At the age of three, Sam Parfitt knew that he had a love for tennis. He would take his racquet and hit a ball against the wall for the pure enjoyment. His passion as a child was so high, that his first word to his parents was "Agassi".
 
Growing up, every adult athlete experienced that initial love for the game they love to play. But with the emphasis in today's society on the mentality of a winning culture, some of that pure feeling towards sport can be lost along the way.
 
For the former international and Chattanooga Mocs tennis player, that joy still exists at 25 years old as much as it did when he was a three-year old.
 
Enter The True Athlete Project, a nonprofit organization Parfitt started in January of 2015 that has the mission of enhancing the experience of an athlete, improve performance and transform the overall culture of sport through sports psychology.
 
"My dad had a very holistic view of the way he coached me, and there was quite a lot of sports psychology in his coaching through imagery and tactics of calming yourself down and becoming present in the moment," the Norwich, England native said. "That's really what the mindfulness in sport is all about. At the elite level, it's how can you train someone to be in the moment. Being in the mindful state is kind of like being in the zone.
 
"Something about the pure feeling of hitting the ball, I just love it," Parfitt added. "That's one of the things that this project is about, which is how you rediscover that initial joy of sport and that kind of feeling when you are just out on your own practicing. It's that very pure feeling and love of sport, and that can disappear in youth sport and onwards with all of the pressure that goes on.
 
"This project is a lot about keeping that purity of sport."
 
In today's culture, sports are often seen as winning at all costs, and often times the means to achieving those goals are not always with the best intentions. For youth who are involved, these tendencies can often lead to discrimination, cheating, bullying, performance anxiety, depression and burnout. But the True Athlete Project's main goal is to take all of that away and focus on the purity of sport, using a mind, body and spirit approach.
 
Parfitt, who is the director of athletics at St. Peter's, an independent kindergarten through fifth grade school in Chattanooga, uses this innovative approach involving sports psychology to help others recognize The True Athlete Project's message.
 
One of those influences came at the Muhammad Ali Center in Louisville, Ky., where Parfitt has twice presented his passion to the Athletes and Social Change Forum, where people that share the common goal of making sport better for society as a whole come together.
 
"I think I had a lot of influences," Parfitt said "The big thing is my job at my school, St. Peter's. We kind of had a blank-slate sports platform that kind of creates a really holistic sports program on character development and the sort of whole mind, body and spirit aspect of what it means to be an athlete and a good person, as well as how those things can be intertwined, because becoming a compassionate person can also improve performance.
 
"Sports psychology and the mind is obviously a big deal, but how do you teach those who don't have access to sports psychologists to implement those things? We try to help coaches develop that in their athletes. We want it to be easy to implement and incorporate in those training sessions."
 
With a team of 11 including Parfitt, the True Athlete Project has been able to spread its message and the effects have shown. Some of the partners involved with the nonprofit organization include Pam Boteler, a 32-time U.S. National sprint canoe champion, Dr. Zibin Guo, a UTC professor who pioneered wheelchair tai-chi at the Beijing Olympics, Dr. Aaron Althouse, a former Stanford 400 meter runner who coaches soccer with "at risk" Hispanic youths, along with several others who have impacted the world of sport around the country.
 
"Gathering the team was the big thing," Parfitt said." It was a lot of emailing and explaining my passion to them that brought them on board. I had to make it relevant to what kind of skill they had. They all shared the same philosophy towards sport but came from different angles, so doing it in a way that made each of them excited was important. They were all just amazing.
 
"That was one big step, and then we've been doing a lot of paperwork to get the nonprofit status, so we're now an official non-profit charity. It's really grown from there, and we've decided the different ways that we're going to go about it, from writing proposals to gaining interest from schools that will ask how we can help them and their coaches. It's cool because there are so many different talents on different teams."
 
Two of the athletes Parfitt is currently working are Souleyman Bah, who is a legally blind parathlete that won a gold medal representing Britain at the World Schools Championships. The other athlete is Donna Kay Henry, a former UTC soccer player who currently plays professionally in Iceland.
 
As for a target audience, the True Athlete Project doesn't limit itself to a certain age limit, but can hold certain events such as  "In the Zone: Mindfulness for Athletes," which has been going on throughout March focusing on the different aspects of the mind/body/spirit approach to competition.
 
"It's open to anyone really. Some of the programs will naturally lend themselves towards younger athletes, but some of what we do is really targeted at coaches too," Parfitt said. "It's really open to anyone, but youth sports is really a particularly good time to get them involved. Especially with opening them up to sports psychology and various meditation practices. You don't want them to get to around 20 years old and not educated on certain practices. They get to know that the stuff they learn before competition is helpful, real and good to learn at an early age.
 
"For example, a school can say it has an issue where demographics are changing here, a coach trust issue or there's specialization in one sport too soon. Whatever it may be, we can personalize a True Athlete Project for these people to meet their goals, meet their schedule, and whatever else we can come up with.
 
"That's how we almost approach every project. Where is the need, what is the need and how we can help."
 
The quote Parfitt uses to summarize his nonprofit organization's goal, is "changing the world one true athlete at a time," with the main focus of literally changing the world in order to see a better culture of sport.
 
"We want to hopefully move into multiple countries and make it an international project," Parfitt said. "I think this really lends itself to areas with low resources, and yet it can impact everything you can do. Moving into public schools and having coaches certified in our methods and having a coach coach-certification course to build on for when they lead their athletes, as well as coaches being able to go online and select different modules."
 
Another one of Parfitt's goals would be to see every national federation require its coaches to go through a holistic approach in sports psychology, where through the True Athlete Project, they can incorporate that type of product.
 
"That would be a huge thing," Parfitt said. "There's a couple of links where we can hopefully make that happen, but imagine if all of those federations required that in their coaching processes. That would be unbelievable and right there, you've impacted an enormous number of people."