MSU’s volleyball head coach Kristen Kelsay has psychology in her blood.
Kelsay grew up with a clinical-psychologist dad and an AP psychology teaching mom, only to realize that psychology was her passion too. Kelsay graduated from Michigan State University in 2014 through the Honors College with a degree in psychology. As a student athlete, Kelsay was a team captain, Academic All-American, Big Ten distinguished scholar, president of the Student Athlete Advisory Council, among other accolades.
Now, Kelsay draws on a lifelong foundation of psychology and education to lead a Big Ten volleyball program that prioritizes relationships, safety and transformational development in her student athletes.
Here, she reflects on her winding path to becoming a psychology major, how interweaving her experience as a team captain into her classes enhanced her education experience, how she uses psychology every day in her job to understand and motivate her players and more.
Why did you pick psychology as your major?
Psychology was always the choice that was meant for me, but I didn't know it at first. I thought I might want to be a doctor, but I almost fainted when I took first aid training. I tried business and struggled in my classes. When I zoom out, I see that psychology was the plan for me. I was raised in a family where psychology and education were the foundation. My dad is a clinical psychologist, and my mom taught Intro to Psych and AP Psych my whole life, so psychology was always in the background. I knew who Freud was when I was learning to walk. Psychology has always been what I’m passionate about.
So much of psychology is understanding people. That’s what I loved when I was a setter — I always felt like I had to know my people better than any other position. I had to know how to talk to the different attackers so I could get what I needed. To be able to study psychology and put it into action as an athlete was so helpful.
Can you talk about your time as a student athlete?
I squeezed out everything from my college experience because I was passionate about having a holistic experience. I wanted to be the best volleyball player I could be, but I always knew that I was more than just an athlete.
One thing I love about Michigan State is how interwoven athletics is to the university. My professors valued my experience as a student athlete and encouraged me to use that in my studies. To me, that is what helped me have a transformational experience. I got to use my degree in my sport and then I used my sport to learn more about my degree.
Professor Joe Cesario’s class was one of my favorites because it helped me intertwine my experience as a team caption with being a student. As a senior, I got to do projects that were based on my experience as a team captain-- like manipulating behavior and motivating people. Dr. Pleskac also worked with me on my thesis for the Honors College which focused on the hot hand in volleyball.
How did your PSY background affect you as a student athlete and team captain?
I’m very lucky to have grown up with the parents I have because their backgrounds in psychology and in education allowed me to see a lot of different experiences and perspectives. My dad taught me to put on different hats — athlete, coach, dad, clinical psychologist — so I learned to fill different roles. As a team captain, I often needed to be the connector between the coaches and my teammates, so I needed to be a trusted resource. Because I had learned to value different opinions and perspectives growing up, I was often able to mediate those different dynamics.
When I looked at majoring in psychology, I started taking classes like cognitive psychology and behavioral psychology and I loved it. I went home and opened my dad's DSM and was fascinated. This interest in psychology helped me be a better team captain then, and it gave me tools that I still use every day as a coach.
At what point did you start thinking about coaching in your future?
It never occurred to me to think about coaching, which is funny looking back now. I loved school so I was planning on going to grad school. After graduation, I started working at MSU’s Academic Center. Two months into the job, Coach Cathy George brought me into her office and shut the door. She starts asking me if I’m where I want to be and if I'm fulfilled with my job. She was trying to be respectful of my life plan, but she had bigger plans for me. By the end of the conversation, she told me that she’d like to hire me as an assistant. So, there I was, barely 22 years old, and a full-time assistant at a Big Ten school.
I am so grateful that I had people in my life who saw my potential before I saw it myself. Almost 10 years to the day she first hired me, I walk into my office as head coach at Michigan State. I am so grateful that Cathy saw something in me, because I wouldn’t be here without her.
How important is mentorship in your coaching?
I see mentorship and relationships as the most important part of my job. As head coach, I have to hold my athletes accountable, but it is important that they trust me. They know there may be a conversation later, but they have a direct line to me at all times if they need help. Being a first-year head coach, trust was the most important thing to establish. I needed them to know that even though I might not have recruited them, my commitment to them is unconditional. We’re in it together.
We often talk about transactional versus transformational experiences. College athletics continues to move more towards the transactional side with the revenue sharing. It's great in some ways, but I never want my athletes’ experiences to be just transactional. I had a transformational experience at Michigan State, and that's what I want for them, and that's what I'm committed to doing for them. It's so important to me that they know that I value who they are, not just what they can do.
How do you manage team dynamics and conflict?
We do a lot of self-awareness surveys to help them figure themselves out. It’s so fun watching them go from being freshmen who have no idea who they are outside of their family structure to really finding out who they are and what their values are. It’s such a privilege for me to be the mentor and leader to guide them through these years. I don’t take that for granted.
Your college experience is some of the most formative times of your life. As a coach, part of my job is to challenge them to be better people and to hold them accountable when they don’t live our values. But we have a saying that is my favorite quote: "Truth without love is harsh, but love without truth is hollow." It holds me to the standard of loving them and being truthful. That means giving hard feedback from a place of care and earning their trust so they can bring anything to me.
One of our team values is courageous conflict. Most people don't like conflict, so we have to be courageous in that. It may be easier to walk out of the gym and not say something to your teammate, but our values say that you have to talk about your differences. In a team, you take all these individual relationships, and then you take the position specific relationships, and then you try to fit them all together.
How do you prioritize physical, emotional, and psychological safety?
I tell my team all the time that my No. 1 job is not necessarily to win or to get them to graduate. Those are part of my job, but ultimately my job is to make sure they are physically, emotionally and psychologically safe in our program at Michigan State. If they feel safe, then we can go be a winning program. Then we can do really special things and get them to graduate and make it back to the NCAA tournament.
There's so much pressure that these young women carry and so it is the most important aspect of my job to ensure that they are safe in those three categories. I tell them that if there's ever anything that is impacting their physical, emotional, and psychological safety, I need to know about it so I can get them the resources and support they need. Michigan State has some of the best resources I've ever seen. I always tell my student athletes that we will meet them over halfway and I want them to feel safe to share with me.
I also talk very honestly about how therapy has changed my life. I try to be really open and vulnerable, because I would not have gotten through some of my really tough life moments without a professional. I'm here to listen as much as I can, but there may be a time when my student athletes need to talk to someone who's medically and professionally trained to help them through their hard time.
Can you talk about the psychology of returning to play after an injury?
So much of the return to play process from an injury is psychosomatic. When an athlete comes back from an ACL tear, a lot of times they wear the brace not because their knee needs the brace, but because their brain does. We have a phenomenal team of doctors that help our student athletes through this journey, and I’m so impressed by them.
A lot of times, the fans only see physical ailments. They don’t always understand how difficult it is for an athlete to successfully return from an injury – mentally, physically, and emotionally. Getting that identity taken from you with surgery, and the amount of rehab and training needed just to be able to walk again is one of the hardest things a student athlete will have to go through.
Any coaching advice that could help everyone?
Stay curious. When someone exhibits unusual behavior, lead with curiosity instead of judgement. Staying curious helps us connect as teammates but also as human beings.
This story originally appeared on the Department of Psychology website.
