8 — Tuesday, February 2, 2016
Sports
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Fighting the hidden battles

By KELLY HALL

Daily Sports Editor

Garrick 
Roemer 
was 

scared. The 17-year-old wasn’t 
comfortable in the back of the 
ambulance. He didn’t want to be 
there, and on the surface, it didn’t 
look like he belonged there either.

His mom, Cathy Radovich, 

overheard him nervously asking 
the paramedics if his emergency 
trip to the hospital was going to 
follow him, if people were going to 
hear about it.

Outside 
that 
ambulance, 

Roemer seemed to be living out a 
reality he had strived for. As a 2012 
graduate of Saline High School and 
lifelong Michigan fan, he grew up 
a hop, skip and a jump away from 
Ann Arbor as he ran to an All-
State title in the 400-meter dash. 
He committed to Michigan’s track 
and field team as a preferred walk-
on, rejecting a partial scholarship 
from Michigan State in order to 
don the maize and blue. There 
are pictures of Roemer dressed in 
Michigan apparel from the age of 
2 onward, and a scholarship offer 
from his rival wasn’t going to sway 
him. He came to Ann Arbor to 
fulfill his dream.

But you can’t always tell what’s 

really going on from the outside 
looking in.

On 
that 
day, 
the 
future 

Michigan track athlete didn’t want 
to go to the hospital, didn’t want 
to talk about his problems — but 
Radovich knew he needed to. The 
spring of his senior year of high 
school was difficult for Roemer, 
so after consulting his therapist, 
Radovich called the paramedics, 
and Roemer reluctantly got in the 
ambulance.

He looked physically healthy, 

and 
he 
wasn’t 
sick 
in 
the 

traditional sense. But he had 
threatened to hurt himself in front 
of people at school, and that was 
enough cause for alarm.

When people suffer from a 

heart attack or a stroke, they don’t 
worry about seeking medical 
attention. 
But 
when 
people 

need an emergency psychiatric 
evaluation, they very rarely seek 
the help they need. Sitting in an 
ambulance with his life in danger, 
Roemer was wondering what 
other people would think.

For most athletes, the biggest 

battle takes place internally. And 
far too often, that struggle goes 
unheard.

A 2014 study conducted by 

Dr. Daniel Eisenberg and Ph.D. 
candidate Sarah Ketchen Lipson 
at the University showed that of a 
random sample of approximately 
7,000 students at nine colleges, 
just 30 percent of those with 
depression or anxiety sought 
mental health services.

For 
student-athletes, 
the 

statistic was even lower. Just 10 
percent of student-athletes with 
depression or anxiety used mental 
health services.

In May 2014, following his 

second year at Michigan, Roemer 
committed suicide. According to 
Radovich, a “perfect storm” of 
events had hit her son, including 
injury and an isolating redshirt 
sophomore year that prevented 
him from traveling with his 
teammates.

“I think stigma really was a part 

of what stopped him from getting 
the help he needed, and that’s 
kinda why I’m here (talking about 
it),” Radovich said. “Whether 
you’re an athlete or not, it hovers 
over you.”

* * *

Almost two years later, on Jan. 

22 of this year, Radovich sat at a 
table describing the thoughts she 
believed her son may have had 
that spring day. The only way the 
stigma would go away was if she 
talked about it.

Sitting next to her was Will 

Heininger, a former Michigan 
football player who left his job 
in Chicago when he realized 
that he wanted to join Athletes 
Connected, 
a 
University 

organization 
dedicated 
to 

supporting 
student-athlete 

mental health and one of the first 
programs of its kind.

On that Friday afternoon, the 

Athletes 
Connected 
Advisory 

Board — a sort of “think tank” 
for current and former student-
athletes, interested community 
members, 
clinicians 
and 

psychiatrists to suggest ways to 
improve mental health on campus 
— met for the second time.

The 
Athletes 
Connected 

initiative 
first 
formed 
when 

Eisenberg, an associate professor 
in the School of Public Health, 
saw a posting for the NCAA 
Innovations in Research and 
Practice Grant. He learned about 
the grant about the same time 
as Trish Meyer, the manager for 
outreach and education at the 
University’s Depression Center, 
and the two reached out to Barb 
Hansen, one of three athletic 
counselors 
employed 
by 
the 

Michigan Athletic Department.

