The Untold Truth of Being a Student Athlete
[Music]
my name is kiera young
i’m a part of the women’s soccer program
at goldie beacon college
i’m currently a senior pursuing a degree
in psychology in hopes that one day i’ll
be a sports psychologist
and i’m going to be talking about the
untold truth of being a student athlete
student athletes internationally and
across the country
different divisions in different
conferences struggle to balance
their academics their athletics and
their social life
today i’m going to be sharing my story
in hopes that
i can show everybody what athletes
across the world and across the u.s
are struggling with and hopefully i can
be a voice to bring about
change in breaking the social norms that
student athletes have been
held down with the first thing i’d like
to do is go over my schedule now mind
you
gordy become division two women’s soccer
program this isn’t what
every schedule looks like for student
athletes division three is different
division one is different
conferences are different schools are
different but this is what my schedule
looks like
i start my day when i have lifts at 5
team lift usually lasts about one hour
so that’s six to seven
i then go from 7 15 to about 8 o’clock
showering and getting my breakfast in
and then from 8 to 11
i work from home i’m fortunate enough to
work with a company that allows me to do
that while i’m in school
from then i start my first class at 11
15 and that goes to about 12 45
and then from 12 45 to 1 15 i have 30
minutes to not only get in lunch
but get in a nap and to complete any
school work that i’ve missed from games
or practices there are some days that i
can get all three and that’s great and
other days not so much
i then go to the athletic training room
at 1 30
to get in my stretches and to work out
any aches and pains from the previous
game in practice
then practice starts at 2 o’clock from 2
to 4 we’re working on drills
watching film and practicing for our
upcoming game
that takes me to about 4 15 i make it
back to my dorm
i shower and i complete any school work
and homework that i need to catch up
with
my next class starts at 5 30 and
depending on the professor can last till
about 9 or 10 o’clock at night
which is when i have the time to make
dinner if i didn’t have time before my
night class and then i finish up some
homework i’m in bed by 11 or 12 o’clock
like i said before this is what my
schedule is like and it’s hard to
compare
other athletes from different schools
and divisions but for
this it’s busy for me it’s something
that i struggle with but i work hard
every day to work with it
but now i’d like to reintroduce myself
hi
my name is kiera young i’m a part of the
women’s soccer program at goldie beacon
college
i’m a senior pursuing a degree in
psychology and i struggle with ocd and
depression
now the schedule that you saw before may
not have seem busy now
but now when i incorporate my ocean
depression
it’s a lot harder for me so what i’d
like to do
is talk about specific points in my
schedule that are very
difficult and i would like to make a
comment that it doesn’t matter
for any student athlete whether you have
developed
high levels of stress and anxiety or
mental health issues
prior to being a collegiate athlete
during or after your collegiate career
what matters is how we are going to help
each other and
myself once we get to that position
so the first thing that’s difficult for
me is my 6 a.m team lift
i wake up at 5 30 and i’m exhausted from
the night before because i
obsessed about not waking up so every
hour without setting alarm
i was waking myself up once i get to
team lift
it gets even worse from there every time
whether it’s with my team or by myself i
have to complete an exercise
such as squats right easy you have three
three sets
10 reps each however i have to always
complete an extra rep or an
extra set if that doesn’t feel right to
me
i do it again and again and again
until my body feels as though okay i
completed the form correctly
i did the exercise correctly i’m going
to feel sore i can move on
if i don’t do that i get this feeling of
dread that something bad is going to
happen
and i don’t always know what it is all
the time
that moves into 8 a.m to 11 a.m which is
when i work
so i am a student manager at a
restaurant called mulligan’s pub and
girl
in college park maryland quite far away
from wilmington delaware but as i said
before i’m lucky enough to work from
home
i make the schedule for all the student
employees
so i use excel and i go through all the
hours all the days throughout the week
whether it’s wait staff they’re working
in the turn on the golf shop
or we have a function for a wedding but
i sit there
for those two hours two to three hours
and i go through every employee and i
have to explain to myself
more than five times
why they deserve this shift why they do
not why they have to take this shift why
they did not
this becomes time consuming and most of
the time i don’t get to finish this
and i have to send it off to one of my
colleagues to finish
that moves on to 1 30. i’m at the
athletic training room i stretch
every practice and every game i have to
do my stretches
if i don’t i can’t can’t play i just
have this bad feeling i’ll get injured a
teammate will get injured i can’t do it
so i complete my stretches
i have a set of them they’re all 20
seconds each
if i do not feel as though that stretch
was done properly
i tack on another 10 seconds if it
doesn’t feel right after that i start
the process all over again which is why
sometimes i’ll go in a lot earlier than
1 30
to complete all of my stretches
that takes me to practice this is
another thing that’s really difficult
for me
there are days when my depression kicks
in and i do not have any motivation to
go
and i have to have i have to call my mom
my dad
boyfriend friends get my teammates to
help motivate me so i can get there
because i still struggle to do it by
myself
so when i get there my ocd also triggers
i’m sitting there constantly going
through every activity and drill and
film that we go through
every conversation that is made between
teammates and myself and my coach
myself and i am repeating it in my head
multiple times and in different ways
because i feel as though if i forget
i won’t remember and i’ll do poorly in a
game all
somebody will get hurt or we just will
not have a good season
now they may seem like irrational
thoughts but they go through my head and
although i know
that those are not true it feels like it
so i do them until the feeling goes away
and for the last two school work and in
the class taking notes
i no longer write with a pencil and
paper
i have transitioned over to an ipad with
