How are student athletes in New Orleans coping with chronic stress?
For athletes, knowing when to push and when to rest can make or break mental health. What can we as a community learn from their experiences?
Behind This Story
This article is part of "Get Ya Mind Right," a multimedia content series and event exploring mental wellness and mental health care access in New Orleans. The series was produced by the Fall 2022 Lede New Orleans Community Reporting Fellows who spent 16 weeks researching, completing interviews and documenting local stories around mental health and mental wellness. If you or someone you know is struggling or in crisis, help is available. Call or text 988 or chat 988lifeline.org
By Skylar Stephens
Kaleb Huggins is a smiling face on the Xavier University of Louisiana campus. Huggins, 18, grew up in Zachary, La. Now a freshman studying psychology and a Xavier basketball player, he is positive, charismatic, and confident. On or off the court, Huggins exudes energy, always walking with his head high and giving encouraging words to those around him. He also supports mental health discussions.
This is rare, since many college athletes express discomfort when discussing mental health. According to the American College of Sports Medicine, only 10% of student athletes seek help regarding mental health. Even with the pressure of being great both in school and sports, student athletes hold back from seeking help due to stigma.
“When discussing mental health and being an athlete, the excuses are limited because you signed up for this,” Huggins said. “So you have to make it work for you.”
Huggins doesn’t feel comfortable talking to just anyone when it comes to his own mental health. As he faces sleep deprivation, time lost with family and friends, and being away from home due to his busy student athlete schedule, support is important. Fortunately, Huggins knows he can always turn to his mother for support. Similarly, he encourages other athletes to identify their support system and have difficult conversations so they can clear their minds, allowing them to stay present in their games and lives in general.
Having a support system is critical for athletes like Huggins, because without an outlet for mental frustrations they continue circling in the mind, creating a negative emotional state.
However, talking about mental health isn’t always enough. What is being done for athletes when the game is just too much and talking about it isn’t helping? The reality is that sometimes, the best choice may be to walk away from the game altogether. This is exactly what some pro athletes are doing.
Vontae Davis is one of those athletes who decided to walk away. In 2018, after 10 years in the game and worrying about injuries and protecting himself, he was “mentally finished.”
His decision came one football Sunday in Buffalo, New York. About 70,000 fans had filled the stands to watch the Buffalo Bills and Los Angeles Chargers play in week two of that year’s NFL season. As halftime concluded, the players returned to finish the last half of the game. Figures in red, white, blue, and gold rushed back onto the field. Except one: Davis.
On September 16, 2018, Davis quit the season abruptly during that game’s halftime. At only age 30, he was done. In his official statement, Davis said that his retirement was for the sake of his own health.
“Do I want to keep sacrificing? Truthfully, I do not because the season is long, and it’s more important for me and my family to walk away healthy than to willfully embrace the warrior mentality and limp away too late,” Davis said in a statement. His words underscored that too often fans hold athletes to higher standards, forgetting they are human.
Professional and student athletes alike deal with stress in their lives that we don’t see when we watch them in action, some from their chosen sport.
“If I want to be the best at my sport and possibly earn more money for my scholarship to help me, there’s a sacrifice that I have to make. But I feel like sometimes you reach a point where you say ‘enough is enough, and I’m ready to take care of me,’” said Karrington Stewart, a sophomore on the track team at XULA.
“I feel like sometimes you reach a point where you say ‘enough is enough, and I’m ready to take care of me.’”
– Karrington Stewart, student athlete
Stewart has been running track for 10 years, but has had some experiences that have taken her love away from the sport. She’s had to miss out on events and other student organizations because of prioritizing being a student athlete. After multiple injuries, Stewart has decided to part ways with student athletics.
Although she plans to no longer compete, she will continue to run recreationally because it’s what she loves–a move Stewart hopes will improve her work-life balance and overall mental health.
There are many factors that can affect an athlete’s mental state. Student athletes deal with social stigmas, pressure to be the best, and the mental drain of physical injuries. This chronic pressure not only affects well-being, but also may lead to physical pain. According to the National Center for Biotechnology Information, chronic stressors lead to issues such as muscle pains, weak immune systems, changes in blood pressure, anxiety, and more. The longer they go without caring for their mental health, the worse the consequences become, putting athletes at risk of issues like heart problems, strokes, damage to memory, and declining ability to concentrate.
Experts suggest stress management is essential to maintaining high levels of performance on and off the field.
“Without intervention, stress tends to lead to breakdowns of both mind and body. Many chronic medical issues have some sort of connection to long term stress,” said Edward Simon, a doctor of clinical psychology. “A daily practice of cognitive behavioral therapeutic exercises like meditation, yoga, and consistent talk therapy can help folks stay ahead of the stress curve.”
Athletes are not the only ones who face chronic stress in their everyday lives. Many of us relate to being firmly committed to a high-level stressor. Most times, it’s not as easy as just walking away. College students often find the workload gets overwhelming and it’s hard to go to class everyday, but soldering on is necessary for maintaining grades and keeping scholarships. For single parents, it’s hard to work full time and come home to being a full time parent, but neither parenting nor career can just be walked away from. Many people work in jobs that are physically demanding, like factory or construction work, and workers may want to flee the mental and physical pain of the job–an impossibility when the job is supporting you and your family.
These are just a few of the chronically draining situations many of us face, identical to the stress student athletes face but cannot walk away from.
Even in the most demanding situations, it is important that we take care of ourselves. When we are unable to sever the chronic stress in our lives, it is essential to talk to our support systems, seek comfort in therapeutic exercises, or take a break when able. If we allow our daily lives to chip away at our mental health without restoring peace of mind with evidence-based strategies, we’ll have nothing left to give.
Skylar Stephens is a Fall 2022 Community Reporting Fellow with Lede New Orleans. Stephens, 19, is a journalist, emerging photographer and a student at Xavier University. She grew up in Canton, Ohio. She writes for the Xavier Herald and recently completed a fellowship with the Black and Missing Foundation.
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