Mitch Lyons is an MIAA consultant and the founder of GetPsychedSports.org (GPS), a nonprofit organization that changes the subject matter of what is taught on high school sports teams from a place where sport-specific skills are taught with some verbal and ambiguous life messages to a structured, written curriculum of daily mental training.   GPS challenges and changes the very model of a sports team by changing the messages learned from verbal to written.  With the assistance of Dr. Grayson Kimball, D.P.E. from Springfield College and a curriculum approved by the Director of the School Psychology Program of Northeastern University, Dr. Louis Kruger, GPS, through its workshops and curriculum, read by both player and coach, establishes clearly that there is a certain way to think that makes improvement more likely to happen.  Learning how to think to be successful, and then, most importantly, practiciing these skills everday on a high school sports team, can teach students more about life than sport, more about how to improve than about winning.  Students and coaches alike have the best chance of achieving success when they begin to think about working on the skills of giving maximum effort, actively supporting others, being positive with self, creating success daily in things we control to build our self-worth, recognizing and changing harmful thoughts to helpful ones as thoughts effect performance, thinking more about process more than outcome, goal-setting, and meditation practices.

Mr. Lyons is not a psychiatrist or psychologist, but a coach of approximately 20 years whose articles on changing the culture of sport have appeared in national publications.  He has spoken frequently in front of groups of parents, educators, high school and middle school students, athletic directors and coaches, offering his distinct and original viewpoints.  There are currently 31 high schools who are or who want to, given funding restrictions, implement the GPS program.  Mr. Lyons has been as assistanct coach on the Lasell College Men's Basketball Team for the past two years and prior to that, coached high school girls' basketball at Newton South High School for six years and then AAU boys' basketball for the past 8 years.  His website www.getpsychedsports.org has attracted attention from all parts of the world because of the content and the concept of GetPsychedSports.org.  Mr. Lyons was a practicing attorney for 26 years prior to retiring to work full time in making positive change in youth and school sports.  He received a law degree (J.D.) in 1973 from University of Santa Clara in California and a Bachelor of Business Administration from Adelphi University in 1969.