Today’s Mental Health Issues and Today's Student Athletes: Opportunities, Roles and Responsibi
“Coach” Dr. Rick McGuire Dr. Rick McGuire is the Director of the Missouri Institute for Positive Coaching. He recently retired as the Director of Sport Psychology for Intercollegiate Athletics at the University of Missouri, and Graduate Professor of Sport Psychology in the Department of Educational, School and Counseling Psychology. For 27 years (1983-2010) he was Missouri's Head Track and Field Coach. Under McGuire's tutelage, Missouri athletes earned 143 All American recognitions, 110 conference champions, 29 USA National Team members, 7 NCAA Champions, 3 collegiate records, and 5 Olympians, with two winning Olympic Silver Medals. He is the founder and was the chairman for 27 years of the USA Track and Field Sport Psychology program and served on the staff for 11 USATF National Teams, including the 1992 and 1996 Olympic Games in Barcelona and Atlanta. Rick also served as a member of the NCAA Track and Field Committee and was President of the NCAA Division 1 Track and Field Coaches Association. In 2014 Rick was awarded the George Dales award for lifetime service, achievement, and contribution to the coaching profession. In 2016, Rick was inducted into the University of Missouri’s Intercollegiate Athletics Hall of Fame. As a professor (35 years), Rick established Missouri’s graduate masters and doctoral programs in Sport Psychology, along with providing a popular undergraduate Sport Psychology class. He has been recognized with the Missouri Students Association Award for Outstanding Teaching, the College of Education’s Pillar of Excellence Award for receiving the Highflyers Awards for Teaching Excellence for 15 consecutive years and was honored with the University of Missouri Alumni Association’s prestigious Faculty-Alumni Award. Rick has been a significant contributor to the cause of coaches’ education, has written extensively, and is a prominent speaker at coaches’ organizations meetings, clinics, and seminars. He has established the “Missouri Institute for Positive Coaching” to support, study, research, teach, promote and in all ways encourage the importance and the impact of highly effective Positive Coaching. Rick is a founding member of the Association for Applied Sport Psychology (AASP), was in the initial class of AASP Certified Consultants, and has been honored with the recognition of AASP Fellow, and with the 2019 AASP Distinguished Practice Award. He is a long-standing member of the American Psychological Association (APA-Division 47) and received the Bruce Ogilvie Award for Distinguished Practitioner. For over 30 years he has been a member of the United States Olympic Committee’s Sport Psychology Registry. He received his doctorate in 1983 from the University of Virginia, where he studied under Bob Rotella, world renown golf sport psychology consultant. Rick and his wife Jane now make their home in the San Francisco area, near their two adult children, Wendy, and Mick, and their three grandchildren.
