- Our team
-
-
- Sport Psychology Providers
- Leadership Consultants, Research, Support and Client Relations
Sport Psychology Providers Providers
Leadership Consultants, Research, Support and Client Relations Providers
-
-
Sport Psychologist
A former collegiate basketball player, Dr. Kidd understands the demands of competitive sport from both sides of the relationship—as an athlete and as a psychologist. Her work integrates mental performance, psychological health, identity, relationships, and the realities of the environments athletes compete within.
She works particularly well with:
Her goal is not simply to help athletes perform better. It is to help them develop psychological skills that allow them to compete effectively, recover from adversity, remain connected to themselves, and sustain performance over time.
Helping athletes remain present, decisive, and effective when pressure, emotion, expectations, or adversity increase. Dr. Kidd helps athletes understand their individual responses to pressure and develop practical strategies for returning attention to what the moment requires.
Helping athletes build confidence that is grounded in preparation, evidence, self-trust, and adaptability rather than dependent solely on outcomes. Her work supports athletes in responding productively to mistakes, setbacks, slumps, and uncertainty.
Helping athletes understand and work with emotion rather than treating emotion as something that must be eliminated before performing well. Athletes learn practical strategies for regulating arousal, recovering after difficult moments, and competing effectively while experiencing strong emotions.
Supporting athletes as they navigate role changes, injury, changing expectations, coaching transitions, career decisions, graduation, retirement from sport, and questions about who they are beyond athletic performance.
Working with captains, emerging leaders, teams, coaches, and athletic programs to strengthen communication, accountability, trust, emotional awareness, and the capacity to remain connected and effective during challenge.
Dr. Kidd brings a culturally responsive lens to sport psychology, recognizing that athletes do not experience performance separately from identity, belonging, relationships, culture, or the systems in which they compete.
Her work helps athletes better understand how these factors may influence confidence, psychological safety, stress, communication, mental health, and performance.
CERTIFICATIONS Licensed Psychologist, Minnesota Board of Psychology
Licensed Psychologist, Illinois Board of Psychology
Authority to Practice Interjurisdictional Telepsychology (APIT), PSYPACT Commission
EDUCATION Psy.D. in Counseling Psychology – Springfield College
M.Sc. in Athletic Counseling – Springfield College
B.S. in Psychology (minor in Sport Studies) – Mount Holyoke College
Sport & Performance Psychology, Performance Anxiety, Confidence, Emotional Regulation, Athlete Mental Health, Anxiety & Depression, Perfectionism, Athlete Identity, Life & Career Transition, Trauma-Informed Care, Leadership Development, Team Dynamics, Culturally Responsive Sport Psychology
Dr. Kidd believes sustainable high performance requires more than learning mental skills. Performance is influenced by how athletes understand themselves, respond to emotion, interpret pressure, relate to others, navigate their environments, and recover when things do not go according to plan.
Her approach is collaborative, relational, practical, and culturally responsive.
Rather than asking athletes to become emotionless or endlessly positive, she helps them develop the awareness and psychological flexibility necessary to perform effectively across a range of internal experiences.
Sessions may involve developing strategies related to confidence, attention, emotional regulation, routines, self-talk, pressure management, communication, identity, recovery from mistakes, or navigating difficult sport environments.
Dr. Kidd places significant emphasis on relationship and trust. She believes athletes perform and grow best when they feel understood enough to be honest about what they are experiencing—and challenged enough to develop new ways of responding.
The goal is not perfection.
The goal is developing the capacity to recognize what is happening, respond intentionally, and return to what matters.
Dr. Kidd has worked across professional, NCAA Division I, NCAA Division III, high school, and community sport environments.
Her work includes individual sport psychology services, embedded athletics support, team consultation, mental health care, leadership development, workshops, coach consultation, and organizational programming.
Areas of applied work include:
Dr. Kidd is particularly interested in the places where mental health and performance overlap. She helps athletes understand that struggling psychologically and wanting to perform at an elite level are not competing realities—and that supporting the person often strengthens the performer.
Dr. Kidd provides sport psychology, mental performance, and mental health services across collegiate and professional athletic environments.
Her current work includes serving athletes and teams within:
Chicago Sky
Providing mental performance consultation within a professional women’s basketball environment, supporting athletes with confidence, emotional regulation, competitive readiness, composure, and the psychological demands of professional sport.
University of Minnesota Athletics
Providing individual clinical and sport psychology services to NCAA Division I student-athletes and collaborating within an integrated athletics environment.
Macalester College Athletics
Providing embedded sport psychology and mental performance services, including individual athlete support, team consultation, leadership development, athlete mental health programming, and department-wide performance initiatives.
Across these environments, Dr. Kidd works not only with individual athletes but also with teams, coaches, leaders, athletic trainers, administrators, and multidisciplinary performance staffs.
Kirbi Kidd, Psy.D., is a licensed psychologist and sport psychologist specializing in the intersection of mental performance, athlete mental health, identity, culture, and high-performance environments.
Her relationship with sport began long before becoming a psychologist. A former collegiate basketball player, Kirbi attended Mount Holyoke College, where she studied Psychology and Sport Studies. Her experience as an athlete helped shape her interest in understanding not only why athletes perform the way they do, but also how sport environments influence confidence, identity, belonging, mental health, and personal development.
She later earned a master’s degree in Athletic Counseling and a doctorate in Counseling Psychology from Springfield College.
During her doctoral training, Kirbi worked across clinical and sport settings with children, adolescents, adults, families, and athletes. She completed her APA-accredited psychology internship at Mississippi State University, where her work included counseling and sport psychology services for university students and student-athletes.
Today, her work spans individual clinical care, collegiate athletics, professional sport, team consultation, leadership development, workshops, and organizational mental health and performance programming.
Kirbi’s approach is grounded in the belief that athletes are people before they are performers. She is particularly interested in helping athletes understand the relationship between performance and the broader context of their lives—including identity, culture, relationships, belonging, expectations, and the systems around them.
She also has a strong interest in culturally responsive sport psychology and in helping sport organizations develop greater cultural humility, empathy, and awareness when supporting athletes from diverse backgrounds.
Kirbi values curiosity, humor, relationship, and practical application. She enjoys helping athletes understand why something is happening—not simply giving them another technique to perform.
Outside of her professional work, Kirbi enjoys reading, museums, exploring new cultures, movement and fitness, and a good superhero origin story. She is an avid Marvel fan and remains fascinated by the stories people tell about who they are, what they have survived, and who they are becoming.
Dr. Kidd presents to athletes, coaches, clinicians, athletic departments, professional organizations, and interdisciplinary audiences on topics at the intersection of sport psychology, mental health, leadership, culture, and performance.
Areas of speaking and consultation include:
Her work often explores a central question:
How do we help athletes perform at a high level without asking them to disconnect from the very human experiences that shape how they perform?
For speaking inquiries, please contact Premier Sport Psychology.
Dr. Kidd may be a strong fit if you're looking to:
