The Student-Athlete Pursuit of Wellbeing

From the outside looking in, even within our closest circle of teammates and friends, we fail to recognize when someone is having thoughts they don’t intend to have. It may be apparent, that we laugh together in the locker room, on the bus, and in hotels, joke around with each other at our over-filled homes, showing off our best lives to our social media followers. All of a sudden, we are ambushed by butterflies in our stomachs and shocked to hear from someone else that one of our own, one of our supposedly ‘closest’ teammates or friends are struggling to resist thoughts that he or she does not intend to have. Too often we are blindsided by our teammate’s sudden struggles, and this is all but a recurring theme in college sports. We romantically fall in love with what we expect the college experience to look like, yet we may fail to find the purpose, or contentment in the experience itself. Our alternate reality is somewhat fictitious and a distant manifestation of the real world. Within this environment, we are conditioned to seek the moments of sensations that satisfy our thirst for fulfilling the hole within us, driven by pure adrenaline. The short bursts of instant gratification from winning games to physically exerting oneself in pre-season, to the social extravaganza are all that is desirable and without the chase, we feel empty. During the peak, it’s as though we are living on cloud 9, but as we find ourselves with a minute to spare only with our thoughts to cling to, we try to avoid the recognition that there’s a mild imbalance in our mental health stability. The extreme emotions of joy and despair, the expectations that we place on ourselves, our experience, and a lack of productive conversations amongst us, if not managed delicately, mix for a wicked cocktail, all too intoxicating for our wellbeing.

Considering recent events in the student-athlete community, mental health perhaps is not talked about critically enough amongst ourselves and requires a shining light to highlight its importance. I write this intending to increase awareness of student-athlete wellbeing and encourage current and former student-athletes, to create a space where vulnerable conversations are the norm, avoiding any means of negligence to the issue. There’s no doubt that mental health is an issue in college sports. According to the NCAA, a 2019 survey found that approximately 30% of female and 25% of male student-athletes, report having anxiety, yet only 10% seek professional counsel. The overly concerning conclusion and the point we need to investigate together is why do we not feel like we can talk about our challenges to our peers and support networks?

The Foundation

It begins within the foundations of our experience. We start by having a set of idealized expectations of what our experience should look like driven by the content we consume from social media and what we hear from our friends. This is partly my fault, as I manipulate the narrative to only show the glorified side, corrupting the younger generation to expect only the extravagances even if it is the furthest thing away from reality. It’s an escape for me when I have a bad day on the pitch to resort to the comfort of feeling externally validated through my social media profile. It’s kind of a life hack since it distracts me from dealing with my issues. I do it because it gives me a kick to show off and get comments feeding my self-esteem. I prefer to post myself winning championships and celebrating with the guys, without mentoring the younger generation about the beauty that lies within some of the worst moments, the reality. Some of the beauties lie in the challenges that we need to overcome such as getting 3 hours of sleep before a morning exam after a loss on the road the night before and then having a shocker at practice followed by being dropped from the starting 11 topped off with toxic arguments with teammates about something that will be irrelevant by end of the day. How do we deal with this? We escape into an alternate reality to take ourselves away from the present moment and focus our attention on what we could have or would have had if were not in this space.

External influences, combined with our expectations of the community lead us to be convinced that we need to live this flawless and perfect life. We are only human, yet we pressure ourselves to be the perfect version that someone else, whether it be our coaches, teachers, or teammates wants us to be. We are expected to be perfect in the classroom, perfect on gamedays, perfect in every facet of life and if we can’t, we fake it to keep everyone else happy. We don’t want to cause inconveniences, getting in the way of our game-day routine where the only thing that matters is the win. We are so consumed by the pursuit of perfection and external validation that we forget to recognize genuine gestures of affection from our teammates, or we fail to show that same affection to someone that really needs it.

