The Pressure Lab

What does a professional soccer player actually eat to perform at the highest level, and how does that translate to a youth athlete eating lunch between classes and playing a game at 7 PM?

In Episode #11 of The Pressure Lab, Keith Wilford sits down with Marissa Gaab, Head of Nutrition for the Philadelphia Union and Registered Dietitian Nutritionist, to bridge the gap between elite sports nutrition and the practical realities of feeding a young athlete in the real world.

Marissa works daily with professional MLS players to optimize how they fuel, recover, and sustain performance across a grueling season. In this episode she brings those same principles down to earth for the audience that needs them most: teen athletes, their parents, and the coaches who work with both.

What happens to a young athlete's mental health when the label the world gave them stops being true?

In Episode #10 of The Pressure Lab, Keith Wilford sits down with Philadelphia Union midfielder Ben Bender for one of the most honest conversations about athlete identity, injury, and resilience The Pressure Lab has produced.

Ben Bender was the first overall selection in the 2022 MLS SuperDraft. He was 20 years old. The expectations attached to that number, to being chosen first above every other player in the country, are enormous and immediate. He contributed 8 goals and 8 assists in 61 matches for Charlotte FC before a meniscus root tear in September 2023 changed everything.

Bender underwent surgery to repair the meniscus root tear in October 2023 and spent the next year and a half fighting to feel like himself again. "I didn't start feeling like myself until this off-season," Bender said. "So it basically took almost a year and a half." He struggled to regain his form quickly enough under a new manager at Charlotte, and by April 2025 the club waived its former number one overall pick.

For many players, that is the beginning of the end. For Bender, it was a door reopening. The Philadelphia Union signed him in May 2025, the club that had first introduced him to professional soccer as a teenager, now offering him a chance to revive his career. He posted a career-best 82% pass completion rate across 320 minutes in MLS play that season. He was part of the Union's 2025 Supporters' Shield-winning season and re-signed through June 2027.

In February 2026, when Bender struck from 18 yards out against Defence Force in the Concacaf Champions Cup, he described the relief of scoring after nearly two years without a goal: "Even though we were up six or seven on aggregate at the time, it was still a relief to get a goal after not having scored in almost two years."

This is not an episode about soccer. It is an episode about what happens inside a young athlete's mind when the identity built around them, number one pick, rising star, the guy everyone expected, collides with the reality of injury, roster decisions, and starting over.

What does it actually take to build mental toughness in young athletes, and how does the psychology used at the Olympic level translate to a 15-year-old competing on a Saturday morning?

In Episode 9 of The Pressure Lab, Keith Wilford sits down with one of the most accomplished sports psychologists in the world to find out.

Dr. Colleen Hacker has served as a member of the United States coaching staff for six Olympic Games as a Mental Skills Coach and Performance Psychology Specialist, beginning her national team service in 1995 with the U.S. Women's National Soccer Team. During her tenure the team won the first gold medal ever awarded in women's soccer at the 1996 Olympic Games, followed by the dramatic overtime victory over China in the 1999 World Cup. She most recently served on the gold medal staff for USA Ice Hockey at the 2018 Olympic Games in PyeongChang. Across six Olympic Games her teams have won four gold medals and two silver medals. She is also the author of Catch Them Being Good, co-written with champion soccer coach Tony DiCicco, and her most recent book Achieving Excellence.

This episode is not about elite performance for elite athletes. It is about the mental skills that work at every level, and why the principles Dr. Hacker has applied in Olympic locker rooms are exactly the same ones that can change how a young athlete experiences pressure, failure, and growth.

What does it take to keep training when there is no game, no crowd, and no guarantee it will ever matter?
In Episode 8 of The Pressure Lab, Keith Wilford sits down with two Philadelphia soccer products who answered that question in real time, during one of the most disorienting periods in sports history, and came out the other side with something most athletes never build: an identity that does not depend on an audience.

Sizzy Lawton was a four-year starter and captain at Penn when the Ivy League canceled its entire 2020 season. Every other Division I conference went back to competing. She trained alone, asked herself the hardest question an athlete can ask, and answered it by choosing Tennessee, the most competitive transfer option available. In her extra COVID eligibility year she earned SEC All-Conference honors, helped the Lady Vols reach the second round of the NCAAs, and walked away from the game entirely on her own terms.

Nate Harriel faced the same silence at 19. In the middle of that same pandemic he passed on college entirely, signed a homegrown contract with the Philadelphia Union, and bet his entire career on himself before anyone could guarantee it would pay off. He put it simply: "If you'd told me seven years ago that I'd be at this point in my life right now, as a kid from Florida, I would probably say you're insane." He now leads MLS in interceptions, has captained the Union in CONCACAF Champions Cup play, represented the USMNT at the 2024 Paris Olympics, played in the 2025 Gold Cup final, and recently signed a new contract through 2028-29.

What happens when the sport you love starts to feel like proof of who you are?

