Kevin O’Brien is a mental performance coach, speaker, and educator who builds systems that work under pressure for competitive athletes, coaches, and the schools that develop them.
For more than 25 years, Kevin has worked at the intersection of teaching, coaching, and mental performance. He grew up in Ohio, picked up a lacrosse stick at Phillips Academy Andover, captained Division I lacrosse at the University of Pennsylvania, and earned his M.A. from the Bread Loaf School of English at Middlebury College.
After losing his younger brother Conor to suicide in 2000,, Kevin began a long personal journey through grief, mindfulness, and meaning-making. That experience — combined with more than two decades in classrooms and locker rooms — now shapes everything he does as a coach, speaker, and educator.
He developed the COMPETE framework, a four-pillar mental performance system (Recognize, Reset, Lock In, Lead) designed to give coaches and athletes a repeatable process for handling pressure, failure, and high-stakes moments. COMPETE is a system to elevate performance through daily training.
Kevin teaches American Literature and coaches lacrosse at University School, an all-boys JK-12 school in Hunting Valley, Ohio.