• Welcome to The Coaching Zone Initiative

Dr. Wally Bzdell

Dr. Wally Bzdell is a sport psychologist who specializes in providing comprehensive sport psychology services and high-performance mindset training for teams, coaches, and individual athletes. He teaches principles and skills that help individuals organize their inner experiences and mental skills to build capacity to perform well in consequential moments.

His approach is relationship based and process focused. His model and approach are grounded in the understanding that we can train our minds just like we can train our bodies and our crafts; they are the only three things we can train. Training your mind, like training your body and skills, takes hard work. There are no short-cuts or hacks. There are principles and skills that when learned and applied, help people fully engage and compete consistently near their potentials.

Wally works with athletes and coaches at the high school, prep school, collegiate and professional ranks, and his process has a proven success rate. His clients include 2014 and 2015 NCAA Division I Men’s Ice Hockey National Champions Union College and Providence College (back-to-back championships). Since 2010, the Division I programs that he’s worked with have reached four Final Fours, four regional championships, made eleven NCAA Tournament appearances, won seven regular season championships, captured five league tournament titles, and 10 league semi-finals/finals in hockey alone.

He has worked the NCAA Division 1 and Division 3 teams that have competed in the NCAA tournament in men’s basketball, women’s basketball, men’s lacrosse, women’s volleyball, baseball, and men’s soccer. Most recently, he was part of the Rutgers Men’s Lacrosse team that played in the elite 8 of the 2021 NCAA tournament.

Additionally, Wally consults with NHL, AHL, ECHL, and PLL athletes as well as professional cyclists.

He continues to coach at the high school level (hockey).