Washington Spirit midfielder Maddie Elwell joins host Keith Wilford for a conversation about one of the most overlooked pressures in high-level sport: the slow erosion of identity when performance becomes the measure of your worth.

Maddie played at Vanderbilt University and competed professionally in the NWSL. She knows what it costs to build a life inside a sport, and what it takes to stay yourself while doing it. In this episode, Maddie and Keith get into:

• How athletic identity forms early and why it becomes a trap for so many young athletes
• The pressure of joining new teams and trying to prove yourself every single day
• Managing emotions on the field without losing your competitive edge
• Why self-worth and sports performance are not the same thing, even when everything around you insists they are
• The practices that helped her stay grounded: presence, real relationships, and relentless self-forgiveness

This episode is for every athlete who has ever tied their value to a result, a roster spot, or a coach's approval. It is also for every parent and coach who wants to understand what is actually happening inside the athletes they care about.

If you are a young athlete who replays every mistake long after the game is over, this episode is for you. If you coach or parent one, this episode is also for you.

In Episode #6 of The Pressure Lab, Keith Wilford sits down with Dr. Scott Glassman, licensed psychologist, author of A Happier You, and director of the Master of Applied Positive Psychology program at Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine, and Will Davis, a high school sophomore goalkeeper for FC Delco 2010 MLS Next HG, to answer one of the most searched questions in youth sports: how do athletes build confidence and stop dwelling on mistakes?

A mistake on the field can become a story online before the final whistle. For teen athletes, the pressure doesn't stop when the game ends. In Episode 5 of The Pressure Lab, Keith Wilford sits down with Dr. Megan Walls, pediatric psychologist at Nemours Children's Hospital, to talk about what social media is doing to young athlete mental health, and what teen athletes, parents, and coaches can actually do about it.

For a goalkeeper, every mistake is in the spotlight. There is no hiding, no reset, and no one standing behind you. It is the most isolated position in soccer and the most unforgiving one mentally.

In Episode 4 of The Pressure Lab, Keith Wilford sits down with Cate Cantu, ECNL national champion, U.S. U19 Youth National Team goalkeeper and Louisville signee, and Jillian Loyden, former U.S. Women's National Team goalkeeper and professional coach, to talk about the mental health and sports psychology of the most unique position in the game.

They explore what it actually feels like to be the last line of defense: where one moment can shift everything, where the loudest voice is often the one inside your own head, and where the mental game is not a supplement to the physical one. It is the whole thing.

Cate and Jillian get into perfectionism and what it does to young athletes, the specific loneliness of the goalkeeper position, the mental weight of penalty kicks, how to recover after getting scored on in front of everyone, and the difference between playing to prove your worth and actually learning how to grow. They also talk about routines, self-talk, identity, and why a goalkeeper's real strength is knowing how to come back to the present moment when everything in you wants to spiral.

This episode is for every goalkeeper who has ever stood alone between the posts and wondered if they were enough. It is also for every coach and parent who works with one and doesn't always know what to say.

Alan O'Mara knows what it feels like to reach the top, and then lose yourself on the way down. Keith Wilford sits down with Alan O'Mara, GAA footballer, founder of Real Talks, and author of "The Best Is Yet to Come," to explore what resilience actually looks like from the inside. At the height of his career, Alan was playing in front of hundreds of thousands of people. Six months later, he hit rock bottom. He became the first active inter-county GAA player to speak publicly about depression, and he opens up about the slow slide into burnout, the moments he almost asked for help but didn't, and the decision to finally speak out when vulnerability in sport was still rare. They get into what resilience actually means: not just pushing through, but learning how to come back, rebuilding identity after sport, and developing the mental performance tools that help you hold steady when things get hard. From journaling and breathwork to honest conversations and real connection, Alan shares how resilience is built in small, consistent ways. This is a conversation about identity, isolation, and the courage it takes to speak up. Because sometimes the bravest thing you can do is ask for help.

Carli Lloyd’s legendary career was built by learning how to lose. Carli and host Keith Wilford sit down to explore the mental work behind one of the most decorated players in the game. Carli looks back on getting cut from the U-21 National Team, questioning whether she wanted to keep playing, and rebuilding her confidence after setbacks. They get into the pressure she carried into the 2015 World Cup, learning to compete against herself, and how failure became feedback instead of something to fear. This is a conversation about pressure, identity, and what it takes to keep going when things get hard. Because the real work of being an athlete happens after the mistake.

In this episode of The Pressure Lab, host Keith Wilford sits down with Philadelphia Union legend Sébastien Le Toux and sport psychologist Dr. Alec Baker for an honest conversation about what pressure really does to athletes. They get into where it starts, how comparison, coaches, parents, and social media can warp it, why vulnerability so often gets mistaken for weakness, and what actually helps when the game is over and the emotions are still roaring. This episode is for anyone trying to stay in the game when the pressure starts to take over.