Author Archive: Stephanie Salazar

Q&A: U-M Diving Coach Mike Hilde

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The Athletes Connected program recognizes the many different entities that factor into student-athlete mental health. As part of what will be a new series, Athletes Connected will share how coaches, administrators, trainers and other athletic staff approach their roles in the lives of student-athlete health.

To open the series, Athletes Connected caught up with head diving coach Mike Hilde.

Q: What role do you play as a coach in your athletes’ lives?
A: I think I play more of a role than just the direct coaching aspect. I am also there to help them through situations outside of the pool whether it is in relationships, handling school, stressed out or overwhelmed. I think the term coach carries more weight than the traditional definition of the word. As a coach I need to be a mentor and friend to these athletes.

If we help our athletes to use the tools that we know are effective in improving mental health, then they are going to be able to go anywhere.

Q: How do you see mental health affecting your athletes?
A: Mental health is very, very important to me. Diving is a very dangerous sport. Honestly, to me any athlete can be a diver but what holds people back from being a diver, and a great diver, is the fear and the mental aspect of the sport. With it being a very dangerous sport, if you don’t have the right mentality going into a practice or a meet, or if there are situations outside that are affecting your mind it can put athletes in a very bad situation. Diving off high platforms and hitting water at great speeds can cause injury if mentally the athlete is not present and aware.

So for me mental health is probably the most important aspect of a diver’s life. It is very important to know what they are going through, what’s going on, how I can help them, and then to get them the right support so they can be successful in the pool. The last thing I want to do is put a diver in a situation where they are going to get hurt because I had no idea that something was going on in their mind. I feel like gymnastics is the same way. We are the two sports that are super dangerous if you don’t have the right mentality or the right mindset.

Q: What do you do to support your athletes’ mental health?
A: I try to get a read on my athletes when they come to practice. Because I am in a sport where every skill and action get a response from me, I am able to see if there is something going on in their minds or if something is a little off with them mentally. I am not a mental health expert but I know that Michigan has a great program where there are people and resources for them to reach out to.

One of the things I have done since Dr. Scott Goldman was hired (as Director of the Performance Psychology Center) is bringing him in to talk to the team. I have also told my athletes that staying on top of their mental health this is probably the most important thing in this sport and then for them all moving on through life. I have expressed to them that if there is an issue, I am not necessarily the one who will help fix it but I am someone who will help to provide support by giving them the resources to reach out to someone in the Performance Psychology Athletic Counseling unit (PPAC).

PPAC has licensed clinicians who know how to help student athletes manage the situations that are causing stress. I let them know there is no difference in mental health support than the trainer or the strength and conditioning coaches. I don’t get involved in that but I get them to the right resources so they can be taken care of.

Mike Hilde is in his fourth year as diving coach at U-M.

Q: How do you use the support systems available within the athletic department?
A: I try to give them every tool they can to be successful. I want them to know those resources are out there. I think some people don’t even realize what is available and some coaches might not be giving the athletes the information so they never reach out for the help that is valuable. Often times I have seen as time goes on the struggles just spiral downhill and then it becomes very difficult for them to get out of it.

One of the things I do is if I see a diver in a situation where I know they would benefit from reaching out and I think they need to, I will require them to use the resources and reach out to somebody. This is so I know they are getting the help quickly enough so they can be put in a situation where they can get better.

Q: How do you see this benefiting the athletes and you as a coach?
A: First, I think if athletes are not happy and they are struggling then a lot of other areas of their lives will be harder to deal with. So I think for athletes if they are in the right mindset they are going to be happy and committed to what they are doing. They are going to feel good about what they are doing. So for me, when there is an athlete coming in with a great mindset their performance is better, they have more confidence, they help build the team, and it helps everything with their sport.

If there is a place where they can go for resources, it is going to help them in the pool. This is not only going to help my career, but also their career going forward which is the most important thing. My goal is to keep my athletes happy, confident and able to do what they need to get done.

