Athlete’s Mental Health and Academic Performance (Free Essay Sample)

 A topic often neglected is the stress of focusing on a sport and maintaining grades. Grades, GPA, and standardized test scores are one of the first components of an individual that schools care about when applying for college. But how do sports influence an athlete’s mental health and academic performance? Although there are positives to being a student-athlete, this essay will focus on the negative impact sports have on an athlete’s life with personal experiences, studies, and statistics. 

In an interview on the National Public Radio (NPR) Ari Shapiro and Alisa Roth speak about the mental struggles of college student-athletes. A’Shon Riggins is a football athlete from the University of Indiana. Despite being very successful he never found satisfaction in the sport. “I really didn't know what was going on at the time of - like, aware of my body, my mental health, or anything like that. I’ve always heard, you know, if you go see sports psychologists, like, oh you’re crazy” (NPR Inc. 2021). This shows a general background for how athletes such as A’Shon feel about their mental health, afraid to speak up because of how society views this issue. Even if sports cause fulfillment and happiness, they can also be a source of stress for the athlete. “Student-athletes face the same mental health struggles as regular students and some athletic-specific ones, too - things like the stress of leading very public lives and performance anxiety” (Alisa Roth 2021). This shows that playing a sport can cause anxiety from performing in front of a large group of people. 

In an Interview by Quinn Storey, B.A. majoring in Psychology, UBC, and Mental Health Advocate, we learn about personal stories about mental health from collegiate basketball player, Brian. Brian shares his experiences of how a sport can be mentally challenging to compete with every day, “The first thing that comes to my mind is the necessity of mental fortitude for athletic performance. When it comes to competition and entering a performance mindset, it’s important to not have factors outside your game affecting you. Having a good grasp on your mental health can help bring an aspect of resilience and toughness to your capabilities as an athlete that extends beyond physical limits. One of the biggest things that I’ve struggled with is confidence. You put in the reps in the gym and the work on the court, but when it comes to performance there is often a seed of doubt telling you that you might not be good enough. I think it’s something a lot of athletes face when the time comes to compete. Everybody wants to keep getting better and see improvement, but it’s important to have confidence in where you are now. Keeping an open mind and focusing on long-term goals is super important. Having something you’re pushing for in the long term helps shift the focus off of day-to-day ups and downs and forces you to look at how far you’ve come and the future that’s waiting for you. It’s nice to take this opportunity to have an open discussion about it because it’s not something that gets talked about often. There’s a lot of messaging around being tough and fighting off weakness, and oftentimes, struggling with mental health gets lumped in there as a sign of inadequacy. It’s important to remember that it’s not something that’s always directly controllable and plays a much bigger role in performance than many people might think.” This shows that a sport can affect mental health because not only is it physically challenging, they are mentally challenging to consistently maintain the focus and effort to be successful.