David Udelf, Psy.D.

Sport and Performance Psychology Services

Individual Services

Dr. Udelf serves athletes and other performers seeking to be at their competitive best. Clients served include: professional, amateur, and youth-level athletes and performers representing a wide-range of ages, sports, disciplines, and abilities. Individual work focuses on cultivating an approach to the client’s sport/performance endeavor that enables them to consistently be at their best. Dr. Udelf assists clients with the management of distracting emotions, thoughts/mind-chatter, and resultant behavioral responses that can interfere with optimal performance. He also helps them improve their competition and training focus, training regimen, leadership skills, dealings with difficult teammates, coaches, and parents, and a variety of other concerns. Dr. Udelf is an active referral source for an Employee Assistance Program that serves the National Hockey League (NHL) and Major League Baseball (MLB).

Team and Organizational Consultation

Dr. Udelf consults with schools, universities, athletic departments, and youth programs and teams. Services and programming for performers, parents, coaches, teachers, and administrators is provided. Dr. Udelf has served as consulting sport psychologist for Notre Dame Cathedral Latin School (NDCL) since 1996 and contributed to the school’s 2001 and 2009 state (Ohio) baseball championships. Dr. Udelf has worked with NDCL soccer (men’s and women’s), men’s basketball, and football teams. He consults with Golden Spikes and Force youth baseball training programs. He consulted with the St. Ignatius baseball team for several years, contributing to that school’s 2013 state (Ohio) championship final-four effort, and the Cleveland State University baseball team from 1997-2001. He has also provided onsite training for youth participants of the Miami (Ohio) University Summer Hockey School.

Team and organizational services and training offered by Dr. Udelf for athletes and performers include:

• Goal-setting
• Resiliency and mental toughness
• Leadership/followership skills
• Focusing techniques
• Effective practice and training approach
• Coach-a-bility.

Programming focused on effective youth sports coaching and parenting is available. Trained by the American Sport Education Program (ASEP), and the National Federation Interscholastic Education Program (NFICEP), Dr. Udelf offers the following educational programs:

• Responsible sports parenting
• Child development and age-appropriate approaches
• Establishing and maintaining effective discipline for youth athletes
• Dealing with difficult parents
• How kids learn: Effective teaching and coaching technique

Target audiences for the above include: Parents, teachers, coaches, program administrators, athletes, and involved others.

Scholarly Contribution

Actively engaged with the Association for Applied Sport Psychology (AASP), Sports Psychology’s foremost professional association, Dr. Udelf is a scholarly contributor to the organization, and has conducted training workshops for professionals at annual AASP conferences in Salt Lake City, Utah, (2009); Providence, Rhode Island, (2010); New Orleans, Louisiana (2013); and Phoenix, Arizona (2016). His AASP audiences include international contingents of Olympic athletes, sports psychologists, coaches, and other sports professionals. Dr. Udelf presented a sport/performance-related training workshop for professionals at the Association for Contextual Behavioral Science (ACBS) World Conference in Montreal, QC, Canada (2018).

Coaching and Sports Administrative Experience

Baseball is a lifetime passion for Dr. Udelf, playing the game for over 40 years, and coaching since 1969 at all levels of competition from t-ball thru Division I collegiate ball. His teams won 16-and-under state (Ohio) summer championships in 1997, 1998, and 1999. Dr. Udelf has coached with summer youth programs in Shaker Heights, OH; Denver, CO; Memphis, TN; and San Juan, PR. He offers individual and team baseball skill instruction to young people, ages 5 and up.

Previously, Dr. Udelf directed the Shaker Heights Youth Hockey organization, and established and directed the Shaker Heights Youth Baseball travel program. He also founded Shaker (Heights) Sports Camp for middle school children and served as the camp director for five years.