Dr. S.Erdner, CMPC (she/her) is the Founder and CEO of The Center for Optimal Psychological Education in Injury & Rehabilitation, The COPE Center. She also serves as a Clinical Associate Professor of Kinesiology at Adams State University where Dr. Erdner teaches graduate-level courses in sport psychology and coaching. She additionally teaches as an adjunct faculty at the University of Western States specializing in mentoring aspiring certified mental performance consultants (CMPC) & teaching the psychology of sport injury & rehabilitation course to medical and sport psychology students. Dr. Erdner earned her Ph.D. in Sport Psychology and Motor Behavior from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, where she also completed her M.S. in Communication Studies with a focus on interpersonal communication.
As a CMPC through the Association for Applied Sport Psychology, Dr. Erdner is not just well versed in working with non-injured clients. Her most notable role was serving as a mental strength coach for a Major League Baseball organization, where she worked alongside physical therapists and athletic trainers within the minor and major league systems to create comprehensive psychological programming for athletes on the injury roster. She has continued to work with injured-ill clients in various capacities to help them flourish through the rehabilitation-recovery process.
Dr. Erdner is also the author of Dear Coach, What I Wish I Could Have Told You: Letters from Your Athletes, which is a powerful collection of letters that gives voice to athletes' unspoken experiences. As with all things Dr. Erdner does, advocacy is always at the forefront. While Dear Coach was written to advocate for athletes, it was clear in learning about their lived experiences that coaches’ health and well-being also need better support. Thus, this book was written from a place of empathy for coaches. If interested in reading, you can download a FREE eBook version of Dear Coach HERE!
As you’ll see from the photos, Dr. Erdner is no stranger to injury, or to the complex, often misunderstood world of co-morbid illness. In 2014, a running-related injury led to foot surgery, abruptly ending her triathlon career. Years later, after establishing herself as a seasoned rock climber, she was sidelined again; this time by a rare, cascading series of medical events.
What appeared to be only gynecology-related issues, resulting in a stage 4 endometriosis diagnosis, a hysterectomy, and the loss of her left ovary, these procedures didn’t fully explain the severity of her symptoms. As her health deteriorated post-operatively, further evaluation revealed the deeper issue: two vascular compressions that were silently refluxing blood into her pelvic region for years. Conditions such as May-Thurner Syndrome (MTS; a compression of the left iliac vein) and Nutcracker Syndrome (NCS; a compression of the left renal vein) had gone unrecognized by most of the medical system.
Treating these compressions were not only imperative to allow her to athletically perform but to live. MTS was addressed with a left iliac stent to restore proper blood flow to her pelvis and legs. NCS, however, required a more invasive solution: a kidney autotransplant. Performed at UWHealth in Madison, Wisconsin, which is one of the few centers worldwide offering this life-saving procedure, the surgery involved relocating her left kidney to her lower-right pelvic region, leaving both kidneys on the right side of her body. To date, Dr. Erdner has undergone eight surgeries, seven of them within a two-year span, while simultaneously managing additional co-morbid diagnoses that profoundly affected her ability to perform in sport and in life.
Although her health has improved significantly since correcting these vascular issues, navigating these diagnoses reshaped her understanding of what “injury” actually means. Injuries are not only acute events like a sprained ankle, torn ACL, or concussion, but are also shaped by the chronic illnesses, systemic conditions, cultural considerations, and physiological complexities that influence a person’s baseline well-being. These illnesses often dictate how someone tolerates rehabilitation-recovery, appraises their progress, and experiences barriers during recovery. Understanding these influences is essential for meaningful, individualized psychological support. Injury and illness are inseparable for many clients and comprehensive care must reflect that.
Through both inpatient and outpatient procedures, Dr. Erdner has gained firsthand insight into the psychological demands of injuries and chronic illnesses sustained both within and outside of sport, as well as the unique recovery processes associated with each. Her lived experience, combined with years of teaching the psychology of injury and rehabilitation, illuminated a gap: most textbooks and training programs do not fully capture the complexity of the injury-illness and rehabilitation-recovery landscape. These personal experiences paired with her professional expertise ultimately inspired her to create The COPE Center, a place where injured and medically complex clients, along with the practitioners who serve them, receive the specialized psychological support they deserve.
Outside of academia and consulting, Dr. Erdner is a multidisciplinary artist who enjoys painting, writing comedic material for open mics, and collaborating on music with local musicians. She is also the host of the Nutcracker Syndrome podcast, which Dr. Erdner created to address a major knowledge gap for both medical professionals and patients navigating this rare medical journey. She embraces a quiet life in Evergreen, Colorado, where she lives in a cozy 500-square-foot cabin with her partner, Kyle, and their three beloved pets: Lego, a five-year-old orange tabby; Kira, a seven-year-old husky/pit mix who behaves more like a cat than the actual cat; and Gouda, a two-year-old chow/shepherd mix who didn’t get the proper puppy-hood he deserved as he came into the family a few months prior to Dr. Erdner’s health taking a major plummet.
Dr. Erdner asks that you please send good energy that Kyle will become more open-minded in allowing them to add another dog to their pack even if they do live in a space that’s considered “too small” to allow it! :)
Dr. Erdner is also aware that Kyle is right.
