By Sixx Orange
Duce Robinson is a two-sport sophomore athlete competing on the baseball and football team. This is not unheard of, to play two division 1 sports, but times have been unique for Robinson. The home field of USC baseball has been demolished to make room for an additional football practice field. This has forced USC baseball to travel to Irvine, CA, an hour at least away from campus, for every home game series. Put simply, being a part of this team means you are traveling nearly every single weekend to compete in their sport. For Robinson, this unexpected challenge has made his sports furthermore time consuming. When his sports overlap, the days are full.
“I get up at 4:20 a.m. and have football practice at 5:00 in the morning and then I'll usually have school or a lift. I will then have some sort of academic meeting. Then I’ll get on a bus with baseball to go play at Great Park or LMU, do warm ups, play the game, and then bus ride back. We're usually back here at campus by 11:00 p.m.,” said Robinson.
Robinson believes that time management has been crucial to his success and feels that he has a good support system to keep him on track. But regardless, becoming slightly overwhelmed is inevitable. For Robinson, that resides on the academic end.
“I chose to play two sports so, I'll never feel like I can do enough of that stuff,” said Robinson. “I feel it more on the school side where I might have just gotten done with a long day, but I have to come home and do Spanish homework and I just don't feel like doing it but it's what's able to keep me being able to play. So, I acknowledge that it's a part of it and it comes with doing what I want to do and trying to get what I want to get out of life.”
Adjusting to this balance is one thing, but adjusting to college in general is another and it poses challenges to anyone. And at a university as prestigious as USC, expectations are high, especially within each self. For student-athletes, the outside noise can be difficult to deal with but the biggest critic is themselves and one that they cannot escape.
“I tried to extend myself too far and expected too much of myself last year, especially with it being my freshman year,” said Robinson. “I faced a lot of disappointment just from self expectation and how I perceived myself and what I thought I should be doing. Pressure is a privilege but I think we also put too much pressure on ourselves at some points.”
Technological advancements and the fast growing phenomenon of social media has resulted in a new hurdle for student-athletes these days. These athletes are continually subjected to criticism and judgment on their social platforms leaving them to have to fend for themselves even more than they already do.
“Just based on human nature, someone could say 10 good things about you, but one negative comment is the one that you're going to focus on,” said Robinson. “Speaking from personal experience, I put so much value into what people were saying about me on social media, and I've been trying to be a lot better about it, but there were points when I would put so much value into what someone was saying about me on social media that it's literally how I viewed myself as a person.”
There is a massive juxtaposition in the idea of college athletes being well-known figures. It is extraordinarily glamorized from the outside because all eyes are on you as a college student but those same sought after eyes and attention are what torments these young athletes.
“We're normal human beings. We were born, we grew up, just like every single normal student here,” said Robinson.
The general public may wonder how hard the life of a paid student-athlete may be and what they could possibly struggle with.
“We all go through hard times, that doesn't make it any less,” said Robinson.
The conversation regarding mental health in collegiate athletic departments has been around for some time but it is not a one-size-fits-all topic. It differentiates drastically between genders, sports, ages, etc. Robinson attests to the fact that addressing a growing mental health issue as a male in an environment where the tough exterior stigma is very prevalent can be and is difficult.
“Just being able to speak from a male's point of view, we want to give the perception that everything is okay and I think in our minds, we think we're weaker if we feel the need to speak out about stuff or talk to someone but that couldn't be further from the truth,” said Robinson.
The fallout of mental exhaustion is inevitable for anyone at any time but claustrophobic societal stigmas, especially in the locker room of a division 1 football team, will creep up on these athletes.
“I think it's really important that we talk about stuff, because I've seen it happen before, all the stuff that we go through, it just builds up, and stress manifests itself in different ways, but at some point you're going to start to break down,” said Robinson.
Somewhere in between the lines of his chaotic schedule, Robinson finds the time to sit down and debrief with the university psychiatrist.
“I go see one of the sports people every week, just to talk, even if I feel like I'm good, even if everything's going well. There's been times where I've been in the best shape of my life but my mind hasn't been right,” said Robinson.
