Bruce Ogilvie Award for Professional Practice recipient

The award recognizes the port psychologist who has: (1) provided leadership in changing the profession, its public image, and its public acceptance, or (2) conducted applied work, including assessment, consultation, instruction, and direct or indirect intervention that contributes to the development of the profession. Significant contributions of work done in professional or public arenas as a sport psychologist at the national, state and local level may be recognized.

It is not difficult to identify the role through which Rick McGuire has had the greatest impact on the profession of sport psychology: Coach. This is saying something given the breadth and depth of the contributions Rick has made. However, nowhere has his impact been greater and his legacy more secure than in the world of coaching and specifically track and field. From 1983-1988, Rick was the head coach of the Women’s Track and Field/Cross Country team at the University of Missouri, and in 1988 he became the head coach for the Men’s and Women’s Track and Field/Cross Country teams at Mizzou until his retirement in 2010. During this time, he received the President’s Award from USA Track and Field (1992), GTE Coach’s Academic Enhancement Award (1994), Missouri Track and Cross Country Coaches Association Hall of Fame (1999), Drake Relays Hall of Fame (2000), Big 12 Conference Indoor Coach of the Year (2000), Columbia Kiwanis “Don Faurot Sports Person of the Year Award” (2008), C. Harmon Brown Award for Service to Sports Science from USA Track and Field (2009), ROARS “Coach of the Year” from the University of Missouri (2010) and ROARS “Legacy Award” from the University of Missouri (2010).

Of course, Coach would quickly point to his student athletes’ too numerous to list academic and professional accomplishments as his greatest impact and most cherished awards. Along with his coaching, Coach served as President of the NCAA Cross Country Coaches Association, President of the United States Track and Field and Cross Country Coaches Association, President of the Missouri Track and Cross Country Coaches Association and a Member of the Executive Committee of the NCAA Track and Field Coaches Association. Through all of these years, honors, and awards as a coach, Rick was both practicing and promoting the profession of sport psychology. It is impossible to quantify the impact he had, but numerous jobs, consulting opportunities, and careers have been created as a direct result of Rick’s work, and this continues through the present day. While Coach McGuire’s accomplishments are certainly more than a career’s worth of highlights, Dr. McGuire’s resume as a sport psychology consultant is equally impressive. He was an inaugural member of the Association for the Advancement of Applied Sport Psychology in 1986, has been an AASP Certified Consultant for 19 years, and listed on the USOC sport psychology registry for 23 years. In terms of both providing leadership and conducting applied work contributing to the development of the profession, in 1983 Rick created and has subsequently Chaired the Sport Psychology Program for USA Track and Field for 28 years. The USATF Sport Psychology group has been a prototypical service delivery model and has attracted many of the most experienced and well respected sport psychology practitioners as service providers (Portenga, Aoyagi, & Statler, 2012). Rick has also served as the sport psychology consultant for nine USA National teams, the IAAF World Championships in Goteborg, Sweden (1995), and for USA Track and Field at the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona, Spain, and the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta, Ga.

In his roles as coach and sport psychology consultant, Rick has always considered himself an educator and he has also had a tremendous influence on sport psychology through academia. In fact, his first job out of college was as a junior high math teacher and he maintained this position (along with coaching cross country, basketball, baseball and track and field) for nine years before completing a Master’s in Physical Education (Alfred University, 1978) and a PhD in Physical Education/Sport Psychology (University of Virginia, 1983). In 1985, Rick was appointed as an Assistant Professor at the University of Missouri and he continues teaching both graduate and undergraduate sport psychology courses and teaching, supervising and mentoring sport psychology graduate students to the present day. For his teaching, Dr. McGuire has received 17 “High Flyer” awards for excellence in teaching and a “Pillar of Excellence” award for ten consecutive years of receiving High Flyer awards. He started the master's and doctoral sport psychology programs at the University of Missouri, and has mentored many graduate students who have gone on to become prominent in the sport psychology profession. Dr. McGuire also served as the supervisor for four recipients of the Association for Applied Sport Psychology Distinguished Student Practice ward (it has only been awarded seven times).

Dr. McGuire has also been a frequent contributor to the sport psychology literature with 34 publications including three books and five book chapters. Along with Ralph Vernacchia, he also wrote the sport psychology curriculum for the USA Track and Field Coaches Education Level 2 program. He is a sought after public speaker, and through delivering over 200 professional presentations he has certainly provided leadership in changing the profession, its public image and its public acceptance. A small sample of the audiences he has been invited to address includes: the High School Athletic Directors of five different states (Virginia, Maryland, Missouri, Michigan, Nebraska), the California Community College Athletic Directors, National Federation of High School Athletic Directors, Central Region Teen Institute Substance Abuse Leadership Conference, University of Missouri Toxic Waste Management Conference, Missouri Institute for Executive Development, Missouri State Highway Department, Kansas-Oklahoma Young Insurance Agents Conference, Missouri Valley Lawn and Turf Association, Missouri State Division of Fire Control, Canadian National Basketball Coaches Education Program, USA Track and Field, Columbia Chamber of Commerce, Staff of US Congressman Kenny Hulshof, and the Pepperdine University School of Law. This is perhaps as diverse and definitive a list of leading sport psychology in its public image and public acceptance as is possible to compile. Rick’s influence continues to spread as he is in the process of producing a series of CDs on Applying Sport Psychology for Coaches.

Currently, Rick is an assistant professor/graduate professor in the Educational, School and Counseling Psychology Department, and the director of sport psychology in the Department of Intercollegiate Athletics at the University of Missouri. As a professor, Dr. McGuire has 15 masters students and 4 doctoral students, and these numbers will be increasing to 25 and 10, respectively. He has also established the Missouri Institute for Positive Coaching and is developing an online master’s degree and an undergraduate minor in sport and positive psychology. Both of these innovative endeavors are focused on educating coaches at all levels in effective, positive coaching strategies. Through his position as director of sport psychology and his stature in both sport psychology and the NCAA, Rick is making it his mission to have permanent sport psychology positions in 100 NCAA athletic departments (McGuire, 2011). That is leadership in changing the profession. In fact, in many ways Rick’s mission is to ensure that there is a sport psychology profession.