The Overlooked Battle of Mental Health with High School Student-Athletes
Written by: Coach Kelii Fish
The path to athletic fame in high school sports often starts with victories and culminates in championships. However, behind the victories and defeats lies a significant but frequently ignored issue: the mental health struggles of student-athletes.
The immense pressure from coaches, family members, and academic demands significantly affects these young athletes’ mental well-being. Parents who demand perfection can place an excessive burden on their children, sometimes projecting their own unmet aspirations onto them, turning what should be a positive experience into a distressing ordeal. Rather than boosting their child’s self-esteem, they may end up overburdening them emotionally and mentally with severe criticism.
Similarly, coaches who humiliate athletes publicly during training or matches can undermine their self-confidence. A coach who focuses solely on winning championships risks neglecting their fundamental role, which is to nurture their athletes into well-rounded individuals beyond their high school sports careers. Without such guidance, especially when lacking at home, student-athletes might feel unsupported in realizing their full potential in life.
Academic pressures also significantly influence the mental health of student-athletes as they juggle relentless homework, demanding practice schedules, and game days. Excelling in both academics and sports can lead to overwhelming stress and anxiety. Students who perform poorly academically may experience increased self-doubt, which can spill over into their athletic performance. The relentless expectation to perform from coaches, teachers, and parents can lead to emotional exhaustion or burnout. To mitigate these challenges, it’s crucial to implement support systems such as academic counseling, mental health resources, and effective time management training to help student-athletes sustain their academic performance and mental health. To all student-athletes, I urge you to embrace these essential tools to enhance your mental health.
Start by employing strategies like Bible study, prayer, self-care, and maintaining a balanced schedule that includes academics, sports, and personal responsibilities. Cultivate discipline, surround yourself with a supportive network of friends, and express your emotions through meaningful conversations with people you trust, like coaches, pastors, teammates, family, or mental health professionals. Additionally, set realistic goals and engage in hobbies that help manage stress and promote tranquility. Remember, seeking assistance is a sign of strength, not weakness. By taking proactive steps, you can establish a strong foundation for your mental health.
Hardships: A Hidden Blessing Found in Sports and Life
by: Coach Kelii Fish
High school sports reflect life, presenting three important factors: victory, defeat, and teaching lessons to be discovered. My article will break down how the challenges faced in sports develop emotional maturity, persistence, and the courage to build a foundation for constant success.
Hardships, both in life and in sports, are bound to happen. They test a player’s patience and endurance, directing them to meet face to face the challenges head-on. When facing that experience, athletes face a choice: they can walk through the door of giving up or the door of motivation. The decision-making is theirs to make.
Athletes who overcome adversity in sports can translate that success into real-life success. They learn to manage stress, become problem solvers, stay strong-minded in the face of storms, and develop qualities necessary for growth. The necessary qualities are faith, servant leadership, humility, selflessness, time management, focus, accountability, patience, self-control, mental toughness, teamwork, discipline, and gratitude.
Instead of viewing hardships in sports in a negative manner, see them as stepping stones to greatness. These good experiences teach athletes valuable life skills and lay a strong foundation for inspiring success stories. By embracing and overcoming trials and tribulations, players can turn any struggle into triumphs, both in sports and life.
(1) Hardships can strengthen your faith. Philippians 4:13 teaches, “I can do all things through (Jesus) Christ who strengthens me.”
(2) What is God’s purpose in hardships? Romans 5:3-4 teaches, “We rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope.”
So why keep trusting in God’s plan for your life? Because He uses hardships for His purpose for our good.
Keep relying on praying, meditating in God’s Word, your coaches, teammates, and the support from your family and community during your hard times. Keep the focus on glorifying Jesus through both victories and setbacks.
The journey in sports and life will be challenging and a blessing. Understand that each struggle is not in vain. They build perseverance, character, and hope in Jesus. Keep doing your best, and keep glorifying Jesus in every victory and setback, trusting that His great purpose for you is greater than anything you can imagine.
The Consequences of Poor Leadership: When Athletic Directors Are Unsuccessful
by: Coach Kelii Fish
With every successful athletic program, you will consistently find strong leadership led by a good Athletic Director. On the other hand, a struggling athletic program is often led by poor leadership from its Athletic Director. Poor leadership operates like a virus, spreading the illness that impacts coaches, student-athletes, and the school community. If no accountability is spotted, poor leadership from Athletic Directors can damage high school sports teams, leading to an extended rebuilding journey.