an apple pencil
now you would think typing would be
easier but i try to challenge myself so
i use an app
so that way i can write and it’s easier
to erase but if i need to i can type
when on the fly
i no longer can write with pencil and
paper because i have this idea in my
head
that my handwriting has to be perfect
and if that letter
crosses that line i have to start my
notes all over again
imagine writing 10 pages of notes and
starting them
over again in a class that you only have
an hour to do or luckily
a night class where you have four hours
to do it it’s not fun
and it is difficult and it is very hard
for me to do it so
ipad and pencil work ipad and apple
pencil work for me
but there are days where it’s still the
struggle
now what i’d like to do now is describe
a little bit more what depression and
ocd is like
and then go into detail on how it
affects me every day
now depression is a severe but common
mood disorder
it affects how you feel
think and handle daily activities such
as sleeping eating and working
now there are different types of
depressions there are different
intensities
and everybody is affected in different
ways for me
i am lucky that it doesn’t affect me
every single day
of my life and i’m fortunate enough to
not have to struggle
every day but it is something that i
still have to work on
as i go throughout my college career and
hopefully hopefully i don’t have to
but i may have to do it afterwards
because this is something that is still
fairly new to me
as i was diagnosed this past spring in
2019 now ocd
ocd is an anxiety disorder but it’s
broken up into two parts
obsessions and compulsions obsessions
are intrusive and unwanted behaviors and
thoughts
that are only um
that are only subsided through
compulsions and compulsions are ritual
and repetitive
actions that have to be completed in
specific rules
and patterns in order to subside the
obsessions
for me this is something that i struggle
with every single day of my life there
are days where i
am doing great and it only affects me
here and there and there are days when
it
is so bad that i feel as though i can’t
function and i can’t do my daily
activities this is something i’ve
struggled with since i was a kid but i
didn’t know until i got to college
because that’s when it got really bad
but like i said before everybody is
different
my depression may be different from the
teammate off to my right or the teammate
off to my left
my ocd may be different from my sister
or my classmate
everybody is different in how it causes
it
how they react to it and what they do
to solve it my depression and ocd
it is hard some days and some days it’s
easier
for me as i said before depression is
not an everyday thing for me
there are some days where it’s better
than others but ocd
is quite difficult
i wasn’t diagnosed with ocd until the
fall
till my the fall of my sophomore year
i didn’t know although i had struggled
since i was a kid but it didn’t get back
until i got to college and that’s when i
was diagnosed and i had no idea
how to help myself i had no idea who to
get in contact with what to do whether
there’s medications i need to take
so i struggled for two years by myself
trying to fix this on my own
with no progression then
in the spring of my junior year i was
diagnosed with depression after i hit a
low
i struggled for a couple of months and
realized i can’t do
all of this by myself i am one person i
don’t understand this i don’t have the
resources i need to get help
but the problem with that is that i’m an
athlete
it’s hard a lot of times
we have these social norms that we can’t
break
because we’re seen as weak and that we
shouldn’t be here
so what i’d like to do is show you an
example on the board
of what some of my ocd triggers are
so this is one of my notes i took on my
ipad
simple some of you may say uh it’s a
little sloppy handwriting
but there’s nothing wrong with it so
we’re going to get a little closer
you may say oh no it’s it’s fine a
little sloppy
i still don’t see anything
these arrows all point to areas
where it triggers my ocd the fact that
the n and the t
in orientation does not touch the line
it triggers it the t the line isn’t
straight across
that triggers it the o and the l are too
far apart and the e doesn’t finish
its curve it triggers it
this is just a small list of the
hundreds of things in my writing
that triggers it and i don’t know all of
them i just know that once i start
feeling
like something bad’s gonna happen when
i’m staring at my handwriting
i know i have to start my compulsions
now those are all different
right now it’s a blinking sequence i
don’t have a pattern i don’t have a set
number
but i complete a certain amount of
blinks in that time frame
until that feeling of dread until that
feeling of something bad is going to
happen
goes away and i feel satisfied
now as i said before this is something
that i’ve kept from my teammates from my
coaches
and i’ve struggled by myself even from
my parents and friends
because i thought that if people knew
they were going to see me weak i grew up
being the tough kid i was the only girl
in a group of all guy friends
they always saw me as tough and that i
could do anything and when i went to
college soccer
that title followed with me
but what i didn’t know is that i
couldn’t do it by myself
i needed help but because of the social
norms
such as you chose this lifestyle you’re
an athlete you chose to have this
schedule you chose to deal with the
stresses
you should be able to deal with it
you’re fine
you’re fine what’s going on it’s gonna
pass you will
get through it there’s no need to worry
about it
the word tough that one gets me a lot
because a lot of people believe that
since you do sports you’re tough nothing
can go wrong you can get through it
and you’re not cut out for this i felt
as though once
i told somebody once i tried to get help
those were the words i was going to get
and those were the words i did get from
some people luckily
being here at goldie beacon college and
having the resources that i did here
i didn’t get that but other places i did
and what i am here today
is to show people that we need to break
these social norms we need to get past
these words and sentences that bring
athletes down
and make them not want to seek help
like i said all conferences and
divisions and student athletes in
colleges
are different and everybody deals with
things in
a different way however we need to stop
with the social norms and we need to
bring on more psychologists
sports psychologists to every university
in college so that way athletes can feel
as though
they can get the help they need without
bringing themselves down
thank you