SHIPPENSBURG, Pa. — Mental health is an overlooked and underestimated part of a college or high school athlete's overall success. It makes a big difference to be both physically and mentally strong. However, to reach their peak physically requires a better understanding of their health mentally.
“I think that more and more universities are adopting an understanding of mental health and understanding. For me, if I just directly relate it to performance, stress is stress, right?" said Shippensburg University's Director of Sports Performance Dennis Kerstetter.
Kerstetter's job is to improve the overall athlete performance of the Raiders student-athletes. More and more, he realizes it's imperative to address mental fitness.
“We talk to our athletes about the three biggest things they can take care of eat, sleep and hydrate. That is 100% in their wheelhouse of what they can control. If you’re not mentally there, it can affect your sleep. That affected sleep leads to a downgrade in performance. Not eating enough leads to a downgrade in performance and not hydrating enough leads to a downgrade in performance. If I think of it as just a performance professional, all of those factors that mental health has a relation to can affect their performance on the field.”
Physical skills are easy to identify. It's not quite as easy to tell when an athlete struggles with their mental health.
Maelynn Leber is an Eastern York High School graduate. She is currently a graduate student at Shippensburg and played softball for the Raiders. Maelynn admits returning to campus for her sophomore year after COVID was difficult.
"You would walk around like there was kind of a rain cloud over you," she explained. "Everything felt really heavy so I’d wake up in the morning and I would feel those feelings and they never really changed from my day to day whether I was going to class or practice."
One of the ways athletes at Ship are proactive about their mental health is by joining The Hidden Opponent. It's a national, non-profit advocacy group that gives students resources and support to discuss mental health issues.
Club members are equipped to step in and offer possible solutions when they see a problem.
"Airing that out and finding support in a community lifted that rain cloud," Leber said. "You truly see the light at the end of the tunnel and you find ways to cope with it and then you do start to enjoy your sport so much more. That’s what our club is all about, it’s giving those resources and lending that helping hand.”
A small percentage of high school athletes will go on to compete in college but that doesn't mean the pressure to perform is any less. A recent mental health symposium held at Susquehannock High School in York County pointed out to coaches, parents and athletes how mental health can improve your play and have fun.
“It’s really about them enjoying their youth and just being a kid and to be able to see the pressures that sport puts on them or that parents put on them," detailed Tracee Rankin, a parent with two kids playing sports at Susquehannock. "Just being able to balance that and understanding the tools that are necessary for us to do a good job.”
York Suburban senior Brynn Neidigh went to the symposium specifically to learn how to become mentally stronger.
“I think the most important thing that I wanted to learn was how to deal with my mental health in high-pressure situations and sometimes those high-pressure situations aren’t just competitions, sometimes that’s in practice," Neidigh said. “I think the most important thing is having supportive teammates and having supportive and understanding coaches. There’s only so much you can do for yourself and sometimes you need other people to help you out, and I know that I have struggled with that.”