Mental Health & Sports Performance Programs
Strength-Based Resilience
Across all levels, the foundation of this philosophy is a strengths-based approach. Rather than focusing on deficits, we identify, cultivate, and expand existing capacities. Resilience emerges when individuals leverage their strengths, teams align their talents, and organizations amplify a culture that prioritizes growth through challenge.
Physical Well-being
Physical well-being is the practice of nurturing the body through intentional movement, balanced nutrition, and mindful breathing.
Resiliency Training
Resiliency training is the proactive development of mental and emotional tools that help individuals adapt, recover, and thrive under pressure.
Mental Health
Mental health refers to the emotional and psychological state that influences how individuals think, feel, and respond to life’s experiences.
Our Approach
We care about the whole system from the larger organization down to each unique athlete. When we work with athletes we understand their training exists within a larger system. Using this approach allows for us to:
- Identify the external pressures shaping the behavior
- Reduces pathologizing of the athlete
- Normalizes the stress response as adaptive
- Supports the athlete in strengthening their broader resilience network
Individual
Team/Group
Organization
Programs & Offerings
2025-26 Campus Catalog
Athlete & Family Program
The Mental Growth & Resilience Sports Program is a 5-step program that streamlines the natural connection between performance and mental health. This allows athletes, coaches and parents to quickly leverage a growth mindset to optimize physical ability and mental capacity to compete at a high level.
Individual Team Clinics
We offer workshop-style clinics for athletic teams to provide hands on learning experiences. Based on our Growth & Resiliency Model© curriculum, these workshops provide teams with an opportunity to practice experiential exercises to foster team connection and grow their mental health toolboxes.
Consulting Package
This consulting package for coaching professionals is built around the idea of top-down learning. Simply Bee experts will work directly with coaches and team leaders to teach them skills and strategies so that they can in turn teach their athletes. This package is offered separately or as part of a bundle.
Professional Speaking
Our sports performance experts provide presentations on a variety of topics with a focus on providing athletic communities with skills they can utilize both on and off the court/field. Example topics are Introduction To Sports Psychology and Building A Cohesive Team.
Simply Bee also offers 1:1 therapy-style sessions for individual athletes with specific performance needs. We see athletes for issues such as pressure, fear of failure, setting expectations, lack of confidence, parental and coach expectations injury/loss of season, overcoming mental blocks, difficulty balancing sports with other areas of life and perfectionism. To schedule your 15-minute intake call, click here.
Check Out Some Of Our Past Work
Schools & Public Speaking
Private Clubs
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the topics for professional speaking?
How long are speaking events?
Are your programs virtual or in person?
Ready to Learn More?
Schedule a quick discovery call with our Director Of Operations & Communictions, Kate Kelley, MSW to learn more about how to bring these programs to your club or school.
Get In TouchMeet The Experts
Audrey Grunst, LCSW
Audrey Grunst is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and CEO of Simply Bee. Simply Bee focuses on mental health for all people to achieve and sustain personal wellness through therapy, education, consulting and more. She is the author of the published Growth & Resiliency Model© and 5-part planner series. Audrey has presented this model and more to over 100 different schools and families across Illinois.
Audrey is a former D1 volleyball player at Loyola University Chicago and was the mental performance coach for the Northwestern Women's Volleyball Team. She has a passion for helping athletes with their mental performance. You can find some of her work featured on local news outlets and radio airwaves such as 670 The Score and national media articles such as USA Wrestling.
Michael Motyka, MA, MS, LPC
Michael graduated from Adler University in 2024 with a dual-masters in Clinical Mental Health Counseling and Sport and Human Performance. Michael has worked the past few years in mental performance with athletes focusing on issues such as stress-management, confidence, and self-management.
Michael has experience as both an athlete and a coach himself, having played and won a national championship as a D3 volleyball player at Carthage College & currently as a high school and club volleyball coach. Further, Michael has worked with high school athletes and leadership groups, helping them work on team identity, communication, leadership and development and more.
About The Growth & Resiliency Model©
The Growth & Resiliency Model© was created and copyrighted in 2021 by Simply Bee CEO Audrey Grunst, LCSW. It is the foundation of the work we do with athletes, coaches, and parents. This comprehensive five-step model is designed to fuse theory, skill, and knowledge into people's understanding of their personal growth and emotional development. By using this model throughout all of our mental performance resources, we aim to create shared understanding and language amongst all participants. Through this model, we focus on the whole athlete and family system in an effort to shift organizational mentality to be mental health inclusive.
The theory behind this model is that a growth mindset occurs when you are aware of your internal world, can observe it without judgment, know how to respond instead of react, and can integrate all of that information into the external world effectively. The final step is to reflect on the process, celebrate what went well and learn from what didn't. Through the use of this model, we believe you can learn to intuitively overcome life's daily challenges and appreciate them as opportunities for positive change.
Learn More
Learn From Our Experts
Redefining Strength: Body-Image Neutrality For Athletes E-Book
This e-book focuses on body-image neutrality - an approach to help athletes create a more neutral realtionship with their bodies that centers around appreciating what their body can do for them instead of just how it looks. The goal of this e-book help teen athletes cope with difficult body image days and ultimately feel more accepting towards their bodies.
Overcoming Perfectionism Workbook
Perfectionism is a common experience for many teens and can have a big impact on overall confidence and self-worth. Written by therapists Eric Stevenson, LCPC, CMPC and Michael Motyka, BA this resource is here to help teens understand where perfectionism comes from and how to dismantle it step by step in order to increase resilience, improve their mindset and build acceptance.
4 Ways To Cope When The Game Is Done
Whether due to a pandemic, an injury, or other life circumstances, one of the hardest experiences as an athlete is coming to terms with the end of sport. Audrey Grunst, LCSW created this e-book to give athletes coping strategies for managing this difficult transition and their future ahead
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