How Coaches Are Managing Mental Health In High School Sports

.....Whether it comes from the athlete’s personal ambitions or from the expectations of those around them, the feeling is omnipresent and can often times be overwhelming.

“Pressure is a trigger,” he said. “When I see the monkey on someone’s back, one of the many things that we talk about is, ‘stop thinking about yourself, just forget about it. Start swimming for the team.’ It’s amazing what you can accomplish, especially for elite athletes, when they’re not thinking about themselves.”

In Peters’ experience, the vast majority of mental health issues that high school athletes deal with are not clinical in nature, but the result of environmental and interpersonal factors.

Counterintuitively, these issues generally do not present themselves in high-pressure situations such as meets, but rather in more routine settings such as practices......

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Bethany`s Notes: A good read for all coaches this week to better understand how important love and empathy is to helping student athletes through their journey.