And while it is hard for anyone to seek help, Robinson believes that for male athletes to break the stigma, seeing one another step up and take care of their mental health will only inspire his peers around him. From a two-sport athlete and leading receiver, the advice is this:
“Talk. Talk to people. It's extremely difficult to do what we do.”
Callie Cirilli is a redshirt junior, veteran player on the women's lacrosse team here at Troy. Having been on this same team for her entire collegiate career, Cirilli has learned to great lengths what it takes to not only be a successful student-athlete but how to maintain your identity through it all. Cirilli has come upon a conclusion regarding the juggling act that is being a student-athlete that I advise her peers to listen to:
“I think no one's perfect, so there's always a point where you don't balance it, there's no such thing as balancing anything,” said Cirilli.
There seems to be a false idea that there is a full-proof method to juggling all of the responsibilities a student-athlete has. But to Cirilli, that is not the case. She has found ways to cope and navigate her way through this journey.
"What I always come back to is gratitude and the factor that I'm doing what my younger self always wished I could do,” said Cirilli. “It's definitely easier said than done but I always like to ground myself in gratitude and if there is a hard day, kind of coming back to why I'm here.”
A very common experience for athletes that needs to be understood is the natural growing pains individuals go through when transitioning into college but with the added adversity athletes have to endure. Right out of the gate as a freshman you are expected to prove yourself and exhibit that you belong on your team. That “test”, if you will, never ends. This expectation never dissipates.
“You're adapting to college in general but you’re also adapting to being on a college team, which is a huge thing because you go from being the best of the best in high school to then being like, you're great, but you're probably the worst on the best team in college,” said Cirilli.
During these times of adjustment where Cirilli rode the wave of highs and lows she really leaned into her support system, crediting her family as the reason she has maintained good mental health.
“For me, if I didn't have a strong support system, I honestly think that I'd be in a completely different place, maybe not even playing the sport anymore,” said Cirilli.
Having the capacity to constantly check in with herself has really grounded the lacrosse player in her purpose here, which can be easy to lose sight of in the moment.
“I remind myself that there's much bigger things to life than just my sport and it's something that I'm lucky that I get to wake up and play. I don't have to wake up and play,” said Cirilli.
In order for more student-athletes to have this honest and realistic mentality, it requires strong mental health.
Being very in touch with her head space throughout her athletic career, Cirilli has made some distinct observations specifically regarding student-athlete mental health and how it is tended to at this level. A lot of this comes from her close relationships to her teammates and her boyfriend who fittingly plays football at USC.
“I think the biggest thing is when you're on a college sports team, unless you're an individual sport, you're on a really big team so, a lot of the time, coaches aren't looking just at you,” said Cirilli. “If you're struggling, it's really hard for someone to pinpoint it.”
This is true and a very common issue within collegiate sports is how easy it is for an athlete to slip through the cracks and no one even notices until it is too late because there are so many athletes and so many blindspots. This is where not only the universities need to step in but the NCAA as well.
“I do think that the NCAA needs to universally create a space where if an athlete needs a space or some sort of resource, they can receive that,” said Cirilli.
That being said, a lot of schools like USC do have countless resources but is the conversation about the importance of mental health big enough for them to go utilize those resources?
“I think the biggest thing I've learned through this is, no matter what resources you have, it takes a lot within yourself to choose to use it,” said Cirilli. “The biggest challenge with mental health is for individuals to be able to understand themselves and know when they need the help or create a space where if someone knows that someone is struggling, they can go and help them.”
Miller Moss is one of the starting quarterbacks of this most recent season at USC as a redshirt junior. An athlete who has waited his turn to lead the Trojans at the Coliseum for five years now and has finally reached his goal and been granted the opportunity. But with that dream come true has come glimpses of nightmares. To have the honor to be selected for such a coveted position at quarterback you would think you would feel untouchable. But the hard truth is that you are almost always accessible to affect, especially with the presence of social media in collegiate sports these days, as previously mentioned.
