May is mental health awareness month. A lot of people focus on teen or adult mental health, but we need to look more into teen athletes’ mental health.  Not a lot of people understand the mental health of an athlete. As an athlete myself, having to juggle school and skill work and practices can be a struggle. Many players get discouraged during their sports season. Some reasons this can happen is that the player is not performing up to their potential. This can be very hard on a teenager if they know they can do better but they are not getting there. Sophomore Michael Mauney, spoke about how sometimes after games he can be hard on himself. Michael states that one reason he is harder on himself is that “sometimes I feel like I’m falling short of my end goals, and need to be a little harder on myself to get back on track.”

Although some kids might struggle during sports, there are some benefits when playing sports. Coaches are very important to most players. Most coaches will become a huge role model, and help with the struggles players might be facing. Some coaches push kids to work very hard. Many coaches encourage kids to work harder than others because they see the potential in them. Michael talks about how his coaches challenge him and his teammates a lot during the season to make them better players and a better team. Some people might try and say that sports are not good for kids’ mental health, but according to adventhealth.com, sports can help your mental health way more than you think. 

Some teens use mental health as an excuse to not have to play sports, but when playing sports you learn a lot of things that you can use in life later on. You learn how to get along with people that you normally wouldn’t get along with, you also learn how to respond to certain problems, and you can also learn how to work together with other people. When speaking with Michael about how he feels about if it is a good thing for teens to play sports throughout high school, Michael says that “most importantly teens learn how to face adversity, and to not stop when they face a block whether that block is mental or physical.”