Q: What is a common misconception about coaches and athlete mental health that athletes may think exists?
A: I think one of the big misconceptions from coaches is if a coach thinks an athlete is struggling then they are helping by pushing them through it or having them continue and telling them to toughen up. The idea among athletes is that they need to be tough, they need to move past this and that they are fine.

I don’t think people understand the broad range of how many problems there are in mental health. I believe having a better understanding of what mental health is first. Understanding that without this knowledge, and without the use of the resources, we are doing a disservice to our athletes. If we help our athletes to use the tools that we know are effective in improving mental health, then they are going to be able to go anywhere. So I think that you have to have an understanding that mental health is real, it does exists and that if people need help, support them in getting the help that they need so that they can be successful in and out of the pool.

Q: What is something you would like athletes to know about mental health from a coach’s perspective?
A: That we support it. That if you come to me and say that you are having an issue know that I am not going to judge you for it. I understand that there are a lot of things going on in life and that there are a lot of things that people are struggling with. I sometimes feel that my athletes don’t think I understand, and sometimes I might not understand, but I am a support to help them get to those who can help.

I am not going to look at an athlete who is struggling and tell them that they just need to get over it and move on. I want them to know that I care and that we are here to support them. I want to get them the help they may need to achieve whatever goals they have and be whoever they want to be.

Ringer: College Athletes Are Only Starting to Get Access to the Mental Health Care They Need

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Shared here is an excerpt of a story in The Ringer about how college athletics are providing access to mental health care. Athletes Connected is also prominently mentioned as leaders in this area.

By Julie Kliegman

Austin Cannon | Evan Watkins–247 Sports

Fewer than 25 Division I schools had a full-time licensed mental health practicioner on staff in the athletic department as of January 2014, according to ESPN, let alone more resource-strapped Division II and III schools. While that number of professionals has been growing in recent years—per one 2016 survey, mental health clinicians are now in as many as 39 percent of Division I athletic departments—there’s still a critical gap in mental health care for student-athletes who often have access to the support they need physically and academically. That will persist unless this issue remains at the forefront of the college sports conversation.

“The stereotype is that student-athletes are tough somehow or more put together than others. No, people are people.” — Brian Hainline,
NCAA chief medical officer

When players are expected to leave the athletic department’s facilities to seek care, they get the message that they’re outsiders, that what they’re dealing with isn’t a problem common among their peers. They can get the impression that they need to separate who they are as student-athletes from the ways in which their brains work.

“Within the athletic department, a full-time mental health professional that you would point athletes to, that’s something that even top-level FBS schools are just trying to get on—in my opinion—the right side of,” Fagan tells The Ringer.

Having the ability to access mental health support in the same place that they often meet with trainers, watch game tape, and work with academic tutors is key for student-athletes, who face pressure to push down any perceived on- or off-field weaknesses, even when they experience mental illness. College athletes experience anxiety and depression at slightly lower rates than their nonathlete peers, according to an American College Health Association survey based on students’ experiences in 2011, but they’re less likely to seek help for those issues. And while anxiety and depression are two common, relatively low-stigma mental illnesses, they’re far from the only ones student-athletes face: Experts say they also routinely see athletes with eating disorders, personality disorders, and substance-use disorders.

“The stereotype is that student-athletes are tough somehow or more put together than others,” says Brian Hainline, the NCAA’s chief medical officer. “No, people are people.”

* * *

Student-athletes are also a driving force in the push for better mental health care. As mental illness—particularly common diagnoses like anxiety and depression—becomes less stigmatized, players feel more comfortable speaking out. In addition to its association-wide initiatives, the NCAA in 2014 funded Athletes Connected, a University of Michigan campaign to destigmatize mental illness among college athletes and encourage them to seek help.

Kally Fayhee, a swimmer who graduated from Michigan in 2013, embraced being part of Athletes Connected after contemplating backing out about five or six times. At that point, she says, only a handful of people knew about her bulimia. She’d been swimming competitively since she was 10, but her experience in college felt different. “When I got to Michigan, it was a whole other level of competitiveness, of trying to live up to the expectation, the swimmer that your scholarship means that you are,” she says.

