He is a valuable asset to OSU athletics, but chances are you have never heard of him.

Although Dan Hicks does not get the headlines of Chari Knight or make the cover of Sports Illustrated like Gary Payton, Hicks is very much an important part of the success of some athletes.

Hicks has been the sports psychologist of the athletic department at OSU since 1989 and has worked with athletes from 13 different sports. Technically Hicks is a sports psychologist, although he does not have a doctorate.

“Most sports psychologists are not actually psychologists," Hicks said.

The athletes Hicks counsels meet at his private practice in downtown Corvallis, which is on the corner of Third and Western. He usually spends six to eight hours a week with athletes from OSU and the rest of the time with his private practice. He also goes to team meetings, talks to players at practices, and meets with the coaches and trainers. Hicks is currently on a ten-month contract, but sometimes his counseling falls into late spring or early fall, and he is available in the summer.

His first year as a sports psychologist started in 1989 with the OSU gymnastics team. Hicks’ wife, Jill, is an assistant coach.

“I started out kind of unofficial, helping out some girls," Hicks said. "Then I went from there to a paid basis. In January 1991, the athletic department opened it up to everyone."

In his private practice, which started in 1992, Hicks works with a combination of marriage and family counseling with individuals and couples. But his true love is working with the athletes at OSU.

“I’ve been in sports all my life," Hicks explained. "I feel that’s where my greatest expertise is because I started playing sports when I was six, and I’ve been involved with playing or coaching ever since. I can understand the pressures that they’re under being a full-time student and full-time athlete. It’s a ton of pressure. I’ve enjoyed helping athletes achieve that... reach their potential."

Hicks was an athlete at OSU in the late 1970s, so he knows what it is like from experience. He said this helps him relate to the athletes, and the athletes relate to him.

“I can let them know that I’ve been there," he said. "I know what it feels like to be injured and to have that pressure of competing on. I’ve been in the same place.”

Hicks started wrestling when he was six because his dad was a coach, and he was always surrounded by it. At Roseburg High School, he won five state championships (there are three wrestling styles each year), including the triple crown in his junior year. Hicks received many scholarship offers from colleges, but he chose to go to his birthplace, Corvallis.

“My dad came here and it was kind of the place to go back then. The best in the west," he said.

At OSU, in the 142-pound class, all Hicks did as a sophomore in 1976 was win the Pac-8 championship and achieve all-American status by finishing among the top eight nationally. In his junior year, Hicks was the Pac-10 champion again, but this time he was also the national champion. His senior year he was upset in the Pac-10 championships and finished second, but he came back to again be the national champion. Hicks said his greatest moment as an athlete was winning that second title.

“I'd been injured, been out a month with a knee injury, and came back and won it my second time," he said.

Hicks also met his wife during this time when she was a freshman on the OSU gymnastics team. They have now been married for 11 years and have three children.

After Hicks graduated from OSU with a B.S. in physical education, he coached wrestling at various high schools throughout the state and one year as an assistant at OSU. He then went back to OSU to get his master’s degree in counseling, which he received in 1990. During this time he was helping the OSU gymnastics team.

Hicks said that “sports psychologists” like himself are in a new field because, unlike psychologists, he is working with athletes with a combination of counseling and sports psychology.

"More and more schools see that they’ve got to provide something to help these kids make it through," Hicks said, adding that it doesn't look good to the program if athletes are dropping out for whatever reasons. Hicks praised the athletic department at OSU for caring about its athletes.

"They really want to take care of their athletes, not just use them and burn them out, but to take care of them as people," he said.

During his counseling with the athlete, Hicks concentrates on two different areas; the personal issues and the technical issues.

The personal issues include self-esteem, self-warmth, family issues, fear of failure, etc. It may be an eating disorder or sexual abuse that makes it difficult to concentrate under pressure, Hicks said.

The technical issues refer to the sport: team relationships, positive motivation, dealing with success and failure as a team and individual, relationships with coaches and players, dealing with the media and fans, and learning how to protect yourself as a "star." The two, however, are interrelated.

“We go back and forth," Hicks said. “They are like two side-by-side roads that we are traveling down.”

Hicks said that his private practice and OSU practice are different, but the needs are the same. With both, it is important to help them feel good about themselves and who they are as a person. Sometimes it is harder for athletes, though, because they are in the public eye.

“That can be really hard when the pressure brings the personal issues right to the forefront," he said, adding that some people are good at handling it while others are not.

The ultimate goal for Hicks is that an athlete comes to OSU and leaves more fulfilled, more secure and ready to go onto life prepared. Hicks said that he wants students to have the support that he did not have as an athlete almost 20 years ago. Of the 16 wrestlers on the team his freshman year at OSU, only four survived at the end.

"My underline goal is to help every athlete that comes in to work through the personal issues and be supported… irregardless of how they did," said Hicks."

Hicks works on changing the definition that our culture lives by, which is how many points did you score or how many games did you win.

“I try to redefine that and change the goal to being 100 percent, giving the best that you have,” Hicks explained. "Did I give everything I had? If they can answer yes, then they walk away a winner.”

Hicks said that it is much more difficult for teenagers today because they have a lot more to think about than they did 20 years ago. The hardest part for him is seeing how much pain there is in people’s lives. Hicks blames a weaker family structure, drugs and AIDS.

“Almost everybody I see has got things they’re struggling with. I never had to think about AIDS. There’s so much pressure that they come in with less personal resources available to them rather than coming in with both parents at home and having lots of support and being able to handle diversity," he said.

Hicks wishes the word of his counseling would get out so athletes would have more access to him, be more encouraged to come in, and feel more comfortable to do so. Athletes can be encouraged to see Hicks, but they cannot be required to.

“Sometimes it’s hard to get athletes to come in even though we know they're struggling because there is some kind of attitude that you’ve got to be macho and not come in," said Hicks.

When he is not busy with counseling, Hicks enjoys fishing, hunting, and playing city-league basketball and softball.