PORTLAND, Oregon (AP) – Before every game begins, Portland wood sits together in the locker room, closing her eyes and collectively taking deep breaths before slowly exhaling.
Lacey Henderson quietly tells the player to ground himself, feeling the floor under his feet.
“Then I drop something to meditate. Very recently I’ve said something to make sure you’re really proud of where you were and that you have faith in the place you’re going,” she said. “I close it the same every time. It’s a few breaths and I always say, ‘I trust myself. I trust the team.’ ”
It’s three minutes of Zen before Portland coach Phil Neville gave a pre-game lecture.
The Timbers are probably the only major league soccer team to practice meditation as a group before every game. This is a practice featured by Henderson, who joined the Timbers this season as the club’s mental performance coach.
She stands out for many reasons: for her endless energy, her bright pink tennis shoes, and her glittering artificial legs.
When she was nine years old, Henderson developed a rare tumor in the soft tissue of her right knee. After the chemotherapy failed, doctors saved their life by amputating their legs just above their knees.
She became a University of Denver cheerleader and challenged her father, TJ Henderson, a former Paul Vaulter at Baylor, to try his sport. So she did that.
A natural athlete, Henderson competed in the 2016 Paralympic Games in Brazil in a long jump and a 100-meter dash. In Brazil, she finished in eighth place in a long jump. Henderson is also a long jump American record holder and a Paul Vault world record holder. This is not a Paralympic sport.
She joked that being a Paralympian didn’t pay the bill accurately, so she went back to school to earn a master’s degree in sports and performance psychology.
The wood was called while she worked for NBC at the Paris Palim Games last year. For Coach Neville, adding Henderson to the staff was personal because he had sought help when he was a young player.
“Around 25 years ago, when I was just starting my career, going to a sports psychologist was a taboo and it was seen as a weakness,” Neville said. “But I was struggling with confidence and anxiety. I deal with the difficulties in my life, like pressure, expectations. These don’t bother the young people trying to play for Manchester United.
Many teams have mental performance coaches, but Henderson sees his role as more holistic. She does not ask players to visualize goals for scores, win games, or lift trophies. Professional athletes already know how to do that.
Instead, it is often what players deal with on the field and can affect what they are doing.
“A lot of my job, which I also work on from a professional sports experience, is because “how do you deal with the drama of negotiating contracts, social media, watching things at home?” Life happens no matter where you are in the sport,” she said. “We are thinking, “I’m thinking about how I’m keeping this life in the most sustainable way possible.”
Henderson’s role was “not really tapped yet,” winger Ariel Lassiter said.
“She brings a lot of mindfulness and awareness of herself not only in our environment, but in our present moments, which I think is very important,” Lassiter said. “We have a little mindfulness session before a match or a team meeting. As the game plays with the mind, I think it brings everyone individually into the right mental space. The body follows the mind.”
Unfamiliar with the job means that Henderson has to convince some players that addressing mental health is not only an excellent athlete, but an integral aspect of being a person as a whole. For some, there is still a stigma.
Henderson is an athlete herself and helps her overcome adversity.
“I have something very visible. One, I’ve been through several things. Two, I’m fine with it and I can chat about it. “The social determinants of health that show the longest form of quality of life, and the people who live the longest are people who have really close communities and are dependent on each other. And I try to use obstacles like that.”
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