Mental Health Matters!

Strong Bodies, Strong Minds: The Importance of College Athlete Mental Health

By Brady Lynch|Updated on June 27, 2023 (originally published on March 13, 2023)

Athletes are always taught physical skills from an early age…but it is so rare that we are given the mental skills that would benefit us in the many aspects of our lives outside of our respective sports. The conversation about mental health has become more prevalent in athletics, but most fail to teach athletes actual ways that they can apply these tools to their own lives going forward.

As a graduate student in Ithaca College's MBA in Entertainment and Media Management program, myself and four other students wanted to come up with a way to shed light on the topic of mental health in athletics in a more candid and relatable way, as four out of the five of us are college athletes and have experienced the struggles of staying afloat in the collegiate sports world—sometimes seemingly without a life raft. On Tuesday February 21st, we had the opportunity to watch an event we had been planning since August of 2022 come to life in the form of a live mental health panel titled “Strong Bodies & Minds” featuring elite athletes from different backgrounds.

Our panel was comprised of Connor Buczek, former professional lacrosse player and Cornell men's head lacrosse coach, Katie Lever, a former Division 1 distance runner, author of her college sports dystopian novel Surviving the Second Tier, and current doctoral candidate at UT Austin where she studies NCAA discourse, and Blaze Riorden, a professional lacrosse player who was named the best Goalkeeper in the Premier Lacrosse League. Each panelist provided the audience of over 150 people with different approaches to how they have combatted their mental health struggles throughout their careers by sharing experiences and advice regarding the pressures athletes face on a daily basis.

Through the guidance of Greg Shelley, our esteemed moderator who is the Director of Sports Leadership and Mental Conditioning at Cornell University, we were able to address multiple facets surrounding mental health during the hour-long event ranging from mental performance techniques, dealing with injury, and acclimating to life after your sport has ended.

Riorden, who said this was the first mental talk he had been a part of in his career, expressed how important the topic was to him and what it meant to be asked to speak to an audience of primarily college athletes.

“One of the biggest things I have learned as I've gotten older is that the most growing you'll do is by learning from other people and their experiences. Using others' experiences to help manage my own has been huge in my growth on and off of the field.”

The structure of the event allowed the audience a 30 minute Q&A session following the program where students voiced questions for the talent, allowing them to leave the panel with more insight and tangible strategies than they had when they arrived.

When asked the daunting question about how you adjust to life after sports has ended, Lever said, “There is a huge loss of your sense of self that follows the end of one's athletic career. It can feel isolating and depressing which is why it is so important to invest in your mental health before it becomes a problem. Invest in not only yourself but those around you and use your teammates to lean on and build a community.”

As student athletes at Ithaca College, there are so many events surrounding our sport that we are required to go to whether it be a nutrition talk, an NCAA compliance meeting or just a team bonding exercise outside of practice. It is so rare that mental health is spoken about let alone in an environment such as an interactive panel so this was not only a huge success for our group but for the Ithaca community to have an opportunity to hear from such fantastic panelists.

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Image Credit: GABRIEL BIENNAS/The Ithacan