Some of the stressors and expectations are tangible; others are not. Though it defies logic, many young athletes, on signing a college letter of intent, convince themselves that the hardest work is behind them. They understand there will be practices and training once they get to campus, but this may be seen as maintenance. The toughest work—the development of skill through thousands of hours of practice—has already been completed. Now it’s payoff time, an opportunity to be celebrated on a bigger stage. Also, most college scholarships (of the nonathletic kind) reward prior achievement; once a student arrives on campus, there are no daily expectations, though many academic scholarships do require the maintenance of a specified grade-point level. The time commitment for a student-athlete often ranges to twenty-five-plus hours a week. And it’s grueling, exhausting work that tests your character and resilience during a time—freshman year of college—when those attributes are often at their lowest levels.
Until recently, the majority of athletic departments weren’t proactive or preventive; they simply reacted as best they could if an athlete had a mental health issue. Now some schools are trying to equip kids with the tools to strengthen their minds, to handle their emotions. At Texas Christian University, the athletic department administers a mental health baseline assessment for each athlete before the beginning of the season. A number of universities are doing the same. This way, if an athlete’s behavior changes, the trainer has a way of evaluating whether it’s significantly different than it used to be. “Most of college athletics is: ‘Can he run, can he jump, can he shoot?’” says TCU athletic director Chris Del Conte. “And the whole part of the kid is lost. What do you do with the whole of the kid, with those with eating disorders, with the cutters? It’s amazing that coaches are not prepared to deal with this stuff. So a lot of times you have to help them help themselves. ‘Let me take this off your hands,’ or, ‘This is how you have to deal with this. I know performance is the greatest thing you’re looking for, but here’s what we need to do to get there.’ Some of our coaches get it already. Other coaches, it’s foreign to them.”
Molly McNamara ran cross-country and track for Stanford while also struggling with depression. She wrote a piece for the NCAA touching on issues of perfection, injury, toughness, depression, and empathy. At first Molly felt she was unique in her struggle, until she looked around and realized that a number of other athletes at Stanford were dealing with stressors—all coping in various ways. She told herself, “I am not imagining this… this is actually a big issue.” And as Molly recognized, runners, like Madison, often battled their minds in a distinctive way:
“How do you survive those less-than-perfect situations when discipline isn’t enough? When grittiness gets you through the workouts but can’t seem to get you through the rest of the day? As a runner, you’re highly in tune with your body, and you know its highs and lows; you know your normal aches and pains, and you know when you should probably see the athletic trainer. Learning the highs and lows of your mind is much harder.”
CHAPTER 4
Vacuum
When Ashley was a student at Penn State, she was unhappy, out of place—a feeling that started the day she arrived on campus. During her first semester, she would spend the weekdays at school trying as best she could to make it work, then right after her final class on Friday, she would drive home to Allendale—three and a half hours each way. Once she turned onto her street and walked in the door of the house, she felt like her old self again—happy, carefree, stable.
Maddy was a junior in high school then, Mackenzie a freshman. Maddy could not comprehend that Ashley did not love college. Even though nothing Ashley said could make her understand, Maddy still pressed her, asking questions as if her older sister’s life was a social science experiment.
“So, just to clarify, you’re telling me you don’t like college,” Maddy said.
“Yes.”
“Huh,” said Maddy.
Of course, once Madison was a few months into her own freshman year, she started asking Ashley different questions about how she had felt at Penn State, and, more important, how she had felt when she wasn’t at Penn State.
“Tell me again: What was it like when you were at school?” Maddy asked.
“I was just unhappy; I didn’t feel like myself.”
“Okay, and how did you feel when you came home?”
“Happy—like myself again.”
Maddy looked down. “Oh,” she whispered.
Madison was trying to decide whether transferring was the solution. Everyone in her immediate family seemed to believe she just needed to leave Penn. They had all come up with the same superficial solution: a change of scenery, trading the inner-city vibe of Penn for something more laid-back, maybe in the South. Maddy went back and forth. She was texting all her high school friends, even the ones she wasn’t that close to, about how much she hated Penn. Yet when Maddy heard that Jim was telling his buddies she wasn’t enjoying school, she went to Stacy and said, “Please tell Dad not to do that.”
Maddy seemed intent on controlling her own message, even if she had a tenuous grip on what that message was. Part of her wanted to believe the solution was as simple as transferring, but when she tested that logic with Ashley, she found it wanting.
“And how do you feel when you’re at school?” Ashley would ask Maddy.
“I hate it.”
“Okay, but then when you come home, how do you feel?”
“I’m still unhappy,” Madison would say. “Nothing seems to make it better.”
“That’s just not how I felt at Penn State. I knew the problem was with the school, because the second I left campus, I was happy again.”
“I’m not happy anywhere.”
“That’s different.”
“Yeah, it is.”
Maddy didn’t want to leave Penn since she knew the unhappiness was not simply environmental. She knew that whatever she was suffering from was being carried inside her. Escaping it—escaping herself—was impossible; everywhere she went, the unhappiness came, too. What if she did trick herself into believing a different set of buildings and new logo would fix what was happening? What if she did transfer, but then nothing changed? What if she was walking around that new school, the pain as sharp as ever? That would be scarier than never leaving Penn at all. Living with a ghost is frightening enough, but if you change houses to escape it and the ghost is present in the new space, then you’ve confirmed that it’s not the house the ghost is haunting. It’s you.