Stephanie Thomas, MS, LPC, CMHC, is beginning her first season with the UW-Eau Claire Blugolds as a Sports Performance Coach in 2026.
Thomas has more than 15 years of clinical experience, advanced training in mindfulness and performance, and firsthand experience as a competitive endurance athlete to her work with student-athletes.
Thomas holds a Master’s Degree in Mental Health Counseling from UW-Stout and a Bachelor’s Degree in Criminal Justice from UW-Oshkosh. Throughout her career, she has worked across community mental health, trauma-informed treatment, and outpatient clinical settings, developing extensive experience helping individuals navigate anxiety, stress, trauma, life transitions, and patterns that can interfere with well-being and performance.
She is the founder of Living in Alignment, her private practice specializing in anxiety and perfectionism among high-achieving professionals and athletes. Her clinical and performance work is grounded in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), mindfulness, meditation, and performance psychology. Thomas also has training in Mindful Sport Performance Enhancement (MSPE), an evidence-based approach that uses mindfulness training to strengthen attention, awareness, acceptance, and the ability to perform with greater focus and fl ow.
As a performance coach, Thomas helps athletes train the mental side of their sport—developing the ability to manage stress, refocus after mistakes, respond rather than react under pressure, and align their actions with what matters most. Her approach emphasizes building the “mental muscles” of attention, awareness, confidence, and psychological flexibility, supporting athletes not only in performance, but in becoming more grounded and resilient people both on and off the fi eld.
Thomas also brings meaningful personal experience as a competitive fitness and endurance athlete. She is a Boston Marathon-qualified marathon runner and understands firsthand the discipline, mental demands, setbacks, self-doubt, and sustained commitment required to pursue ambitious performance goals. Her experience as both a clinician and athlete allows her to connect the mental skills of performance to the realities athletes experience in training and competition.
A married mother of three, Thomas has called Eau Claire home since 2004 and is proud to live and work in this community. She values an active, healthy lifestyle and also enjoys reading and spending time with her family.
