Pete Scales,
Senior Contributor

Peter C. Scales, Ph.D., RSPA, PTR, USTA Coaching, “Coach Pete,” was for 50 years an internationally known developmental psychologist and researcher specializing in positive youth development (drpeterscales.com). He created the acclaimed Compete-Learn-Honor™ Approach to youth sports person and player development and coaching (competelearnhonor.com), is a certified tennis teaching pro by the Racquet Sports Professional Association, Professional Tennis Registry, and U.S. Tennis Association Coaching, and is a certified Safe Play tennis provider by the U.S. Tennis Association. He has been a boys and girls high school tennis coach at Parkway South High in Manchester, Missouri since 2008, and mental strength consultant for college tennis teams, high-performance tennis juniors, and adult top 10 world-ranked pickleball pros.

He was Senior Fellow at the positive youth development research firm Search Institute for 30 years, from 1995 until his retirement in June 2025. In his 50+-year career in positive youth development he was nationally known in each of several fields as a leading sexuality education researcher and advocate, child abuse prevention executive and policymaker, researcher and advocate for young adolescents and middle school reform, researcher in developmental assets, thriving, spiritual development, and developmental relationships, and most recently, known nationally as a thought leader in the youth sports world. At Search, Dr. Scales became one of the leading researchers and authors in the world on the Developmental Assets Framework and approach, making it the most-cited positive youth development framework in the world, helped create Search’s Developmental Assets Profile survey and led international teams in its translation into more than 30 languages in more than 30 countries around the world. He has been the author of hundreds of articles, chapters, and books, including more than 110 peer-reviewed papers, 43 scholarly books and policy reports, 38 scholarly book chapters, been a peer reviewer for dozens of scholarly journals, and consultant and speaker for hundreds of state, regional, and national organizations.

Coach Pete’s mental game column, “The Bench,” appears regularly in Racquet Sports Industry magazine, the flagship publication of the industry, and he also does a regular mental game column for the National Alliance for Youth Sports. His and his wife Martha’s “Winning the Mental Game of Pickleball” video course is available on BetterPickleball.com. Coach Pete is the author of the award-winning books Mental and Emotional Training for Tennis: Compete-Learn-Honor (Coaches Choice, 2019), which the National High School Tennis Coaches Association called “one of the best books ever on the mental game,” and The Compete-Learn-Honor™ Playbook: Simple Steps to Take Your Mental & Emotional Tennis & Pickleball Game to a New Level (Coaches Choice, 2023), which BetterPickleball calls a “masterclass” in the mental game. Both books are available on Amazon.

In fall 2025, he and his wife Martha established the Compete-Learn-Honor Scholarship for tennis students at South High who exemplify the values of Compete, Learn, and Honor, with donations accepted through the Parkway Alumni Association https://alumni.parkwayschools.net/students/scholarships/compete-learn-honor-scholarship. Coach Pete’s future focus in positive youth development is to bring the Compete-Learn-Honor approach to every youth sports coach in America. He can be reached at coachpetementgame@gmail.com.