In the LHS community, we have so many sports and high-achieving students with a lot of things on their plate, in the last few years, we have had a lot of advocacy for mental health in the sports industry we have heard recognition of the common problem from professional athletes like Simone Biles, Michael Phelps, and Naomi Osaka all of them recognizing the mental turmoil that athletes go through. So now we take into account the extra stress that is added when you are a high school student with hours of your day being demanded before and after school most days of the week.
To see where we stand as a community, I ran a survey with 6 questions. Here are the results: 53.1% of respondents thought that mental health in athletics is not talked about enough. which is an alarming number, but matches the statistics that 30% of student athletes experience mental health issues across the nation. Respondents were also asked if they found it difficult to balance the expectations of teachers and coaches and it was found that 81.3% said yes. A comment that I received from an anonymous person was. “I feel like a lot of coaches try to talk about mental health, but just end up talking about solutions to emotions instead of actually helping with your mental state or burnout you are experiencing.” When asked about whether coaches create a space to talk about your mental health.
Which is a problem when we talk about the negative emotions and feelings that athletes face. For example, 90.6% of respondents said yes when asked if they had ever felt like they weren’t “good enough” or “not having any success.” When thoughts like that aren’t being fully addressed, the mind can become a dangerous place, and we can’t claim to be offering support to all of our students if a vast majority do not feel heard. While participating in sports has several benefits, including physical and mental, we cannot ignore the pressure that it takes to balance both school and sports.
Although it is great that we are seeing coaches and teams trying to work towards creating an environment where mental health and struggles are discussed. It’s not a linear experience across the board for all sports and students, and we need to do more to raise awareness and create spaces so that those necessary conversations aren’t uncomfortable and more people receive the support they need.