According to Moss, the response he gets on social media is almost entirely dependent on the outcome of each game he plays.
“In entirety, I think just depending on how that week went, it looks very different, and even how a game went,” said Moss. “Let's say you started slow as a team but ended up winning the game, you'll see an influx of positive comments more recently and you'll see a bunch of negative comments a couple hours prior to that."
So let’s picture this. You have homework, exams, meetings, lifts, practices, games, and if you’re lucky, a social life. All of that in your day as a student-athlete but now you want to decompress and sit on the couch to scroll mindlessly through social media. Suddenly, you are met with the most heinous and vile comments pertaining to you, your athletic ability, and your entire career that you have invested everything into.
“It doesn't feel good to have random people on the internet being like, ‘you suck,’ or, ‘I hate you,’ or getting death threats and it's a really ugly side of college athletics,” said Moss. “It definitely upsets me at some point with social media and people having no accountability with what they say.”
If any average college student within the ages of 18 to 24 received the type of social media bullying that these student-athletes get on a daily basis, there would be a campus wide mental health crisis. This age range is such a crucial time for development where teenagers grow into young adults and come into their confidence and sense of self. How debilitating that process must be when thousands of screen warriors are ripping your existence apart. To add another layer, starting just only in March of 2024, online wagering went live with no restrictions on college sports. College athletes are products, cash grabs, and pawns in a game. Not only Moss, but many other college athletes, especially football players, feel the brunt of lost bets and not performing to the likings of sports gamblers. This is why student-athlete mental health will never be a topic that isn’t relevant.
On the surface, athletes like Moss look like they are defying gravity having a career that so many desire to have and so many people assign value to. But we are not seeing underneath the pads, the helmets, or the jerseys.
“Your mental health, I think it's less evident and it's less outwardly painful, even though maybe it's more inwardly painful,” said Moss.
One way or another, mental health disparities need to be addressed and need to be recognized or it is simply an impending doom on an athlete.
“You do something for so many hours out of the week for so many years of your life, you're gonna inevitably have difficult moments within that pursuit,” said Moss.
And from someone who has been given every reason to throw his hands up and surrender this exhausting dual life, he fights on.
“You're gonna doubt yourself and have times where you feel like you don't want to do this. So, I think your ability to maintain a healthy perspective, which obviously starts with having a positive outlook on your mental health, is going to allow you to keep going in that pursuit and not downward spiral when you inevitably face whatever adversity it is,” said Moss.
Emma Charney, junior PAC-12 All Conference First Team tennis player, has come into touch with her mental well-being as an athlete who a lot of the time is flying solo. Each and every sport poses its own unique challenges that make it stressful or overwhelming for an athlete. For Charney, she is constantly having to compete to maintain her status and a lot of the time, she is doing that on her own when she is playing solo on the court.
“I definitely do get anxious before matches, I get super nervous, and right now we're in fall season, so it's a bunch of individual tournaments,” said Charney. “You have to study for multiple tests at a time but also prepare mentally and physically for the Regionals tournament.”
While Charney has harnessed the ability to compete as one and has shown that through her trail of accolades, there is a point in sports where you are on your own at times, which can be really difficult. For Charney, the underlying nerve to compare creeps in.
“Yes, we're all a team and we're rooting for each other, but it's mainly individual and right now, we're all competing individually to make the NCAA tournament,” said Charney. “I feel like comparing yourself to someone who you see on social media that's doing well or even comparing yourself to your own teammates, it is kind of a lot.”
Something that Charney has figured out by being so intuitive with herself is her need to take charge of her mental health. There is an importance to being in a good space with your team to assure the dynamic is strong but more importantly, being in a good head space with yourself first. Mental health of a student-athlete goes beyond the team.
“There's about 10 girls on my team and I'm almost 100% sure that at least seven of us have our own sports psych,” said Charney. “I have a different guy at USC and that's nice too because I can talk to him about my individual needs, and then we also have the team to make sure we're all on the same page.”
