Coach Austin grew up in Winthrop, Maine, following the typical path of young hockey players – competitive youth travel to high school varsity. He excelled on the ice and earned several state and school awards, including MVP, 1st Team All State, and the Hobey Baker Maine High School Boy’s Hockey Award. His dream was to play at the college level, but his family couldn’t afford the traditional route of pay-to-play juniors.

In 2013, he took a different path and walked into the head coach’s office at Franklin Pierce University, a Northeast-10 NCAA Division 2 College, with odds against him but an unwavering belief in himself. He was offered an opportunity to try out for the team and made the Ravens’ squad. He redshirted in his first year and then competed for four years on the NCAA team. After five years of college hockey, he graduated with an MBA in 2018.

Following graduation, Coach Austin began coaching student-athletes, with a focus on the complete mental and physical aspects of the sport. This led to the creation of The Mental Goalie and shortly after, the Mental Goalie’s Mindset Academy. The Mindset Academy goes beyond mental toughness, addressing the mental struggles and demands of the sport that take a great toll on all goaltenders during their journey. Drawing from his own experiences and learning, Coach Austin has guided young athletes to build confidence, accountability, discipline, self-awareness, and positive and productive thinking. His comprehensive and thorough mindset training is tailored to goalies and has resulted in positive outcomes for all his students and their families.

Before starting The Mental Goalie, Austin coached with the Goalie Academy Boston and was a staple instructor at the Rousseau’s Goalie Clinic in Falmouth, Maine, alongside John Racine. As the Mental Goalie, Austin has served as the goaltending coach for numerous youth organizations in the area, including Troy Albany, Saratoga, Clifton Park, CP Dynamo, Saugerties, and Schenectady. Coach Austin is also the on-ice coach for Shen High School, Saratoga High School, Christian Brothers Academy, BHBS High, and his alma mater, St. Dominic Academy. Over the years, he’s coached the men’s and women’s teams at Northwood Prep, and Thomas College. Outside of mental skills training, his bread and butter is semi private & private lessons, as well an intensive summer camps from New York to Maine designed to push athletes out of thier comfort zones and build mental toughness.

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The hockey world is evolving, and so is the understanding of the goaltending position. While it may have sounded absurd just ten years ago to dedicate a portion of practice to goalie training, it is now becoming expected. However, the goaltending position remains often misunderstood. Austin’s approach to goaltending is to reinforce and help ease the mental toll on today’s goalies. There is no “right” or “wrong” style of goaltending anymore, but there is a way to approach the mental training of the goalie game. This, combined with coaching and reinforcement of fundamentals, proper save selection, and positioning, can help goaltenders develop the most important skill of all in today’s hockey game: patience.