The Role of an Athletic Director
The Athletic Director plays an important role in guaranteeing the success of school sports programs. Their accountabilities include: • Hiring and supporting coaches. • Managing sports programs and managing budgets. • Ensuring obedience to league laws. • Establishing a healthy, fruitful environment for student-athletes. • Lining up each sports program with the school’s educational mission. The top goal is to encourage growth within the sports programs and simply impact the school community.
Traits of Poor Leadership in an Athletic Director
Certain traits of bad fruits from poor leadership can severely slow the success of an athletic program, including:
1. Poor Communication Weak communication with coaches, athletes, and parents can lead to misunderstandings, mistrust, and unresolved conflicts. 2. Ignoring the Athlete’s Well-Being Placing wins and championships over the mental, emotional, and physical health of student-athletes will hurt the student-athletes long-term.
3. Little to no Support for Coaches Athletic Directors who fail to provide good training, resources, or administration support will leave coaches feeling devastated, unappreciated, and drained. This little to no support can result in high turnover rates among coaches and produce a poisonous environment. 4. Mishandling Budgets Mismanagement of funds can create division across programs, leading to untrusted resources for some teams and favoritism toward others.
Building a Positive Sports Culture Good leadership from an Athletic Director will provide strong communication, no favoritism, and wise decision-making. By providing healthy support to coaches, and encouraging a positive environment for student-athletes, they can create a sports culture that will benefit the entire school and its community.
Breaking the Quietness: The Damage That Hazing Does in Sports
By Coach Kelii Fish
Hazing remains an undercover however important problem in high school sports and extends into college athletics. While some people may claim that it promotes relationships and team bonding, the brutal painful reality often uncovers a much darker side. The physical, emotional, and mental toll on student-athletes can leave lasting battle scars and raise critical questions about this topic in sports culture.
(A). Understanding Hazing
Hazing refers to initiation rituals intended for new team members. While some methods like singing a team song or completing some simple tasks are harmless, others cross moral boundaries. Some harmful examples of hazing include: • Excessive physical labor. • Forced alcohol drinking. • Public humiliation. • Acts leading to physical injury.
(B). The Consequences for Student-Athletes • Physical harm: Injuries and trauma. • Mental health challenges: Raising the level of anxiety and depression that can lead to suicide. • Decline in performance: Pressure from hazing can damage academic success and athletic focus.
In drastic cases, hazing has led to hospitalization, career-ending injuries, and even death.
(C). Why Hazing Continues • Tradition: Some teams view hazing as a cultural team practice.
• Power authority: Senior players may use hazing to declare superiority over new members.
• Fear of revenge: Victims and witnesses often stay silent out of fear of retaliation.
(D). What Must Be Done To Prevent Hazing
•Teach the truth: Coaches, players, and administrators must be taught to identify and prevent hazing.
• Straightforward guidelines: Enforce zero-tolerance on hazing with consequences.
• Safety: Provide personal outlets for athletes to report hazing without fear.
4. Positive team bonding: Promote team-building activities that highlight trust, respect, togetherness, and love.
Hazing damages the very values that sports are meant to support: such as teamwork, respect, and love. Dealing with this topic head-on is important to creating a safer, healthier environment for all athletes. Change starts with understanding, accountability, and a responsibility to protect the well-being of every team member. Sports programs must prioritize these efforts to provide a positive and safe culture.
The Untold Truth of Free Recruiting Databases: How It is Damaging College Coaches Recruiting Process
by: Coach Kelii Fish
Free recruiting databases for college coaches may seem like a helpful means, but they come with challenges that can restrict the recruiting process:
(A) The Lack of Correct Information Free databases often lack a careful screening procedure, leading to insufficient or false profiles. This pressures college coaches to spend additional time verifying stats, academic information, and contact details.
(B) Overloaded with Prospects With open access, practically any student-athlete can create a profile, resulting in an overwhelming number of unqualified prospects. This makes it difficult for college coaches to determine student-athletes who truly fit their programs.
(C) Risk of Untruth The lack of accountability in free platforms can encourage student-athletes or others to lie about statistics, awards, or accomplishments to gain attention.
(D) The Lack of Personalization Free platforms seldom offer custom-made support, leaving college coaches without guidance on how to purify their recruiting strategies or assess student-athletes effectively.
(E) The Lack of Genuine Connections Unlike paid recruiting services, free databases seldom promote relationship-building or suggestion benefits to help college coaches understand student-athletes beyond their profiles.
While free recruiting databases provide easy access to a large pool of student-athletes, these defects underline the preference for tools that underscore quality, organization, and genuineness. College coaches should carefully weigh the time and effort required against these bogus platforms’ when shaping their recruiting techniques.