Rikishi Smith-Rey, faculty fellow of the Robert H. Brooks Sports Science Institute and assistant professor in Clemson University’s Department of Communication, recently founded Sport PhD, a service that seeks to make academic research centered around sports more accessible for athletes.
Smith-Rey is a former Division I athlete and youth soccer coach with extensive research experience in the sports communication and health communication fields. During her coaching years, she was able to apply her academic research to her youth athletes in a very tangible way.
“To me, translational research is so important,” Smith-Rey said. “If our research is just sitting in journals, it’s not helping those that we mean it for. I get a lot of worth out of seeing my research help.”
Smith-Rey was inspired by a former athlete she coached to form Sport PhD, saying, “I still have not seen something that breaks down the knowledge that’s out there for athletes.”
Despite the extensive research on sports, Smith-Rey feels that this research is not accessible enough to athletes, especially those at the youth level. Areas of sport such as recruiting, sleep, nutrition, psychology and mental health are all topics that Smith-Rey seeks to promote to athletes in an accessible way.
Smith-Rey’s founding of Sport PhD was inspired in part by conversations with Brandon Boatwright, Ph.D., another assistant professor in the communication department at Clemson. Clemson women’s soccer student-athlete Ally Lynch has also worked as an intern with Rey this semester, and the pair have done extensive work on starting Sport PhD from the ground up.
Smith-Rey is excited to continue the work of Sport PhD as she works to widen the reach of the company.
“Sports gave me everything,” Smith-Rey added. “If I can give a little bit back to athletes so that they can understand their sport a little better, that would be super meaningful to me.”
Those interested in following the development of Sport PhD can find them on LinkedIn and Instagram.
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