Saints looking for a mental edge
Siena consults with Delisio, who played goalie for the school
Former Siena lacrosse goalkeeper Danielle Delisio had a good senior year that ended badly in 2015.
She started 17 games for a Saints program that reached the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference Tournament. But it all fell apart in a home loss to Marist in the quarterfinals. She allowed nine goals and made two saves before being pulled for the backup in the second half. The Saints rallied but lost in overtime.
“I knew that physically, I could handle anything,” Delisio recalled this week. “I was a great player. The only thing that I was struggling with that day was my mental game. … Things just got harder and harder and it felt like the wheels just fell off the bus for me and I was in quicksand.”
She said that painful experience helped her decide to become a mental performance consultant. She’s working with the current Siena team, which is hosting the MAAC Tournament this weekend at Hickey Field.
“It’s a huge reason why I’m in my career path today, to be
perfectly honest,” Delisio said. “To be able to come back to Siena to do that has been extremely full circle and very meaningful.”
The second-seeded Saints (10-7 overall, 6-2 MAAC) will take on fourthseeded Fairfield, the threetime defending champion, at noon Friday. The winner will meet either No. 1 Monmouth or No. 6 Manhattan at 1 p.m. Sunday in the title game.
Siena began working with Delisio last season. Siena coach Abby Rehfuss is bringing Delisio in more often to talk to players this year because Rehfuss felt the Saints lost their mental edge in the 2021 tournament. The Saints reached the championship game but lost 12-8 at Fairfield.
“I think instead of playing the game to win, we were playing not to lose,” Rehfuss said. “And so I think for us, right now, it’s about addressing that and finding a way to address what our expectations are, what the anxieties are, what our fears are and finding ways to overcome that mentally.”
Delisio, who is from Woodstock, has a psychology degree from Siena and received her master’s in sports psychology and motor behavior from the University of Tennessee. She lives in Troy and started Infinity Mental Performance, which provides consulting to individual and groups of athletes, performers and coaches.
Outside the sports realm, she consults with a law firm and has worked with Tennessee ROTC trainees and West Point cadets.
On the side, she’s dabbling in broadcasting. She’ll be the color analyst, with Joe Mixie providing the play-by-play, for the MAAC Tournament.
Delisio met with the team three times last week and twice this week.
“Mainly we focused on the topic of confidence,” Delisio said. “It’s a team that already has confidence and anyone can use the enhancement of confidence. It was really great being able to work with them this season and a little bit more recently just prepping for the tournament.”
Delisio said she focuses on “smaller wins.” That can be something as simple as getting up on time when the alarm rings, instead of hitting the snooze button, or making a good pass in practice.
“Those things are things we assume we’re supposed to be great at, and we don’t give ourselves credit when we are great at those things,” she said. “A lot of looking for small wins and being able to build your confidence through focusing on what those things are and how much those things occur every single day.”
Siena fifth-year attack Nicole Mcneely said last year the team was too preoccupied with losing because they’d also been beaten by Fairfield in the 2019 final. Mcneely said the Saints are more focused on winning this time around.
“(Delisio’s) been so helpful to us, I think, just bringing to light certain things, weaknesses we didn’t know we had and building on them just so we’re ready this weekend,” Mcneely said.