As a three-sport athlete in high school and collegiate cross-country and track runner, I have had my fair share of injuries. I've had the pleasure of working with some amazing athletic trainers, but I've also had some that made me feel like an inconvenience and a bother. Injury already can be hard mentally for any athlete but for an insecure teenager, it can be devastating. The whole world is confusing and sports are their safe space. It's a place they understand and feel like they belong in. It can be a space where the two fundamental needs of humanity can be fulfilled, to be seen and to be heard. When injury comes, and the provider, who is supposed to be supporting you through injury, brushes you away or makes you feel uncared for, it can be hard not to spiral. I have always been fascinated by the creative workings of the body. And I wanted to find a career that would allow me to explore it. I also knew that I could not be stuck inside all day. Again, I am an athlete, and need to have the sun on my face. I love watching people push their physical limits and work together in the pursuit of excellence. I want to be able to support athletes in their pursuit by eliminating as many physical obstacles as I can. For years, I have struggled with my mental health and my identity in sports. As a high schooler, the best thing about me was my athletic abilities, or so I thought. As COVID hit and sports seasons were put on hold, I began to lose who I was and who I thought I was supposed to be. I struggled with injuries the following years and I felt like I didn't have anyone who really wanted to help me. Those feelings followed me to college. I again struggled with injury and mental health, but this time, I had athletic trainers who showed that they wanted to help. From the very beginning, my trainers would ask not just about the physical injury but my mental state. They showed me what it was to care for someone in a wholistic way, in a way that makes you feel both seen and heard. Adam (trainer and professor) would let me come into his office and he would listen as I ranted about life events or team drama. He gave the time of day and made me feel like I was important. After working with high schoolers for two summers at a summer camp and after having bad high school experiences, I decided that I wanted to become a high school athletic trainer. I want to be the trainer who takes the time to listen to the athletes. I want to be someone that cares not just about the physical pain, but the mental pain too. I want to show athletes that they are more than the sport they play.

I sat there staring out at the thin line of trees between my car and the CalSag. I watched the cars pass in front of me, trying to prepare to face the day ahead. When the clock struck 8 AM, I dragged myself up the steps of my high school. I hated who I was and had so much anger and pain, but I held it all in. I faked smiles and kept my grades up so as not to raise any suspicion. As the youngest kid, I had to be okay. I had to do my homework and have friends. I had to be the best athlete like my brothers before me. My head was screaming, but I did it. When it came time to pick a college, I waited as long as I possibly could without it being suspicious. I didn't want to pick because I didn't think I would be alive long enough to get there. But I did. I found friends in college who didn't care about what I was hiding behind the smiling mask. It took a while to let them in because I thought I would just get hurt again. Hurt in ways that I couldn't heal. But I finally let them in. My best friend was a teammate and suitemate. She spent many nights talking with me when I felt like the world was going to end. I hated how I felt and I hated that I was sharing my issues with her when she already had problems of her own. But she stuck by my side. She helped me to open up to others about how much I was struggling. She was the one who eventually got me to get the professional help I needed. So I finally sought help in my second semester after barely making it through the first semester. I put in the work. My mental health journey has been hard, and some days it feels like I've been swimming backward underwater. As I learn to cope with and battle my depression and suicidal ideations, I lean on my friends, who have become more family than friends, and depend on my Lord to guide me through the deep waters. Like every other kid, I wanted to be a teacher, a doctor, or a vet. As I grew up, I lost any idea of a future. I had no idea who I was or what I wanted. Playing soccer and running were the two things that I knew brought me a little joy, and I had always been fascinated by medicine. For good or for bad, I tend to put my own issues aside and lean into helping those around me. I found the perfect career, athletic training. I spent my fair share of time in my high school's athletic training office with my own injuries, and I saw how much of an impact a good athletic trainer makes for a team or for an athlete. I want to work with high schoolers who are in a pivotal time of their lives. So many high schoolers are like me. They are hiding who they are and how they are feeling. They feel like their whole worth is what they can do, the grades they get, or the points they score in a game. I want to be there to tell them that that little voice in their head is wrong. It can be hard for me to see the world as something good when I see so much pain and hurt in the world. I tend to focus on everything that is going wrong and forget that there is so much good even in the suffering. My friends taught me to look for the good in the small places of the world. When everything feels like it's going wrong, the flowers are still budding and the leaves are still changing colors. The wind still blows and there is beauty.

