Hi, I'm Elsebeth Birman

I am reflective, insatiably curious, and in constant pursuit of knowledge. I love sports and the impact it can have on an individual and within a community. In my experience, coaches are some of the most influential individuals in an athlete's life. I believe all athletes deserve to be in an environment where they can learn, grow, and ultimately thrive in sport.

Here's what I've come to notice: coaches are trained to read athletes through a coaching lens; talent, effort, attitude, execution. Clinicians are trained to read them through a different lens entirely; attention, sensory processing, executive function, motor planning, what an environment is asking of a nervous system at any given moment.

I'm trained in both, and it changed how I see. When I walk onto a court, I'm not just watching for shot mechanics or rotation slip-ups. I'm watching for the athlete whose attention got spent walking from a quiet hallway into a loud gym. I'm watching for the player who locks in on two verbal cues but loses the third. I'm watching for the first-year whose nervous system reads tension in a coaching voice as threat, not motivation, and shuts down before the play even starts.

The OT lens doesn't replace the coaching lens, it deepens it. It highlights what's actually getting in the way. Most of the time, it's not effort or attitude. It's something about the environment, the cueing, the sequencing, or the structure, something a coach can change.