Meet Fernanda,
the mind behind
Mindgames Athletics.
— The founder
Her story does not start in an office. It starts on the field and in the fire, long before she had the letters after her name to explain what she was already living.
Fernanda's story begins on the field
She's been playing sports since the age of five, and by seven she was competing year round in soccer and softball. Her life revolved around the game: school, practice, quick dinners, homework, repeat. She knew drive, effort, and discipline like second nature.
But she also knew emotional chaos. Fernanda was an expert at intensity, the kind that fueled her competitiveness but often consumed her. Her emotions controlled her game. One minute she was unstoppable, the next, self destructive. Coaches saw her talent, but they also saw her volatility. Then one day, a college coach said something that would change everything.
—Where it started
"You're great, but programs won't want this behavior."
What a college coach told FERNANDA, thIS WAS THE moment that changed everything
— The turning point
Those words became the whole second half of her career.
Fernanda went on to play collegiate sports and earn a master's degree in counseling psychology, eventually becoming a licensed marriage and family therapist. For nearly two decades she worked on the front lines of mental health: supervising crisis response teams, training first responders, and speaking on national and international stages about emotional wellness and resilience.
But even with all her professional success, something was missing. She wanted to go back to where it all started, the field, the mat, the court, to help the athletes who were just like her: driven, talented, and emotionally dysregulated.
24
Years of clinical experience
2
Decades on the front lines of mental health
LMFT
Licensed marriage & family therapist
1
Athlete turned clinician who's lived it
The mission lived in her for years before the business did.
For years, this was the work Fernanda did quietly, on nights and weekends, in between everything else. She'd put in twelve hour days at her job, come home, and still find herself thinking about the athletes out there just like she used to be: talented enough to go far, and one bad moment away from believing they couldn't.
This wasn't a side idea. It was the dream she kept circling back to, the one she couldn't put down no matter how full her plate already was.
So she finally took the leap. Mindgames Athletics is what happens when twenty four years of clinical training and a lifetime on the field stop living in two separate lanes, and become one mission: to help athletes, their parents, and their coaches learn the psychological skill sets that don't just help them win the game, but help them win the game of life.
— THE LEAP
— THE MISSION
Through Mindgames, Fernanda merges twenty four years of clinical expertise with a lifetime of athletic experience to empower athletes, parents, and coaches to understand the mental side of performance.
