Robert Price, CEO at Elite Minds LLC, has worked with hundreds of athletes in a variety of sports to set goals, problem solve and create lifelong success strategies.
Price began working with college golfer Abigail Cheney early in her junior golf and high school golf career at South Effingham High School. Always a good athlete, Cheney got serious about golf in 8th grade and quickly made progress. But she battled her emotions on the golf course, and her responses affected her performance.
“We decided what she should expect to shoot in tournament golf and got her to understand that reality,” Price said. “She’s a competitive young lady but she needed to realize what it takes to put together competitive rounds. We started focusing on milestone breakers and getting Abigail to focus on smaller goals without worrying about the outcome of the score.”
The result of working within Price’s Elite Minds program is Cheney is now entering her sophomore year of college golf at Shorter University in Rome, Ga. In 21 rounds as a freshman, Cheney’s stroke average was 77.48 and she recorded four top 10 finishes in nine tournaments.
“The mental game in golf is one of the most important things because if you can’t keep your emotions together, it doesn’t matter how good you are,” Cheney said. “Working with (Price) definitely kept me on the right track. It helped with finding the positives during a round of a golf, and after a few months even my parents could tell a difference about how I would react on the golf course.”
Not only did Price work with Cheney to develop on-course strategies during competition, they worked on building her confidence. During her last two years of high school, Cheney firmly believed in her abilities, and Price helped her begin contacting college golf coaches to continue her competitive golf career.
“Confidence was a big thing for me,” said Cheney, who chose to play at Shorter over West Georgia University and Coastal Georgia College. “When you don’t have confidence, it affects everything. Trying to keep that is a big thing, and (Price) and I worked a lot on ways to keep your confidence even when you’re not doing great.”
Price, who played football at the University of Pittsburgh and holds Masters degrees from both the University of Maryland and Johns Hopkins University, founded Elite Minds in 2000 and has since worked with a wide range of athletes that includes collegiate and professional kickers, amateur tennis players, golfers of all levels, basketball players, gymnasts, hockey players, lacrosse players, soccer players, ice skaters, field hockey players and track and field athletes.
Elite Minds is a mental performance coaching and consulting service that works with athletes to help them reach and exceed their potential on and off the field. Through proven mental skill techniques, athletes are led to more consistent performances even in the face of adversity.
“(Cheney) is building toward being the number one player on the Shorter golf team,” Price said. “She’s still learning to compete at the college level, but I told her she belonged and she can make it and do it. We focused on being the total package, and Shorter was a program that believed they could take a very talented, unfinished product and get her to perform really well. And that’s what has happened.”
Price and Cheney still communicate regularly, and being able to have access to her mental coach continues to be an important resource for her.
“Going from the top of the class to a freshman, you’re starting to look up to people when it comes to golf,” Cheney said. “You’re expected to live up to the standards that you’re expected to play to. So, I talk to (Price) whenever I feel like I need to, and just being connected to mental coach and knowing he’s there if I need him is very helpful.”
Price has received training in Mindfulness Meditation at the University of Miami under Dr. Amishi Jha and achieved a Level III Master Resilience Trainer from the University of Pennsylvania. He is also a certified therapist using Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) certified by EMDRIA and a licensed clinical professional counselor in the state of Maryland and Georgia.
Visit Elite Minds LLC to learn more about Elite Minds LLC and Robert Price or schedule a consultation.
