According to the NCAA reports, about 55% of students take sports outside of school and about 6% of them commit in college. Even if they all play a different sport, they all share something in common, and that is mental health. Abby King, a senior at The School of the Holy Child is currently committed to University of Georgia through a swimming scholarship. She has worked for many hours towards this. Even when she struggled mentally, she never gave up and continued to work hard towards the place she is in.
“I’ve always put a ton of pressure on myself, but some of it comes from coaches as well…,” Abby’s pressure increased significantly more once she committed to college knowing that she is now “competing at a high collegiate level”. Although she felt the relief that she finally is committed to her school, she still feels pressure to compete even better.
Pressure can get into an athlete’s head, but there are ways to cope with it. King acknowledges that pressure is building up going into college, “I try to remind myself why I started swimming, I separate performance from my identity and it takes the pressure off a bit.” Experienced athletes that have done sports for a while have the same thoughts but know that they can’t make that get into their heads.
King believes that sometimes her social life affects her mental health as well. She says that “balancing school and athletics and maintaining a social life is super challenging…” Currently most teens care about sustaining a good social life, but sometimes athletics get in the way of that. Athletes have to give up many social events in order for a practice/contest, and this may cause certain people to feel bad.“Oftentimes I sacrifice hanging out with my friends to train and I feel like I’m missing out.”
Even when struggling with mental health and doing a sport, King has ways of coping to improve and take care of her mental health. She believes that taking a break from swimming helps her “mentally reset and prepare for the next season.”
Although mental health can affect many athletes and give them mental blocks of whether they are good enough or not, they should realize that everybody around them can also be experiencing the same process/pressures to be good enough.