In April 2014, the Athletes 

Connected initiative received a 
$50,000 grant to conduct research 
on student-athlete mental health. 
Athletes Connected was born as a 
partnership between the School of 
Public Health, Depression Center 
and Athletic Department, with 
the major goals being to reduce 
the stigma of mental health 
issues, promote coping skills and 
encourage 
help-seeking. 
The 

group moved quickly, conducting 
student-athlete 
and 
athletic 

trainer focus groups over the 
summer.

Throughout 
the 
2014-15 

school year, Athletes Connected 
presented 
to 
every 
athletic 

team and its coaching staff, and 
provided 
biweekly 
75-minute 

support groups with a clinical 
social worker for student-athletes 
who wanted to listen or share their 
experiences dealing with stress.

Athletes Connected first told 

the coaches about the initiative in 
September 2014, and then checked 
back in to update them with 
results in May 2015.

Next, they opened up the floor 

for questions.

Which coach put his hand in 

the air first? Michigan football 
coach Jim Harbaugh.

“He started asking questions 

and then other coaches got 
involved,” Meyer said. “It was 
really, really encouraging and 
heartening because they care so 
much for their student-athletes 
and they want to know that there’s 
a system in place that going to 
support them in that way.”

* * *

Michigan 
men’s 
basketball 

coach John Beilein has seen a lot 
over his 40 years of coaching. 
Like Harbaugh, he was an active 
participant during the Athletes 
Connected presentation, and for 
good reason.

“Over 
my 
(career), 
I’ve 

probably had four or five kids with 
depression,” Beilein said. “During 
that time, I was virtually helpless 
as a coach. I would talk to them and 

there wasn’t anything happening. 
They needed clinical help. That’s 
why this is so important.”

He’s a strong believer in the 

power 
that 
mindfulness 
can 

bring to the court and even cites 
a time that Jordan Morgan, a 
former Michigan captain, added 
meditation 
to 
his 
game-day 

routine to alleviate any nerves 
about free-throw shooting.

Morgan, a subpar foul shooter 

who made 56.5 percent of his 
free throws in his career, made 
seven of eight shots in a 2014 
NCAA Tournament game against 
Texas. Beilein credits the standout 
performance to the fact that 
Morgan happened to mediate 
three times that day, focusing on 
seeing himself make foul shots.

It’s not uncommon for seasoned 

coaches to get stuck in their ways. 
Beilein has run the same offense 
his entire career, but he readily 
admits that his viewpoints on 
mental health have changed over 
time, especially as he started to 
grasp what was really at stake 
with his athletes.

“There are so many things going 

on with these kids; mental health 
and their mental development is 
huge for them,” Beilein said. “I’ve 
seen 
it 
over 

these years. I 
wish I knew 
more about it 
when I was a 
younger coach. 
I 
would 
just 

blame it maybe 
on, ‘Oh he’s not 
tough enough,’ 
or, ‘He doesn’t 
have 
the 
ice 

water in his veins to play.’

“That’s all he needed, was 

someone to talk to.”

* * *

Back in his playing days, 

Heininger decided to talk to 
someone, and it changed his life.

According to a video featuring 

Heininger 
on 
the 
Athletes 

Connected website — the same 
video Athletes Connected shows 
every Michigan athlete — he 
started “hating himself and his 
life” and had “all the classic 
symptoms 
of 
depression, 
but 

didn’t know what it was” during 
his sophomore year of college.

As an Ann Arbor native who 

attended Pioneer High School, 
which 
sits 
kitty-corner 
to 

Michigan Stadium, he dreamed of 
playing football at Michigan. He 
had no idea why he was feeling the 
way he was.

Finally, an athletic trainer 

noticed he was in pain and set 
him up with Barb Hansen, the 
Michigan 
athletic 
counselor 

now 
involved 
with 
Athletes 

Connected. 
They 
worked 
on 

coping techniques, highlighted 
by the video, and he opened up 
and stopped hiding his feelings. 
Ultimately, he recovered from 
depression and became a “better 
student, player and person.”

Now, Heininger is 27 and 

teaches new athletes the same 
coping techniques Hansen taught 
him. Athletes Connected is hoping 
its presentations help student-
athletes realize why they feel 
the way they do so they don’t get 
caught in the dark like he once did.

