By Greyson Imm
For junior Emaline Handzel, mental health struggles from sports looked like uncontrollably crying on her drive back from volleyball practice three times a week for two months straight. For sophomore Morgan Anderson, it looked like constantly and obsessively comparing her abilities and scores to the other girls at dance team tryouts. For junior Ayden Beveridge-Calvin, it looked like mental burnout on a sport he used to love because of his coaches’ constant negativity.
These current and former student athletes — along with 130 others at East — report their mental health suffering at some point due to sports. Whether it be pressure from coaches, extreme anxiety before games or depression following injury, sports-induced mental struggles are prevalent among today’s youth.
In a poll conducted by the American College Health Association, 30% of 195,000 collegiate student athletes surveyed reported having felt depressed in the last year. In the same period, 50% reported overwhelming anxiety. One main cause is the pressure to perform at a high athletic level, according to the ACHA.
Pressure can come from parents, coaches, teammates or oneself, and can become unmanageable on top of homework, extracurriculars and social interactions.
Former East social worker Becky Wiseman, who is clinically licensed in sports medicine, has seen many cases of perfectionism and pressure-induced anxiety while working at East, Children’s Mercy and Sporting KC for the last 18 years.
“Typically, I'm working with a lot of really high-performing individuals, people who want to do well in every area of their lives,” Wiseman said. “They push themselves really hard. And not only in sports, but also in their classes and socially.”
This anxiety manifests itself differently in different people. For dancer and senior Ava Black, it was getting so nervous before big performances that she felt physically sick to her stomach, nausea and knots forming.
“It's definitely made my anxiety a lot worse,” Black said. “This past summer, I had dance nationals in Maryland, and I was so incredibly stressed for it that I would make myself feel super sick.”
Along with anxiety about sports performance, depression is the second most prevalent mental illness reported by collegiate and high school athletes. Recently brought to light by the suicides of three college athletes in the past year — soccer player Katie Meyer, cross country and track runner Sarah Schulze and softball player Lauren Bernett — depression is common among student athletes according to ACHA, even if it isn’t widely discussed.
In many cases, conditions like depression and anxiety in student athletes stem from not being able to play a sport, usually while injured or during offseason. Wiseman points out that it’s difficult to cope with mental illness when an athlete's coping mechanisms are intertwined with their sport. For example, she says when running cross country or playing soccer after school is how you unwind after a long day and process your emotions, it’s hard to replicate that without being able to do this activity.
Black's dependence on dance motivates her to continue training despite its toll on her mental health. Worrying about her ability compared to the other girls on top of balancing hours of homework from her AP classes and her work schedule made her feel burnt out, but she continued to do it because she says dance is like “a piece of her.”
“[Dance has] made me really upset, and I've wanted to quit a lot because it's just so stressful, and it’s caused me so much anxiety,” Black said. “But dance is who I am. When people think of me, they're like, ‘Oh yeah, she's a dancer.’”
Black isn’t alone. In an Instagram poll of 131 East student athletes, 61% say that they’ve felt depressed after not being able to play a sport, usually due to injury or involuntary breaks.
For student athletes struggling with depression and anxiety, Wiseman recommends setting aside time specifically reserved for relaxation in order to develop other non-athletic hobbies for well-roundedness and balance. This, she says, is the difference between feeling victimized by a busy athletic and academic schedule and feeling empowered by it.
“An athlete's depression can be just as debilitating as anyone else's,” Wiseman said.
“The difference is that sometimes, they just don't have the time or bandwidth to take a look at it until things slow down.”
More conversations surrounding the subject of athletes' mental health are coming to light, including gymnast Simone Biles’s decision to not perform in the Olympics and swimmer Michael Phelps’s openness is his struggle with depression. Wiseman hopes these conversations transfer to high schoolers to normalize athletes asking for help.
“We're having a discussion, which to me, is so helpful because that’s really important, saying ‘I don't want to sit here in shame, quietly suffering and not letting anyone know what's going on,’” Wiseman said. “So I think athletes coming forward and saying, ‘This is something I experienced, and this is really difficult at times,’ is huge.”