Athletes have been expected to carry it alone with no good (affordable) support.
Every coach and parent we talked to had a version of the same story. A 15-year-old who couldn't sleep the night before a tournament. A 17-year-old who fell apart after an early mistake and never came back into the game. A talented kid who quit the sport she'd loved for a decade because the pressure made it no longer fun.
The advice they received from coaches, from teammates, and the internet was usually some variation of "just stay positive" or "push through." Well-meant, but not useful. Mental performance is a skill set, like a left foot or a forehand. It can be trained. But there was no obvious place to train it that respected how teens actually think and live.
So we built one. CTLST Labs draws on decades of sport psychology research and turns it into something a 14-year-old will actually open on the bus to a game. Short sessions. Honest copy. No hype, no shouting, no leaderboards. Just the quiet work that shows up when it matters most.
Best of all - it's proven to work at the highest level. The assessment, lessons, tools and frameworks are the exact methodology that propelled Rosie MacLennan to back-to-back Olympic Gold Medals.
A small team, deeply in this.
Athletes, mental performance coaches, parents, and product people. Most of us competed; all of us have watched a teenager struggle silently with the mental side of their sport.
Rosie MacLennan, MSc, MBA
2x Olympic Gold Medallist, 4x Olympian. Started CTLST knowing the value mental training played on her career.
Kyle Paquette, PhD
Certified Mental Performance Consultant (CMPC) with deep experience working with national teams. Built the assessment and ten-skill curriculum.
Manksh Gupta, MSc
Product and Engineering leader in sports, technology and AI. Passionate about sport and the skills it allows kids to learn.
Nick Snow
Experienced collegiate athlete & coach and Tech Leader. Passionate about sport’s impact on kids and community and wants to make a difference.
Four principles that shape the product.
Regulation over activation.
Most performance content tries to fire athletes up. We help athletes know when they need to fire it up and when calm is the precursor to control.
Sophistication over simplification.
Teens know when they’re being talked down to. The copy, the science, and the visuals all assume real attention and real intelligence.
NO AI - real human voices.
This isn’t AI slop and there’s no AI chatbot or hype language. These are the real lessons, used daily that helped win Olympic gold (twice).
Privacy as the default.
Athlete data is for the athlete first. Coaches see assessment results. No ads, and nothing about a teen’s mental landscape is for sale.