During her freshman year, Fayhee started feeling what she calls “race anxiety,” which hampered her performance. “The harder I tried to control it and white-knuckle it, the worse it got, and the worse the anxiousness got,” she says. Needing to feel some element of control over her races, she started restricting her diet as a sophomore, thinking that if she were lighter, she could go faster. By junior year she was purging. With the help of a close friend and teammate, she began weekly visits to Barb Hansen, a clinical social worker and athletics counselor at Michigan.

Joining Athletes Connected in 2014 meant that, for the first time, the former team cocaptain would speak publicly about her bulimia and how everything in her life wasn’t as perfect as it may have seemed. “You know what, the only way that we’re going to break down the stigma around mental health is if we have a conversation about it,” she remembers telling the first crowd of Michigan student-athletes she spoke to alongside Will Heininger, a former Wolverines defensive lineman who has experienced depression. After one of the sessions, a current student-athlete approached Fayhee to say that she needed help. It made Fayhee’s late nights and early morning commutes between Chicago, where she worked, and Ann Arbor worth it. “Honestly, at that point I would’ve woken up at 3 in the morning and done that until the end of time if we could help kids where I was,” Fayhee says.

Read the rest of the story on TheRinger.com.

NY Times: The Lonely Road Back From a Very Public Injury

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Shared here is an excerpt of Manchester City footballer Ilkay Gundogan in the New York Times during his lengthy recovery from a season-ending injury and the effects of loneliness and isolation.

By Rory Smith

For months, the best part of the day was the first part. Every morning after he returned from Barcelona at the end of January, Gundogan had arrived at Manchester City’s training facility — in the shadow of the Etihad — at the same time as the rest of the squad.

At first, his teammates made a point of fussing over him, welcoming him back, asking how long it would be until he would be playing again. “After the second, third and fourth day, it is less and less attention,” Gundogan said. He preferred it that way, being just another face in the crowd.

Gundogan had been in this situation before. In August 2013, only a few weeks after he scored for Borussia Dortmund in the Champions League final, he had sustained a back injury that would, eventually, prevent him playing for a full year. Three years later, Manchester City signed him while he was sidelined with a patella injury, so keen was Guardiola, the club’s new manager, to work with him.

“That is the most difficult thing: to feel that you are useless, not worth as much as before, not worth as much as the others.”

As Gundogan walked the long path to fitness once more, he could not only make light of his past — “I am quite good at sitting on the couch now,” he joked one night in Barcelona — he could draw hope from it.

On the day Gundogan tore his ligament, he had cried on Guardiola’s shoulder, his despair overwhelming him. Less than 24 hours later, he had reconciled himself to his situation. The A.C.L. is a more common injury than his back problem; there was a clear road map to follow.

But another long stretch out troubled him, too. His injuries might have been unrelated, but he knew what the cumulative effect would be. Soccer has a short memory. There is always someone ready to take your place in the coach’s plans, in the team’s roster, in the fans’ affections.

Gundogan appreciated the sympathy, but he exists in a brutal world. He did what little he could to mediate its effects. He posted regular images on Instagram, and made sure he was present on Twitter. He enjoyed the interaction and, in particular, the photography, but pleasure was just a byproduct.

“I do not want people to forget me,” he said in February.

That kept him going as his recovery started in earnest — that desire not to be forgotten, not to be written off.

His schedule was physically exacting, his life mapped out for him by Cugat, Sala and City’s medical staff. Monday and Friday were for conditioning; Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday were for strength; Wednesday was cardio work. On Sunday, he rested.

The principal target, as explained by James Baldwin, the City physiotherapist overseeing his recovery, was “to restore the mechanics of the knee.” Baldwin talked about “gait re-education,” and proprioception, making sure all the disparate parts of the body are working in unison. In simpler terms, Gundogan was learning to walk again.