“In a cool way, just knowing 

— like I didn’t even know what 
depression was, right? I had no 
idea what had happened to me,” 
Heininger said. “But I’ve had a 
number of freshmen now, who 
are like, ‘Yeah, I get it. If there’s 
something off with my mood, then 

I can do something about it, just 
like if there’s something off with my 
knee, I can do something with it.’ ”

Heininger often makes that 

analogy, that, as an athlete, if 
there’s something wrong with 
your body, you take care of it 
immediately. He wants every 
athlete to know that issues with 

mental 
health 

can be handled 
in 
the 
same 

fashion.

That’s why, 

after two years 
of working a 
finance 
job 

in 
Chicago, 

Heininger 
decided 
to 

come home to 

Ann Arbor. When he received the 
call asking if he would like to come 
back and work with his former 
counselor as well as Eisenberg and 
Meyer, he experienced a moment 
of “serendipity.”

“It was like, what do I want to 

spend my days doing, like what 
matters to me?” Heininger said. 
“And that was during the time that 
I was realizing how critical mental 
health is and its impact on society.”

Heininger may have left his job, 

but he found his calling.

* * *

When Jaimie Phelan first saw 

e-mails and fliers about the new 
Athletes Connected meetings, she 
was instantly curious. The junior 
cross country and track athlete 
didn’t say anything the first few 
times she went, but not too long 
after hearing others open up, she 
did, too.

She found out that most other 

athletes felt the same pressures 
she did.

“At a young age, a lot of athletes 

are taught to tough things out and 
fight through the pain,” Phelan 
said. “For our everyday life and 
for our own mental health, it’s not 
always the best approach to tough 
things out, and I think a lot of us 
struggle with that, too, to be able 
to take a step back and say, ‘All 
right, I need to take a day off,’ or 
‘All right, I need to rest for a bit for 
my mental health if I’m mentally 
drained.’ It’s like the same as a 
physical injury.”

She felt the same sense of 

belonging when she first saw 
the initial Athletes Connected 
presentations. 
Athletes 

Connected always shows the 
same two videos, one featuring 
Heininger and the techniques 
he used to overcome depression, 
and one featuring Kally Fayhee, 
a former Michigan swimmer who 
overcame an eating disorder.

“That hit a lot of us hard, just 

being able to hear someone else’s 
story and have them share and be 
a part of all of us, too, that gave a 
powerful message,” Phelan said. 
“It helped me open up more, 
and I wanted to go to Athletes 
Connected to help deal with any 
stressors that came on.”

After the presentations, every 

athlete took a survey, and 99 
percent indicated that the videos 
were relevant to either themselves 
or their teammates.

More stunningly, 63 percent 

of student-athletes reported that 
“emotional or mental health issues” 
had affected their performance 
in the past four weeks. That 
means that more than half of 
student-athletes realize they’re 
experiencing emotional distress.

But if more than half of the 

student-athlete 
population 
is 

affected by emotional issues on 
a regular basis, then Athletes 

Connected has a problem. Though 
the organization is still conducting 
research on student-athletes, the 
attendance at its biweekly support 
groups has dipped.

In the first meeting of 2016, only 

one student-athlete showed up.

“We keep trying to find the 

magic spot,” Hansen said. “I 
think it’s a combination of things, 
why the attendance is so low. 
I think part of it is always that 
time crunch. There just isn’t that 
perfect ideal time. … I think there’s 
still, certainly for some people, 
that fear, that stigma of, ‘I don’t 
want to go and tell all my business 
or worry what people might think 
of me.’

“But at the same time, feedback 

is really consistent that they value 
hearing 
from 
other 
students 

in other sports, not just their 
teammates, that it’s an opportunity 
to get together with other people 
who are maybe experiencing some 
of the same challenges.”

Phelan — one of the few 

athletes who has taken advantage 
of the biweekly meetings — 
wholeheartedly 
agrees. 
The 

students care about the program, 
even if they can’t always find time 
for it. This year, they decided 
that Athletes Connected would 
be the beneficiary of the athletes’ 
annual Mock Rock charity event 
on Feb. 23.

“I think everyone that I’ve 

talked to who has been to Athletes 
Connected, when they’ve left, 
they’ve all said that it’s been 
beneficial,” she said. “It’s just the 
fact that they’re trying to get more 
people to go if they want to, and 
they don’t have to be clinically 
diagnosed, just go and sit, listen, 
and you never know how much it 
can help you.”