I sat there staring out at the thin line of trees between my car and the CalSag. I watched the cars pass in front of me, trying to prepare to face the day ahead. When the clock struck 8 AM, I dragged myself up the steps of my high school. I hated who I was and had so much anger and pain, but I held it all in. I faked smiles and kept my grades up so as not to raise any suspicion. As the youngest kid, I had to be okay. I had to do my homework and have friends. I had to be the best athlete like my brothers before me. My head was screaming, but I did it. When it came time to pick a college, I waited as long as I possibly could without it being suspicious. I didn't want to pick because I didn't think I would be alive long enough to get there. But I did. I finally sought help in my second semester after barely making it through the first semester. I put in the work. My mental health journey has been hard, and some days it feels like I've been swimming backward underwater. As I learn to cope with and battle my depression and suicidal ideations, I lean on my friends, who are more family than friends, and depend on my Lord to guide me through the deep waters. Like every other kid, I wanted to be a teacher, a doctor, or a vet. As I grew up, I lost any idea of a future. I had no idea who I was or what I wanted. Playing soccer and running were the two things that I knew brought me a little joy, and I had always been fascinated by medicine. For good or for bad, I tend to put my own issues aside and lean into helping those around me. I found the perfect career, athletic training. I spent my fair share of time in my high school's athletic training office with my own injuries, and I saw how much of an impact a good athletic trainer makes for a team or for an athlete. I want to work with high schoolers who are in a pivotal time of their lives. So many high schoolers are like me. They are hiding who they are and how they are feeling. They feel like their whole worth is what they can do, the grades they get, or the points they score in a game. I want to be there to tell them that that little voice in their head is wrong. Mental health and suicide have for so long been stigmatized as not real or something to just suck it up and move on from. Suicide is seen as weak and a cop out for going through a hard time. But the truth is that suicide is the result of an internal war. Suicide occurs when the voices in your head become louder than the voices of everyone and everything around. My generation has started to break the stigmas. We have started to shout over the voices that tell us that we are making things up. If we started to care for our mental health the way we care for our physical health, the world would become a better place. We would find be more understanding and compassionate to each other. We would find joy in the mundane. Suicide can be prevented, but we have to take notice. My mental health is important. My mental health deserves to be cared for.

As a collegiate student-athlete, my time is constantly filled with homework’s, practice, recovery, and fueling. It’s hard to make time for the simple joys of life. I am a student in the John Wesley Honors College, and I work 2 campus jobs. My days are filled with stress and a constant pressure to perform. I am blessed to go to a Christian school and have amazing friends, teammates, and coaches to lean on, but despite all these people, I often find myself in the depths of a mental health episode. I have lived with anxiety and depression since middle school and I didn’t seek help until college. I leaned on my sports to get me through the week and learned how to do school just the right way to get the grades I needed. I suffered in silence pushing myself to my breaking point. My senior year of high school I started having suicidal idealizations. I wanted nothing more than for all the pain and mental suffering to go away, but somewhere God was telling me not to do it. It took me a long time to pick a college and choose a career path. Eventually, I chose to pursue athletic training through Indiana Wesleyan University. As an athlete, I spent a lot of time in the athletic trainers office and fell in love with medicine. I saw athletes come in physically and mentally defeated and I wanted to help. I threw myself at my studies, trying to give myself a better reason to live. I loved the sports I played and wanted to be able to thrive. I run cross country and track for IWU and I absolutely love the team. However running has become quite a difficult challenge both physically and mentally. Since my first cross country season, I began dealing with on and off injuries landing me more and more time in the athletic training clinic. I struggled to get back to running and in the fall of this past school year, had knee surgery. I’ve been recovering ever since and have really struggled mentally with not being able to perform in a way that I know I am capable of. However the injury lead me to grow close to my athletic training staff and allowed me to focus on school. I learned so much about the inner workings of the career and it made me want to pursue it more. I still struggle with mental health, but I know that these people will be there to care for and support me. I want to be that person in an athlete’s life.