The Brewster Whitecaps’ organization-wide GroupMe chat can get a little repetitive. Manager Jamie Shevchik lays out the day’s schedule. The baseball operations team provides the scouting report. Most days, that’s about it.

But on July 23, an early morning message from Dr. Jonathan F. Katz added some variety.

“Fellas…” the note began, “A non-baseball movie recommendation. For those of you who have never watched ‘Good Will Hunting,’ please do so.”

The 1997 classic, Katz continued, could apply to the team in three ways: working through personal “baggage,” pursuing your greatest passions and embracing those passions fully.

Katz is a sports psychologist volunteering with the Whitecaps this season, although he has few specific responsibilities. Instead, he remains a constant presence around the ballpark, meeting with players seeking support or offering his two cents to the team — like his movie recommendation.

He’s taken a similar approach throughout his career, which has included stints with the NHL’s New York Rangers, the University of Texas men’s and women’s tennis programs and several other professional and collegiate teams.

Katz calls his method an "immersion model," where he serves as an in-house performance coach, helping athletes “do what they do better.”

“If I could give [the athlete] some salient feedback on things that would help them, there was buy-in. And then once you become a trusted resource, it just fits from there,” Katz said. “People gain comfort by seeing you around and just talking.”

When Katz began working in athletics more than 30 years ago, the idea of a team psychologist was foreign in the sports world. So, Katz figured his best way to connect with athletes was to fully immerse himself in an organization, attending practices and traveling with the team.

It helps that Katz is a lifelong athlete who ran cross country at Connecticut College for three years and has completed ultramarathons as long as 50 miles. Even now, in his 60s, he still runs five and a half miles six days a week.

It was that experience as a competitor that sparked Katz’s interest in sports psychology, leading him to write his PhD dissertation on the topic at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. The paper helped him land his first gig in pro sports, working with the Chicago White Sox during spring training in the late 1980s. Opportunities blossomed from there.

Katz began working with NBA players, and then with New York City-based college basketball, baseball and football teams. Referrals helped him earn opportunities with junior and professional tennis players, and before long, he was a well-established figure in sports psychology.

More recently, he’s shifted into the financial world, working as an in-house consultant with several New York and Connecticut-based hedge funds.

But whether the focus be in sports or finance, Katz’s expertise has always been in high-performance coaching, helping those already near the top of their crafts improve.

“I understand that people who are not performing well could use some assistance,” Katz said. “But what about the player who’s batting .310? Why aren’t they batting .330?”

To help people achieve that growth, Katz will set up meetings to discuss potential areas of improvement. Some of his most common advice is for athletes to “trust themselves,” especially when working through a rough patch.

He offered the example of baseball players going through a hitting slump. Sometimes, Katz said, hitters overcompensate for their struggles and become overly aggressive. In other cases, a hitter may become timid and too passive.

“You try to get players back to their natural state,” Katz said. “It’s really just focusing on their work day to day, and staying kind of relaxed and not too far ahead of themselves.”

One of Katz’s biggest points of emphasis, though, is that performance improvement is a “lagging indicator.”

“Very rarely do you see, ‘Hey, I suggest you do this,’ and all the sudden, the next day, good things happen,” Katz said. “It’s just a combination of working with people over time and seeing that happen.”

That can be especially relevant in baseball, where randomness often separates a hit from an out. Katz’s goal is to help players consider ways to improve their process, regardless of the result. A 2-for-4 game, Katz noted, could be the product of two bloop hits, while an 0-for-4 performance could include four unfortunately placed line drives.

Those are the kinds of conversations he’s been having with players on the Whitecaps, under the promise of complete confidentiality.

In a speech to the team in late June, the psychologist stressed the importance of sleep, hydration, downtime and other “lifestyle variables,” which can include issues in players’ family or personal lives.

“People, if they don’t take care of the other stuff in their lives, then in a highly competitive situation that can sometimes rear its ugly head and become a distraction,” Katz said. “And so my approach is one of being very holistic.”

Manager Jamie Shevchik gave Katz full access to team meetings ahead of the season, helping the psychologist to execute that holistic immersion method. It was an easy decision for Shevchik, who saw the addition of a team psychologist as a way to add another resource for his players.

“These are kids who have grinded it out for a long time right now, going back and forth in college,” Shevchik said. “A lot of them have only been home for a handful of days, and I’m open to anything that is going to make our team better and make these kids stay a little bit longer.”

Katz, who lives in Eastham year-round, was looking to volunteer his time as a sports psychologist. He had attended games in Orleans in previous summers, so he sent his resume to a few different Cape Cod Baseball League teams.

Whitecaps general manager Jon Mecca and president Luke Dillon responded with interest, agreeing to hire Katz after Shevchik’s stamp of approval. He’s the first team psychologist in team history and is one of the few mental performance coaches around the CCBL.

“I wanted Brewster to set itself apart from the rest of the league,” Mecca said. “To give [the players] that resource is a tremendous advantage.”

Mecca did not give Katz any players’ contact information. Instead, he had the psychologist explain his services to the group, enabling players to solicit help if desired. Many of them obliged — to the point that he’s become something of an assistant coach.

“A lot of the things he says to the team are the same things that I echo to the team as well,” Shevchik said. “So maybe he should be a baseball coach or I should be a psychologist, one or the other.”

Katz attends most Whitecaps games, only staying home when he has a heavy workload at the performance coaching firm he co-founded, High Performance Associates.

At the ballpark, he isn’t hard to find, almost always marked by his teal Whitecaps hat and blue Nike running shoes. He’s never in the same place for long, roaming and chatting with those around the team. By now, he’s fully immersed.

“I think he’s doing a great job,” Shevchik added. “It’s like having a mental coach in the dugout for our guys, which is really cool.”

Title photo credit: Julianne Shivers.