Stephanie Fryer, Ed.D., says whole health care is the ‘undercurrent of my whole experience.’
Having graduated from UWS in 2023, Stephanie Fryer, Ed.D., found a new role in February when USRowing hired her to be its new learning and development associate. Now Dr. Fryer is living the vision she saw when she applied to UWS: innovating how coaches work with athletes by applying a whole-health philosophy to coaching.
Despite learning remotely through one of UWS’ online programs, Dr. Fryer didn’t hesitate to network in physical space. After meeting and talking with UWS professors at the annual Association for Applied Sport Psychology (AASP) conference, she changed course—literally. Having started in the Sport and Performance Psychology Ed.D. program, she decided after the conference that the Ed.D. in Sport and Performance Psychology with Clinical Mental Health Counseling (CMHC) Specialization was a better fit.
Dr. Fryer says she pivoted to this program “partially because it opens up so many doors professionally,” but also due to the inspiration of UWS professor Michelle Rose, Ph.D., director and clinical coordinator of CMHC.
“I was so impressed with Dr. Rose’s teaching and leadership,” Dr. Fryer says. “Dr. Rose had such a clear vision. You feel confident and supported with a leader like that.”
Given her passion for coaching, it’s no surprise Dr. Fryer has an extensive background as an athlete. She spent 16 years as a gymnast. Then, in college, she took up pole vaulting, a sport she pursued for six years after college until an injury ended that part of her career. A bachelor’s degree in psychology and a master’s degree in sports science paved the way for her interest in coaching education.
Just as whole health in medicine means treating a patient as a whole person instead of a collection of body parts or a suite of symptoms, Dr. Fryer says coaching education is about teaching coaches how to treat athletes as people, not just vessels of athletic ability.
“Future teachers learn how to teach, but athletes who become coaches aren’t taught how to coach,” Dr. Fryer says. “So they teach rules and techniques, and they often focus only on the goals, the outcomes. As a result, athletes are often treated as expendable, to be replaced when they no longer perform. This mindset damages not only athletes’ performance but their mental health.”
It was already Dr. Fryer’s goal when she started at UWS to change coach development. She says, “Throughout my experience, I was purposeful in talking to my professors, using my role as a student to reach out to researchers and professionals in the field about coach education. It was an undercurrent of my whole experience.”
In her new role with the Learning & Development department at USRowing, which houses coaching education and development, Dr. Fryer is helping to change the paradigm.
For example, Dr. Fryer worked on USRowing’s newly retooled Level 1 certification for rowing coaches. “I got to help revamp it and make sure it doesn’t just teach coaches the technical aspects of the sport but also how to be good humans, how to coach the human and not just the athlete,” she says.
For now, Dr. Fryer is happy to be working in the field, pursuing her passion. “I’m on the ground doing a training camp for some of our U19 athletes,” she says, referring to trainees under 19 years old. “I’m doing mental performance with them several times a week. I get to work with the coaches as well, because we’re also developing our coaches through this camp process. I’m excited to get to do that more in the future and work more directly with coaches and athletes.”