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PORTLAND, Ore. — Before she became the Portland Timbers’ first mental performance coach, Lacey Henderson was a professional track-and-field athlete, competing in the 2016 Paralympic Games in Rio de Janeiro and setting the U.S. record in the long jump and the world record in the pole vault.
Henderson is also a cancer survivor and an amputee. At the age of 9, she was diagnosed with Synovial Sarcoma, a type of soft-tissue cancer, that ended with the loss of her right leg. Not only did Henderson become an 11-time U.S. national champion, she grew into an advocate for athletes — and more broadly people — living with disabilities.
In 2024, Henderson retired from professional athletics, and later that year, co-hosted NBC’s coverage of the Paralympic Games from Paris. A Certified Mental Performance Consultant, she put her business working one-on-one with athletes on hold to join the Portland Timbers in December.
KGW sat down with Henderson to talk about her new role on the team, the importance of emotional resilience and her efforts to break the stigma around mental health in elite sports. The excerpts below have been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.
What does a mental health performance coach do?
I am a non-clinical sports psychology professional, and essentially the work is working on performance on the mental side — emotional regulation, taking care of yourself from the inside out. There’s some foundational work that we’re started to lay now.
I’m big into mindfulness — paying attention to the present moment without judgment. A lot of that is because the only time you can really influence or change things is in the moment that you’re in now, and that’s really important in high performance.
We have a mindfulness practice we do before matches, and I’m finding ways to kind of start dripping it into everyday practices because as an athlete — as people in general but as an athlete specifically — the everyday work is what’s important. It’s what compounds over time.
The Timbers specifically have made an intentional effort of bringing in mental performance, that it’s just as important as strength conditioning, just as important as nutrition. One, it’s a message to the athletes that it’s something they should take seriously for themselves. Two, it’s a message I think for the league, for greater sports in general, that this needs to be prioritized.
What kind of response have you gotten from players so far?
It’s been well received. I think my expectation was low because it’s new, it’s unknown. And I think especially in men’s sports and me being a woman and me being a visibly disabled woman, they’re not quite sure what they’re going to do with me.
It’s just been a lot of being a consistent presence, being consistent in my messaging, demonstrating the behavior I want, doing the breath work, being consistent with it even if it feels uncomfortable.
How does working in a heavily male team environment impact your work?
There’s a different level of what I like to call mental health literacy, and what I realized with men — both from the Northern and Southern hemisphere — is that I don’t think there is enough rearing from children to adults where men are speaking about the range of emotions that they can experience.
I think as far as athletes are concerned, we can experience anger, rage, and stress. So, there’s limited language around the emotional experience for men. We need to level-set on who we are right now, what level we’re at right now, and slowly start creating a language around that.
Do you think there’s stigma around mental health when it comes to sports?
Absolutely there’s stigma around mental health, especially in sports. You see a lot of people view mental health as like, if you have a problem then you go fix it. There’s not a lot of proactive care. I think mental health in particular gets so intertwined with this idea of mental illness, and we stigmatize illness, we stigmatize disability, we stigmatize any sort of chronic issue or condition.
The conversation around mental health has been reactive because we’ve seen athletes who have taken their own lives, who have had really bad experiences, especially post-career, and we didn’t protect them and we didn’t take care of them. I think when we can kind of insulate and create really healthy, really strong people, body and mind, there’s so much more that can come from that.
Talk to me about how why mental well-being is important when it comes to sports?
The potential for high performance happens when you are doing well mentally. We’re not just a head floating above a body, right? They need to be connected. What’s unique about sports specifically is like, you put your body on the line every day for a career that’s typically a pretty short window. And you feel like an island a lot of times.
We talk about mindfulness, working on this acceptance part, the acceptance with no judgment, and that’s really hard in sports because sports is seemingly simple, right? You win or you lose.
I’m trying to allow the moments where an athlete can just accept where they are, and building this level of acceptance without judgment. Because when we kind of reinforce that, we make faster and smarter decisions on the field, we make better decisions in our families.
Is what you do just about performance on the pitch?
No, I don’t think this is just about performance. This is about taking care of people. When you see an athlete do something that you know we’ve been working on together, there is no greater feeling. If I could bottle that up and sell that, I’d be a gazillionaire.
There’s no greater wish that I have for some of my guys that are dads to be able to leave training or leave a match and just be the best dad — to feel really, really good when they’re with their families, feel like they can be present.
It is so much more than just performance. Performance is a byproduct of well-being.
What do you do to take care of your own mental health?
I’m still working with a sports psychologist. I feel responsible for making sure that I’m taking care of my mental health. I do a lot of journaling. I have a meditation accountability buddy, so we text each other every time we get our morning meditations done. Yoga, because there’s like a marriage that happens between your mind and your body in yoga, and that is not very different from sports psychology.
You’ve written on your Instagram page that it’s important for you to be a “visibly public disabled woman in mainstream men’s professional sports.” Why?
I have wrestled with these conversations we see in social media and regular media about representation. And I think what I’ve seen, especially disabled people, especially women, women of color, it’s almost like we get stuck, like we’ve plateaued in certain areas.
I worked at the Paris Paralympics. We’re starting now to see representation, but almost still within the marginalized silo, so it was like disabled people representing themselves. I’m ready to move forward. I think we need to see people that have experienced life in the margins in mainstream areas. I think that’s really what true representation is, is seeing people who are different in important roles.
As a Paralympian, even covering the Paralympics, it started to dawn on me that that we were still being kind of pushed into these corners, and for me, being a disabled woman in a professional men’s sport feels really expansive.
How do you think being a woman with a disability, being an amputee, a cancer survivor, impacts how the team views you?
I think it is a very visual and easy way to see that I’ve had a complex life. I think that’s something that everybody shares. Mine’s just more visible.
This series is called “Talk About It.” Why is it important to talk about it?
I think it’s important to talk about it, because it’s better out than in. If you can name it, you can tame it. And I think that’s the work, is just talking.
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You can learn more about the role mental health and wellness play in athletics at Cleveland Clinic and McLean Hospital (MA). The International Olympic Committee (IOC) also has a toolkit for elite athlete mental health.
Henderson also suggests athlete mental health advocacy organization The Hidden Opponent, and for young people, including those in college, the non-profit Active Minds.
If you’re struggling with your mental health or know someone who is, help is available 24/7 by calling or texting the National Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988. More local resources are also available at KGW.com/Talk