The various graduate training and career paths in the USA were very familiar to me because of my graduate training, attendance at AASP Annual Conferences, and early career activities. I knew the genealogy of my peers, our mentors, and their mentors – who trained where, when, and with whom. I’ve been in Australia for almost 10 years now, and it has taken me a while to wrap my head around the training and career landscape. I’m still meeting new colleagues and learning about the historical, current and future challenges for practitioners.

One obvious difference is the training pathway to becoming a credentialed practitioner. In the USA there are multiple and diverse pathways that include sub-disciplines of psychology (clinical, counselling, etc) and the sport and exercise sciences, with both providing routes to credentialing (e.g., mental health provider, mental performance consultant). While courses and graduate programs exist in sport and exercise science departments, the only pathway to become eligible to practice SEP in Australia is through an accredited psychology program.

In Australia, the recognized specialization and regulated title for professionals is Sport & Exercise Psychologist. Damien Stewart provided an overview of training pathways in Australia for registration as a General Psychologist and specialist Endorsement in Sport and Exercise. More information on psychology pathways can be found on the Australian Psychological Society (APS) website.

When I arrived in 2013, there were only two accredited programs. Unfortunately, within the next few years, only one option was available to aspiring sport psychologists. This was the case for nearly 8 years until a new program opened its doors to aspiring practitioners just last year. The numerous programs in the USA across different disciplines and departments sets up students to be spoiled (or paralyzed?) for choice, akin to having an entire cereal aisle at most grocery stores in the U.S. when you’re used to a few simple choices.

One of the similarities across both countries is an ongoing narrative reflecting a false dichotomy of mental health and performance. This is a persistent and universal problem for our profession. I’ve seen and heard examples of this among my own professional networks, but also for those across roles and leadership levels in sport generally.

I’ve found myself in the quicksand of role creep that occurs when you do good work and establish effective working alliances within an environment that has multiple and varied needs. There are different ways of working across broad objectives that include culture, well-being, mental health and performance; all of these issues provide relevant and important work across every level in the sport eco-system (individual, team, coaching and leadership, local and national organizations, as well as international governing-bodies). Readiness, access and resourcing of psychological services continues to be a struggle at the elite level of professional, Olympic, Paralympic, and Commonwealth sports. These are perhaps more challenging to address at community, youth, pre-elite, or pathway levels where there are significantly fewer resources, both human and financial, than available in high performance sport.

Despite the vast geographical distance that separates practitioners here in Australia, the sport psychology community is small and the vast majority share openly and support each other around common challenges. Last week, I attended the inaugural conference event for the Global Alliance for Mental Health in Sport (GAMeS) which was co-sponsored by APS CoSEP. As with most conferences, I walked away energized, reconnected, and optimistic by my colleagues’ work highlighting approaches to mental health across community and elite sport, and representing end-to-end health care including preventative and restorative interventions, and system-wide policies and programs. In the days following the event, I’ve benefited from peer consultation and the sharing of organizational guidelines by colleagues in different sports, roles and territories but who have faced and worked through tricky and complex challenges that I find myself in these days.

In the USA, I had a series of 1-2-year contracts across teaching and clinical service roles. I took a tenure-track university position that I held for 8 years, leaving the year after having earned tenure and promotion. I went directly into a full-time fixed-term contract at the Australian Institute of Sport (AIS), a national government-funded sport institute. At the AIS, I worked exclusively with Olympic and Paralympic athletes as a Senior Sport Psychologist. For the first time in my career, I do not have a full-time salaried job in sport psychology. I do realize that fact highlights my privileged and sustained career, and the opportunities and networking that provided to me – a reality not enjoyed by most who piece together multiple contracts with little to no job security beyond the current season. Now that I am juggling multiple contracts (some days well, others not so much), I am very selective in the work I take on with individual athletes and sport organizations.

I still have the same passion and enthusiasm for our profession from when I first discovered it as an undergraduate at the University of Kansas, albeit there are a few scars and a healthy scepticism there as well. It would be remiss of me not to acknowledge that my reflections are based only upon my experience and perspectives from the roles I’ve held over my career, both in the USA and Australia. These perspectives are also shaped by my career progression through development stages, having started and established as an early career professional in the USA, and making a significant move to a different country and taking up organizational and system-level roles in Australia. I’m not only in a different hemisphere but also at a more advanced stage in my career, both having shaped how I make sense of my experiences and the sport psychology landscape in which I work.