Shifting the Lens from Physical to Mental in College Athletics

This August I shifted my focus from the physical side of college athletics to the mental health side, leaving Catapult after seven rewarding years to join OnBalance.

I made that decision for a few different reasons.

Number one is the changing need within college athletics. Ten years ago, athlete tracking technology was the new frontier within performance departments. Coaches were just beginning to identify averages for volume and intensity of movement among their athletes while developing periodization models to optimize performance. Today, that vertical of performance has been tackled as most college teams are all using some sort of wearable device to identify those metrics.

The second is the changing landscape of the NCAA. We have never seen the magnitude of changes within the NCAA than what we’re seeing today. With the emergence of the transfer portal, NIL, roster size limits, legalized gambling and pending monetary settlements with the NCAA, the goal posts have been moved on student-athletes. Instead of focusing on playing their sports, 17-22-year-olds are now forced to deal with a slew of outside stressors that have added a significant psychological weight.

And the last reason for my move was the mental health crisis that our society currently finds ourselves in today. Specifically within our Gen Z population, we have seen depression and anxiety increase at exponential rates over the last decade, unlike that of any other time in modern human history. The widespread belief of the leading cause of this has been social media, with a handful of other factors mixed in as well, including the after-effects of the recent global pandemic.

With that as a backdrop, here is what I have learned thus far after my first 90 days meeting with folks involved in the mental health side of college athletics.

First, there is no standardization among any two schools as it comes to structure, processes or personnel surrounding mental health. Some athletic departments will have dedicated counselors to athletics, while many do not. For those that do not, the integration of those mental health resources for their student-athletes into the university counseling system takes several different forms. Many cases are outsourced to outside providers with varying degrees of visibility to the athletic department.

Second, just about every school are experiencing cases continue to go up at a rate that is outpacing their personnel resources. Meaning, the wait times for student-athletes to be seen are getting longer and longer unfortunately.

Another observation is that this field is largely reactive. My previous world at Catapult, coaches and care teams would be prescriptive in their approach and much more proactive. They would leverage metrics to make intelligent decisions on practice plans and return to play protocols to optimize performance and recovery in calculated ways. Whereas this behavioral health world within college athletics operates in a much more reactionary way.

Lastly, there is a giant stigma around mental health as it comes to athletics. In training rooms, there is no judgment if a student-athlete is getting an ankle taped or a shoulder examined, but if a student-athlete is seeing a psychologist, there is an immediate unspoken judgment that pervades locker rooms causing many to hide their issues.

I believe mental health is the next frontier of college athletics. The quickest road to development within the behavioral health space of college athletics, is through data and intelligence so care teams can make better calculated decisions on how to properly treat … Just as we saw on the physical side a decade ago.