It wasn’t until Charney was personally called out by her mother that she realized she needed to take advantage of the resources that came with the university to nurture her mental health. In retrospect of her own reluctance to seek assistance from sports psych, she understood why it is not as commonly sought out as it should be.
“I honestly think sometimes you just need the push because I know in recent years, there's been a stigma against mental health,” said Charney. “But I honestly think sometimes athletes maybe just are in denial that they may need help.”
All this to say, solo competition or not, there is a team behind every athlete. And while it may take some time for an athlete to warm up to the idea of speaking to a professional in the sports mental health field, another and more approachable option is to utilize those who are wearing your uniform.
“I know it can be hard, but for me at least, I know all my teammates would be willing to listen and help me,” said Charney. “Definitely go see sports psych and also lean into your team. You don't have to be best friends with your whole team but there's definitely that one person that you connect with.”
Robin Scholefield, PhD. is the Senior Associate Director of Culture, Wellbeing & Clinical and Sport Psychological Services at USC. Scholefield’s responsibilities span over a wide horizon of people and purposes.
“I have administrative responsibilities so I do all the surveys that track the experience of the student-athlete at the team level, at the department level and at the university level, around culture, well-being, equity, purpose, identity, etc. And then I also do that for our staff and coaches. It's called the Performance Science Institute," said Scholefield
According to Scholefield, 57% of SC student-athletes used their individual services last year in 2023, which can be acknowledged as very productive.
"The vast majority of the individual work really reflects the strengths of the Gen Z generation. They're very resourceful. Most of them are here for personal growth and development. So it could be anything from being a better athlete, to a better teammate, to a better partner, to a better son or daughter, or whatever it is," said Scholefield.
She states that the most vulnerable age range around mental health systems is in the 18 to 24 year old range. And this is not unique to just student-athletes, this is across the board in the country where anxiety and depression becomes apparent.
"You can come in for whatever you want. You can come in as often as you want, or as little as you want, or kind of almost anytime, which is a real privilege and a testament to the support of the athletic department over decades,” said Scholefield.
To drive home the importance of this support system for student-athletes, there needs to be a clear distinction between them and non-athlete students. This is necessary as a lot of the general public glamorize being a college athlete and dismiss the fact that underneath it all, they are still young college students.
"It's the job everybody wants but nobody wants to do. They're here in the summer at five o'clock in the morning, getting up and working out and busting their butt. They're here when we're fighting to get them two weeks off, no school, no sport. Those are the pieces of information people don't understand. They don't know that during football season, they have probably 50 to 60 scheduled hours only from Monday to Friday and it doesn't include game day or recovery Sunday,"said Scholefield. "So, the question is, do you want to be able to go potentially all year and not see your family? Do you want to get up at five o'clock every morning and have someone yelling at you to go faster? Do you want to have very, very short, tiny times to have a social life compared to everybody else you know? Do you want all of your academic and athletic success public?"
Student-athletes do not need pity. They do not need to be victimized. But there commitment and their dedication to not only their sport but the university at large needs to be acknowledged from the core out. You can't simply percieve what is on the surface and dismiss what happens underneath.
"When you start adulting, you're taking all the values you learned from childhood and you're trying them out on your own, without your family there, and without your home community. That is a time of fumbling," said Scholefield. "You can't live vicariously through someone else and you have to just fumble through it, that's normal growing up. Now imagine if all that was on a zoom lens in the public so, you get a lot of shame if you make a normal mistake. Oops, didn't think that went through right? So that adds a whole nother internal experience for them (student-athletes), which creates a little more pressure."
For student-athletes at USC, the resources and the support is there. In addition to their assigned team psych liaison there are specific programs to accomodate every athlete and every case. "Rise" is a seminar for those who endure season ending injuries and are required to do five sessions of this seminar as it will educate them about the process of injury, the psychological process of recovery, and give them some rehabilitation skills. USC has an eating disorder treatment team. Additionally, they have a group for Black male student athletes in the summer called "Black Men in Sport" as well as a similar group for Black female student athletes called "Sis, you good?"
Being a student-athlete is not easy. Fight On, but not alone.