CU, CSU athletes have mental health help available if needed

Wash. State tragedy shows importance of seeking counseling

The 300-pound Colorado State lineman was a physically dominant force. But it was his mind that struggled, and he didn’t want it to show.

The summer before his junior year, a best friend back home died in a motorcycle crash and another suffered a brain injury in a separate car crash. Then he faced relationship trouble. It all seemed to happen at once. The lineman hardly spoke of his pain that entire season and funneled his energy toward football. Yet outside the game, he often withdrew from his teammates.

Then something changed. “Finally,” he said, “I opened up about everything.”

The former Ram is in a better place now, but when mental health issues go unchecked for extended lengths of time, the results can sometimes be devastating. And his request to remain anonymous speaks to the stigma of depression in sports, even years after he walked away from football.

In 2015, suicide was the secondleading cause of death for Coloradans between ages 15 and 44 — with 1,093 total deaths across all groups, according to the Center for Disease Control’s most recent available data. The state’s suicide rate per 100,000 people was 19.46, far above the national average (13.26).

It’s a public health crisis often forced into the national conscience through sports.

Like on Monday, when former Minnesota Duluth hockey captain Andrew Carroll, 32, took his life by jumping from an elevated roadway near Chicago’s O’hare International Airport. Or on Jan. 16 in Pullman, Wash., when teammates of Washington State quarterback Tyler Hilinski found him dead in his apartment with a selfinflicted gunshot wound. Hilinski was 21.

Much of the public outcry since has reflected the words of Hilinski’s former teammate, quarterback Luke Falk, who addressed suicide with reporters at a Senior Bowl practice last week. “It should be talked about,” Falk told Yahoo.com, “and we should do something about it.”

The University of Colorado and Colorado State believe they are.

Since 2000, CU’S football program has endured the loss of three former players who died by suicide: Drew Wahlroos (2017), Rashaan Salaam (2016) and Gabe Odenberg (2004). A CSU spokesman wasn’t aware of any former Rams who have died by suicide, but CU and CSU take a similar approach in promoting student

athletes’ mental health through the embedding of licensed mental health professionals.

Chris Bader is in his sixth year as the counseling and sport psychologist at CU, and this month the Buffaloes’ athletic department hired Erin Rubenking, who is also a licensed professional counselor. At CSU, Jimmy Stewart is in his fourth year as senior coordinator for counseling services for the Rams’ student athletes.

Through the orientation periods for sports at each school, first-year athletes are introduced to their respective counselors and are given their cellphone contact. Those mental health pros then become regulars at team practices, in the weight room, at study hall, at competition and everywhere in between. Getting help is just a conversation away. Those discussions always are confidential.

“In college, a lot of these athletes don’t want to go to the counseling center,” Stewart said, “because everybody is going to know them.”

Bader and Stewart estimate they each visit with 20 to 25 student athletes per week for varying degrees of crisis. CU reports about a 50-50 split between male and female athletes who seek counseling. CSU said slightly more women attend sessions than men. The demographics typically break into three groups — the athlete who wants to meet; the athlete who is recommended by a coach, trainer or teammate; or the athlete who is required to do so through disciplinary action. Through multiple points of access and a universitywide collaborative effort, CU and CSU aim to erase the idea that seeking mental health is an admission of weakness.

“What I have seen in my time in the field is the stigma is lessening,” said Bader, adding that about 75 percent of CU’S student athletes meet with him annually. “They’re sort of familiar with what we’re doing, and it’s not this weird ‘voodoo magic’ that it might have been a few years ago.”

Madison Porter, a former CSU women’s tennis player who visited Stewart about once a week almost a year after a difficult breakup, said: “On and off the court, it was a tremendous help. I was able to breathe. I could really just grow as a person.”

CSU also has taken a digital approach to providing mental health resources with the development of its “YOU@CSU” program available to all students through school email. Developed by Joe Conrad, a 1987 graduate of CSU, it provides online tools and university resources for mental health skill building.

“It doesn’t solve the need for one to want counseling, but a lot of times when students are struggling, it might be the middle of the night,” said Anne Hudgens, the executive director of CSU Health Network.

Increased dialogue surrounding suicide prevention within the state’s biggest athletic departments is well received by former CU linebacker and assistant coach Brian Cabral. He said those discussions never took place during his playing days in the 1970s, and not nearly enough through his more than two decades (19892012) as an assistant coach with the Buffaloes.

Cabral recruited Salaam and Wahlroos to Boulder, and when both took their own lives within a span of nine months, it left Cabral searching for answers. “They were fun-loving guys,” he said, “and it’s hard to understand how that happens.”

So Cabral and the nonprofit Buffs4life Foundation made a pact as part of a new initiative with the “Never Again” campaign. Launched this month, it provides prominent former CU athletes across the nation with contacts for professional resources ranging from family and marriage counseling to substance-abuse programs to medical health specialists and to career building. That network can then provide immediate assistance to any former athlete they discover to be in trouble.

The “Never Again” campaign hopes to squash suicide before it’s too late, especially for those struggling with the transition away from sports.

“The reality of that is really hard,” Cabral said. “It’s what you gained your identity from, and when that’s taken away or the opportunity is no longer there, most guys are stuck with ‘Who am I, really?’ ”

Kick-starting those conversations about mental health issues with current student athletes is the first step in prevention. It made all the difference for that former CSU lineman. He met with Stewart once or twice a week, often at lunch or on the golf course, to unpack what he kept hidden. That player addressed the Rams in a team setting the summer of his senior year with an important message.

“You’ll go through some rough patches, but nobody is really going to know if you don’t open up and talk about it,” he said. “You’re not in this alone.”