Student-Athlete(-Human)

Discovering Who Exists Behind The Plaques, Banners and Trophies

The NCAA analyzed the results of a survey taken by 19,000 student-athletes:

“Emotional abuse appears to be a greater concern, with 10 percent overall report having been in an emotionally abusive relationship. In all, 22 percent of those who claim having experienced difficulties in an intimate relationship report emotional abuse… while college student-athletes do struggle with depression and anxiety, the data indicate they are less likely than their non-athlete peers to report issues with either.”

Rarely does the student-athlete find themselves at the helm of their own ship. Parents, coaches and mentors undertake the advancement of their career, establishing networks, allocating funds and managing time. The student-athlete is simply responsible for showing up and working hard; a smile, also, doesn’t hurt. For them, performing under pressure becomes natural, and performing under the pressures of anxiety and depression becomes instinctive.

Coping, then, becomes imperative.

We’ve all been warned about the alcohol, the drugs and the self-harm. Films, TV shows and magazines shove these coping mechanisms in our faces as the trophy signs of anxiety and depression. Emotional abuse, on the other hand, is not so respected.

An athlete, already hesitant to admit that they struggle behind the scenes of their athletic performances, may, then, find it challenging to identify and validate emotional abuse as an issue worth seeking help over.

I hit college as a highly-conditioned “student-athlete”, fearlessly confident in my starry-eyed vision for the future; it was shaped by the plaques, banners and trophies that crowded the windows of the Peterson Athletic Complex.

Jump forward to my first Saturday night at Middlebury, shortly after a dominant win against Amherst — a dark suite, twenty senior boys, music blasting, everyone dancing and laughing and singing — except me. I watched, hesitantly, and wondered why I felt so ill-equipped for this situation.

I utilized many outlets in the upcoming months to release my anxiety, leading myself aimlessly down a series of dark holes. Perhaps the darkest of which was a relationship that I now consider emotionally abusive.

My vulnerability, shimmering like shiny bait for anyone with a manipulative agenda, caught exactly that. The heights my emotions reached under the control of this relationship, and the depths they plummeted to, formed an extremely addictive pattern of abuse.

I seized every opportunity to eclipse my internal struggle with external success. I pushed through two field hockey and two ice hockey seasons, adding two plaques and two trophies to the glass cases of the Peterson Athletic Complex. These feats constructed a well-polished façade, successfully hiding the pressure I was facing outside of sports.

However, my close friends were not convinced.

“It’s like a mental massage.”

“Your parents and coaches don’t need to know.”

“They can’t give you meds, but it’s still worth going.”

These are some of the ways that they nudged me in the direction of counseling. I nodded and smiled as my mind auto-filled with a rolling script of all the reasons I shouldn’t go.

‘Tough it out, dude. Don’t let anyone know what you’re thinking. Get knocked down, get right back up. Put your nose to the grindstone, and don’t look up. That is how you were raised.’

I leaned heavily on sports to keep me moving forward. Building up wall after wall, I attempted to compartmentalize the depression and protect this sacred space in my life.

But when it came to game day, I began to notice that the stakes felt the highest long before the pass-back and puck-drop. It was in those pre-game hours that I battled the panic, uncertainty and addiction of this relationship. Frantically, I followed the faulty GPS of my anxious mind, trying to rid myself of the temptation to worry about anything other than the game ahead.

At one point, I expressed this struggle to my dad. As any dad would, he told me to throw my phone in a lake.

It was true that my phone served as the main access point for emotional manipulation, but I feared that if I shut it off, even for two hours, I would lose the relationship that I was suffering to maintain. That is how strong of a hold it had on my mind.

Exhaustion posed as a more intimidating competitor than anxiety; at least anxiety produced adrenaline, which could be transferred into on-field and on-ice aggression. Exhaustion, however, was not so versatile. It taunted me, making me painfully aware of how severely this relationship was exploiting my energy sources.

Home for the summer, I followed the advice of my dad the best I could. Deleting, blocking and ignoring were sufficient protections — and so was the 3000 miles of space between my Portland, OR home and Middlebury, VT. I realized when I got back to school, though, that emotional manipulation is a lot more plausible in a place where seeing someone four times a day is not considered a coincidence.

It wasn’t long into my junior year that my tank hit empty. I no longer held the same starry-eyed vision that I had persistently pursued in the years prior. I decided it was in my best interest to end my ice hockey career.

The expected consequences hit hard: regret, guilt, shame.

My parents, coaches and mentors were surprised by the decision. My friends and teammates, who had an up close and personal view of the car-crash-like relationship I was involved in, were certainly not. In both cases, I received floods of support.

Perhaps the most significant support, though, came from my own self.

I lost the one thing — the stone cold proof of my ability to commit and achieve — that I had invested unfathomable amounts of time, energy and money into. I no longer could mask my discomfort with the plaques, banners and trophies, and this loss exposed me as the broken human that existed behind them.

Recognizing myself as a human was both challenging and invigorating. I thought that ice hockey, a heavy-contact sport, was the aspect of my life that posed the most opportunity for harm. Little did I know, my self-ignorance was much more harmful.

I invested in yoga, meditation and massages, understanding the importance of strengthening both my body and my mind. I signed up for counseling, admitting my ineptness in living a non-athletic life. In turn, I became mindful of myself as a human.

This wellness opened my eyes to the value of intentional and habitual self-care; the return was much higher than that of the emotionally abusive relationship I soon rid myself of.

And this awakening of sorts occurred just in time for me to face my next opponent: the real world.

I spent a lot of my senior year attempting to grip the nerve-racking journey of finding a job. The flow of rejection letters can only be compared to a shot-blocking practice — each one stinging a little more than the last. When the anxiety began to boil, I fell back on my new self-protections.

I gave myself time to breathe. I grounded myself with meditation. I went to counseling. I admitted to myself, over and over again, that I was human.

Within a week, I got my first job offer.

It’s a humbling experience, as a student-athlete, to learn that you are a human. To learn that improving yourself every day is not just a phenomenon that occurs in a weight room. To learn that success is not just what is written down on a statistics sheet. To learn that commitment to a team also requires commitment to yourself.

As athletes, we are too often praised for being selfless. We jump too eagerly to our go-to mottos of “we before me” and “the name on the front of the jersey is a hell of a lot more important than the name on the back.”

It’s time we begin to teach ourselves and each other how to be selfish. It’s time we learn how to identify and admit to unhealthy patterns when we see them and ask for help when we need it — especially from our own selves.

That is teamwork. That is commitment. That is success.