocks and Slumps
The yips. A throwing motion that inexplicably falls apart. A hitter who can’t find the ball. A gymnast who loses a skill she’s done a thousand times. Mental blocks are real, they have clinical explanations, and they respond to treatment.
Slumps — extended periods of underperformance that resist every technical fix — are almost always partly a mental phenomenon. Erin helps athletes identify what’s driving the block or the slump and build a concrete path back to consistent performance.
Burnout and Motivation
When the sport you’ve loved your whole life starts to feel like a grind. When you’re going through the motions. When practice feels like obligation and competition feels like pressure rather than opportunity.
Burnout is real and it’s not a character flaw. It often signals that something important has gotten out of alignment — between the athlete’s values and their current experience, between the demands placed on them and the recovery they’re allowed. Erin helps athletes reconnect with why they play — and rebuild the internal motivation that external pressure can erode.
Injury Recovery
The mental side of injury is rarely talked about and almost never treated. Fear of re-injury. Loss of identity when you can’t train. Grief over a season lost, a scholarship threatened, or a career interrupted. The anxiety of returning to full performance.
Erin works with injured athletes through the psychological dimensions of recovery — helping them stay mentally engaged during physical rehabilitation and approach return-to-play with confidence rather than fear.
Team and Coach Dynamics
Conflict with a coach. Feeling unseen, underutilized, or unfairly treated. Team chemistry breakdowns. The weight of a leadership role and the pressure of being relied on by teammates.
The relational environment of sport is one of the most psychologically complex any young person navigates. Erin helps athletes develop the communication skills, emotional regulation, and self-awareness to manage these dynamics without letting them undermine performance or wellbeing.
Identity and Life Transitions
Who are you beyond the sport? For many athletes — especially those who have competed since childhood — this is one of the hardest questions they’ll ever face. Retirement from sport, whether chosen or forced by injury, can feel like a loss of self.
Erin helps athletes build an identity that is larger than their sport — so that transitions, when they come, don’t feel like endings.
Who Erin Works With
Athletes
Erin works with athletes at every level of competition:
- High school athletes (ages 15+) navigating the pressure of recruitment, performance, and identity
- College athletes managing the jump in competition level, time demands, and mental load
- Professional and post-collegiate athletes seeking a competitive edge or navigating a difficult stretch
- Club and travel sport athletes dealing with early specialization pressure and burnout
- Military athletes and service members at Fort Moore managing performance under high-stakes physical and mental demands
Parents of Athletes
The parent’s role in an athlete’s mental performance is real and often underexplored. Erin works with parents who are:
- Trying to support their athlete without inadvertently adding pressure
- Watching their child struggle mentally and not knowing how to help
- Navigating their own emotional investment in their child’s athletic career
- Seeking guidance on how to communicate with their athlete about mental performance
Coaches
Erin also consults with coaches seeking support for individual athletes on their roster — particularly those dealing with performance anxiety, mental blocks, or behavioral and emotional challenges affecting the team. Contact Erin directly to discuss consultation options.
LENS Neurofeedback for Athletic Performance
For athletes looking to address performance anxiety and focus challenges at the neurological level — or for those who haven’t gotten the results they’re looking for from talk therapy alone — LENS Neurofeedback is available at ADAPT Network.
LENS uses gentle, non-invasive signals to help the brain recognize and shift its own patterns. For athletes, this can mean reduced baseline anxiety, improved focus under pressure, faster recovery from emotional activation during competition, and greater access to the calm, focused state that peak performance requires.
ADAPT Network has two Ochs Labs-certified LENS providers — Christy Hubbard, MS, NCC, LPC and Katie Krieg, LCSW. Many athletes work with Erin on the mental performance side and add LENS sessions with Christy or Katie to address the nervous system dimension. The two approaches work together in a way that is genuinely greater than either alone.