I was doing some reading this weekend about burnout in college sports and came across a great article that compiled a series of opinions from psychologists, coaches, and players. The entire series was fascinating and gave a great insight into how different positions view burnout and mental health in athletics. It's hard to pick out a specific quote to highlight because every paragraph promoted an equally important message, but one that stuck out to me in the very beginning is below.
“The pressures of being a student-athlete are immense. They don’t start in college. They start in high school when they’re trying to get to college.” - Former MLB pitcher and sports psychologist Bob Tewksbury.
We have incredible initiatives at the college level to address existing struggles, but when more and more student-athletes are having to deal with mental health struggles, anxiety, and burnout in their youth career I feel it's important that we do everything we can to help prepare for or prevent these struggles from forming by proactively empowering youth athletes to make life decisions for more than just athletics.
The vast majority of initiatives I hear about today start at the college level and are aimed at reducing or controlling the anxiety, depression, and eating disorders that are famous for striking the student-athlete population. Rarely do I hear about initiatives that start in high school or at the youth level, and I think it’s because we have an idea that parents are managing that part of the process until students go to college. The reality is that parents can sometimes be a core source of that anxiety because of kids’ desires to please their parents, and they’re traditionally not equipped to help kids manage those emotions in a professional setting.
If we’re comfortable admitting that these problems start with youth or high school athletes, then we should be comfortable admitting that those demographics need access to help too. If we work on providing effective coping strategies and destigmatize these feelings that all athletes deal with to some extent at some point in their career, then student-athletes will enter college better prepared to manage adversity both on and off the field.
We have to celebrate and empower the individual, not just the athlete.
