BERKELEY – When Dr. Graig Chow took a phone call from AASP Conference Program Chair Bob Harmison in February, he figured it was another sales pitch to try to convince him to run for president of the organization.

Turns out experts in Chow's field aren't typically asked to give a prestigious lecture while they are still serving as experts in their field.

Harmison's call was to ask Chow to deliver the Coleman Griffith Lecture at the annual Association for Applied Sport Psychology conference at Planet Hollywood in Las Vegas – a highly anticipated presentation given each year. The lecture has traditionally been reserved for professionals who are either retired or in the twilight of his or her career, but the impact Chow is making in the field of mental performance in real time is too important to overlook.

"I was very shocked to receive the call," Chow said. "I figured it was about something else. They tried to get me to run for president for a while."

Chow serves as the director of mental performance for Cal's Cameron Institute – a one-of-a-kind, world-class model of holistic student-athlete development. He has also worked with the Golden State Warriors of the NBA and the Los Angeles Dodgers of Major League Baseball. He was named an AASP Fellow in 2022 for achieving distinction through significant contributions to academic and professional practice knowledge in sport, exercise and performance psychology.

Chow's focus on mental performance – and how it distinguishes itself differently from mental health – has been lauded universally throughout the field. That's one of the many reasons the Cameron Institute has established itself as the gold standard for mental performance across intercollegiate athletics.

"There has been a longstanding debate within the AASP organization in terms of mental health and sport psychology, and Graig has established a system in which a high value is placed on individuals with specific expertise in mental performance," said Harmison, the former president of AASP and the Director of Sport Psychology at James Madison. "There are few better positioned to talk about the important issues in our field and come at it from a science practitioner perspective. Historically, it has tended to be folks near the end of their careers and they look back at a longer history and so forth. But the lecture is not designed to be a recognition of someone's tenure or a lifetime achievement award. Graig is an example of the next wave of folks making an impact who are not necessarily at the end of their careers."

The annual lecture is named after Coleman Griffith – considered widely to be the father of sport psychology in North America who worked for MLB's Chicago Cubs. Chow has been attending the AASP conference since he was an undergraduate student at UCLA in 2003.

"It was a little bit intimidating," Chow said. "On one hand, I was super honored and thrilled for the opportunity. On the other hand, you hope to live up to these former lecturers. It was nice to be able to do it while I'm still doing the work. A lot of them are doing it after they have been retired five or 10 years and talk retrospectively about it."

Rather than reflect on his journey in the field or focus on his research, Chow turned his lecture into a thought-provoking debate about the most pressing topics in the field and examined the forces at work that have produced the issues sports psychology face today.

"He tackled some hot topics in a very measured way that was grounded in good, solid facts as well as his experiences," Harmison said. "He was able to bridge the gaps, and sort of frame mental health and mental performance in a way we are currently attempting to do. Judging by some of the anecdotal feedback I got from some folks, it was one of the best Coleman Griffith lectures we've had in quite some time."