The exercises were simple, but demanding: a series of stretches and flexes, lifts and dips, followed by an arduous series of crabwalks. As the weeks passed and Gundogan’s knee improved, the exercises were made incrementally harder: resistance bands were introduced, or a Bosu ball, or an unstable surface. Baldwin said the idea was to “replicate the elements of human movement.”

All of City’s state-of-the-art facilities were available to Gundogan. His cardio work took place in a heat chamber. A couple of afternoons a week were spent in the pool area, walking against rapids to build up resistance, using underwater treadmills, donning one of a dozen buoyancy suits that hang on the walls. There were regular cupping sessions, to “stimulate the lymphatic system and clear effusions in the knee,” Baldwin explained early in the spring.

The days were long and tiring, but it was not the physical demands that were most punishing. It was the mental strain, the sense of being apart, adrift, incomplete, surrounded by those constant, early-morning reminders of what he used to be, and where he wanted to be. “The general feeling,” Gundogan said, “is of loneliness.”

“The worst thing for me is seeing the other players,” he added. “I see them on the training field, when they are in the locker room, when they go up to the meeting before training. I see how they work in the gym, and I am not able to do the same. You know that you are not able to be a full part of the group.

“That is the most difficult thing: to feel that you are useless, not worth as much as before, not worth as much as the others.”

Read the rest of the story on NYTimes.com.

MGoBlue: Messages of Hope-Doing Something to Stop Student Suicide

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Steve Kornacki of MGoBlue.com covered the Messages of Hope board unveiling on Sept. 15. Below is an excerpt.

By Steve Kornacki

Garrick Roemer used to love running on the track at the University of Michigan’s iconic Ferry Field and walking across the service street to the Ross Academic Center. He ran the hurdles and was on a sprint relay for the Wolverines, and he was living a dream as a kid who grew up just a few miles south of campus in Saline.

Then, on May 4, 2014, his life and all of those dreams ended. Roemer, still four months away from his 20th birthday, died by suicide.

Sorrow came so suddenly for his family, friends and teammates. Grief pervaded the campus and his hometown. Over time, his family received heartfelt compassion and heard so many positive stories about Garrick from countless people, many of whom they’d never spoken with before, that it drove them to do something that could make a difference where suicide is concerned.

“It really is a time for us to wake up to the fact that this is an issue — that people need help.”

— U-M Athletic Director Warde Manuel

“Garrick liked people to be connected,” said his mother, Cathy Radovich. “One of his teammates said he was the glue that connected people. And the people that I’ve connected with since his death are really because of Garrick. He is bringing me to all of these other people that I’m meeting and helping.

“So, he’s still helping people. But it’s just through me. If I can honor him that way, that’s what I will do.”

She and other family members, including Garrick’s father, Ronald Roemer, have funded something that they hope not only carries on Garrick’s loving, compassionate spirit but also provides solace and resources for those considering suicide. Their Messages of Hope board was officially unveiled Friday (Sept. 15), in the middle of National Suicide Awareness Month, along the main corridor of the Ross Academic Center.

Wolverines athletic director Warde Manuel addressed the gathering of well over 100 and said that while it was a “celebration” of Garrick and the Messages of Hope board, as well as a time to share thoughts, it was more than that, too.

“It really is a time for us to wake up to the fact that this is an issue — that people need help,” said Manuel, who has a social work background.

He noted data detailing a 24 percent increase in suicide over the last 15 years and added that a golfer who was at Michigan while Manuel was playing football and participating in track and field 30 years ago recently committed suicide.

Afterward, I asked Manuel what made this topic so personal and special to him.

“We often talk about being a family,” Manuel said of the athletic department. “And because we are a family, we care. And we have family members in our midst in athletics who need our love and support and who are considering and thinking about suicide more than we know.

Read the rest of the story on MGoBlue.com.