The Culture

Perhaps the pressure can be attributed to our culture where we primarily value results and outcomes, where our success is defined by wins and losses on the field or letter grades in the classroom. By doing so, we forget to appreciate the process in between. It’s no longer about the intention but the result at the end of 90 minutes which drives the direction of our conversations. When we’re winning games, we assume everyone is all right, and all it takes is a costly mistake on the field to ask our teammates if something is wrong. Why do we have to wait until we lose to invest in our teammate’s well-being albeit only because we want to foster a winning culture? We win a championship and experience sensations of pure euphoria for a few hours and without the opportunity to reflect or celebrate we move on to training for the next championship, emptying the tank again to chase those few precious moments of ecstasy, thinking that this is going to bring us true happiness. We hide from our emotional needs by channeling that inner emptiness into the chase. But is our experience really a success if all we can hold onto is a ring to symbolize it?

The way the landscape is set, combining our culture with the societal pressures, along with our edgy personalities causes us to ride our extreme highs and lows. In doing so we crave the feeling of thrill, and the adrenaline sets us up for a mind of chaos when really all we need is a little bit of stillness. We crave high levels of dopamine and when we are starved of the natural highs from sport, we look for any other means to feed our addicting personality. We get addicted to the highs and adrenaline rushes from gamedays, to even feeling addicted to the lows and bouncing back to the social extravaganza. If we were to visualize the ebbs and flows on a trend graph it would resonate only peaks and troughs with minimal stability in between. Amid the inner and outer pressures, we lose ourselves in the pursuit of our goals and desires which we think will provide us happiness, and instead push ourselves to the edge of our mental capacity until we fall off.

The Way Forward

There’s no doubt that the various stimulants can be a driving force in causing unease within our community. Whilst there is no quick fix, what we can do together is increase awareness and accept that there is some cultural issues within our space, but also an opportunity to unite in times of adversity. What we can do is focus our intentions to alleviate such issues and create a wholesome and inclusive environment for our teammates and friends. Wouldn’t it be pleasant, to no longer hear our underclassmen looking forward to the experience being finished when they are supposed to be having the best time of their life, or our seniors, just waiting to go toe to toe with the younger generation over petty things that don’t make the experience fruitful for anyone? The arguments we have with each other to save our social pride will be irrelevant in a few years’ time, but the experience will always stay with us.

The true beauty of our experiences lies in the finer moments when we spread our positive energy. Perhaps we can focus our attention on the fact that we organically interact with people from all walks of life, young and old, whether it be a freshman or senior, with different cultures, different challenges and different goals. We should encourage conversations amongst ourselves and make it a norm to be vulnerable with each other. It shouldn’t take a losing streak to check on our teammate’s wellbeing but periodic check-ins regardless of sporting outcomes where we show genuine interest and appeal to the human-being behind the brave athlete front. We can also reform our values, so we are not only driven by the outcomes, but rather the intentions and process of developing over a wholesome 4-year college career, finding joy in small gestures from our teammates and stillness. It simply might be a few hours of tranquility on the bus after a big road trip weekend, contemplating on how lucky we are to travel around the country with our best mates doing what we love. I encourage all of us to also assume the best in each other and never feel undervalued by our teammates. If you’re in a team where you don’t feel comfortable sharing things, then the culture of the team may require to be reformed. By the end of our athletic careers, our achievements are worthless unless we have our teammates to share the experience with years down the line, which in the long run will aid in keeping us sane.

Personally, all my athletic achievements would be worthless if I could not share that with my teammates and reminisce. It’s beautiful when we can feel included and relate to someone else’s struggles and feats, and not feel isolated. The value of winning games and championships is absent if it comes at the cost of having toxic relationships with our teammates, coaches, and friends, and we don’t enjoy the process. I encourage all of us to diversify our experiences and networks, so we don’t feel like a prisoner, shackled to our athletic identities and expectations. Seek purpose, challenges, and joy in talking to someone that doesn’t sound or look like us and get involved in spaces where our impact has nothing to do with our athletic career, and share wholesome stories with our teammates. Maybe one wholesome anecdote is all it takes to inspire or pull our mate out of the dark hole.

The paradox of our times is that we are literally never alone physically, surrounded by our teammates, 24 hours a day, yet internally we can feel so alone, as we disguise ourselves acutely and blend in with the core of the team, to avoid being a burden. I hope we can all be a little more aware of mental well-being and be mindful of our teammates going forward. Regardless of how well we might think we know one of our teammates, we never really know what they may be experiencing internally, so take a step back to be gentle and mindful even amongst all the noise that the student-athlete life brings. Let’s create meaningful cultural change in our community and look after our mates :)