Traci Carson: Why I Left the Team

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The Athletes Connected program continues to share stories from current and past student-athletes, coaches and staff members about various subjects related to mental well being and sports. Beginning this fall, we will have first-person posts in this space. The first of many original stories we will share this year is written by Traci Carson, a former Michigan rower and current PhD student in the U-M School of Public Health.

By Traci Carson

I had never been a “quitter.” This label was tough to swallow, but I knew there had to be a difference between quitting and choosing to making a change when life felt out of control.

As a transfer student, I moved to Ann Arbor the summer before my sophomore year and joined the women’s rowing team. I thought I had found my perfect fit. This team and culture were exactly what I wanted to be a part of; I was surrounded by women who were striving to be the leaders and best, both on and off the field. On the surface, this was a dream come true. Friends and family were so proud, and the positive attention I received as a member of the Michigan athletics community, was truly special. Despite this, something was wrong. I couldn’t identify or name it, but I was losing control.

Fast forward to junior year, I knew that I was unhappy, stressed out, and chronically exhausted, so I made the decision to leave the team. I told myself that everything would “automatically get better” if I removed myself from the team and the pressures of college athletics. While I came up with several reasons why this was the right decision, none of them acknowledged the true problem.

At that time in my life, I was running on empty and living life on autopilot; I was completely out of touch with my mind and body. In retrospect, it scares me to think about the damage I was doing to my mental and physical health, and today I can finally acknowledge and name what I was experiencing.

Being able to name what I was experiencing has been powerful in my journey to recovery and self-improvement and allowed me to accept that I needed help. I encourage anyone reading this reflect how you are feeling right now and what you would tell a friend if you knew they felt this way. Would you encourage that friend ask for help?

I talk about my experiences in the present tense, because I am a work in progress. I found that it became much easier to work on my challenges when I could finally name them.

I have anxiety

Early in college, I didn’t know what anxiety was. I had heard about depression, but I knew nothing about the signs and symptoms of other mental health disorders. I had convinced myself that extreme stress, inability to sleep, and restrictive eating was all part of being an athlete. Today, I can confidently acknowledge that I have anxiety, and I am learning how to thrive and cope with this challenge.

I have disordered eating

My relationship with food has been complicated. From a young age, I was very insecure about my strong legs, and this sparked my interest in learning as much as I could about nutrition and how to control my diet. At the age of twelve I began counting calories and memorizing nutrition labels. This restrictive pattern continued into college, all while training two to three hours a day.

The day I cried in the team nutritionists’ office, when she suggested that I add milk to my oatmeal, I began to realize that food was controlling me. Today, with the help of a nutritionist, I am working on improving my relationship with food and fueling my body in a way it deserves.

I am dependent on exercise

As a college athlete, I truly enjoyed training. I loved early mornings in the weight room, that was my time to stand out. Despite my drive to be a great athlete, I reached a point in college when my body image became more important than my physical performance.

I craved the feeling of complete exhaustion, which I reached fairly quickly due to my poor recovery and nutrition habits. My self-worth was completely wrapped up my identity as an athlete. I still find so much satisfaction in exercise and crave it daily, but I am working on finding the best balance for my body and mind.

* * *

Thinking back to my college years, I realize that I shoved away my feelings and fears, so that I could be this person I thought I “should” be. I lived with perfect structure, leaving no room for flexibility, intuitive decision making, or spontaneous adventure. I trained myself not to feel.

The culture of college athletics is both a beautiful and intense space. Athletics taught me incredible lessons about leadership and community, while at the same time, taking a notable toll on my mental and physical health.

Where am I now? Trying to find balance in my life. I go to weekly therapy sessions and meet regularly with a nutritionist. I found yoga and build in time each week to let my mind and body rest. I have dedicated this past summer to working on myself and embracing the present.

I hope that one day I can speak about my experiences in the past tense, but in the meantime, I will continue to share my story in the hopes that I encourage someone else to do the same.

Resources

Athletes Connected Get Support Page

Michigan Medicine Comprehensive Eating Disorders Program

U-M Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS)

Campus Mind Works – U-M website supporting student mental health