* * *

When you first walk in to 

Barb Hansen’s office, you see a 
few words scrawled in dry-erase 
marker on her board. “Just a cold, 
dark night on Mt. Everest.”

At first glance, the words could 

mean anything. But you soon find 
out the words are applicable to 
nearly anyone who has taken on 
responsibility.

In March 2015, Dr. Alicia Crum 

gave a speech at the Depression 
on 
College 

Campuses 
Conference 
hosted by the 
University, 
Crum 
told 
a 

story about one 
especially late 
night working on her thesis, in 
which a colleague of hers consoled 
her by using that same phrase.

Hansen took note.
“When people climb Mount 

Everest, what do they expect?” 
Hansen said as she recounted 
Crum’s story. “They’re expecting 
it to be cold and miserable and 
harder than hell. … ‘I’ve chosen 
these things. Did I expect it to be 
without stress?’ Really reframing 
stress as, ‘You know, we choose 
these things and we’ll manage and 
we’ll get through.’ ”

The quote has worked for some 

of her student-athletes, allowing 
them to modify their view of stress 
to fit a healthier standpoint. It has 
stayed on the board since.

But it’s also applicable to college 

students 
everywhere. 
Though 

Athletes Connected is focused 
first on helping student-athletes, 
everyone on the team makes it 
clear that they fully intend on 
rolling it out to the general college 
population. As the de facto pioneer 
in studying student-athlete mental 

health on this grand of a scale, 
Athletes Connected wants to 
make sure they get it right first.

“Because it’s a collaboration 

between the Depression Center, 
Public Health and Athletics, we 
are able to use the momentum 
of this — which is specifically 
student-athlete mental health — 
to spill over to the rest of campus, 
high schools around the country,” 
Heininger said. “One of the things 
I’m most proud of in the past year 
is all of the interest from other 
colleges and universities.”

Added Eisenberg: “As a public 

health person, I’ve always been 
interested in having a wide impact 
on a large number of people. 
While I think the student-athlete 
population at Michigan is an 
important population, it’s still only 
900 people, which is tiny compared 
to the whole U of M community.”

In the past year, Michigan club 

sports, ROTC and the marching 
band have reached out to Athletes 
Connected, seeking information 
on how to improve their students’ 
mental health.

“I would hope that there will 

be 
really 
useful 
information 

that generalizes to the college 
population,” Hansen said. “That’s 
my hope, because even if you think 
about the larger college population, 
there’s other schools and groups 
that are also performance-based. I 
think students across campus feel 
that pressure to do really well and 
to compete.”

* * * 

There 
are 
three 
athletic 

counselors at Michigan. All three 
have packed schedules.

According to Hansen, it’s a rarity 

to have three counselors working 
just for an athletic department. 
But each counselor’s workload 
indicates that it’s a necessity.

After 
Athletes 
Connected 

showed 
the 
student-athletes 

the videos featuring Heininger 
and Fayhee, 40 indicated on 
the 
post-presentation 
survey 

that they would like to make 
an 
appointment 
with 
an 

athletic counselor to address 
“immediate concerns.”

If 40 students realized they 

wanted help after watching a few 
videos, then it’s not hard to imagine 

the 
impact 

programs 
like 
Athletes 

Connected 
could 
have 

on 
campuses 

across 
the 

country.

“A lot of schools have great 

facilities and a lot of schools will 
give athletes a lot of gear, and 
‘Woo-hoo, it’s great,’ ” Heininger 
said. “But what about developing 
them as a person, what about if 
they’re not going to go pro?”

And that’s why Radovich is 

involved in Athletes Connected. 
Last year, all of the donations to 
the Garrick P. Roemer Memorial 
Fund went to the program. But 
more importantly than that, she’s 
talking about what happened to 
Garrick so other people know 
what they’re up against.

The 
stigma 
surrounding 

depression and anxiety may be 
hard to shake — especially for 
athletes — but this community is 
taking its best shot.

“If it just helps one other person 

… I think that even if Athletes 
Connected 
would 
have 
been 

here, he may still not be with us,” 
Radovich said. “But if it would 
have prevented it, I’ve got to do it. 
We have to try. We have to try to 
help other people.”

LUNA ANNA ARCHEY/Daily

A recent study found that just 10 percent of student-athletes suffering from depression and anxiety seek help.

LUNA ANNA ARCHEY/Daily

Athletes Connected seeks to remove the stigma from mental health issues such as depression and anxiety.

“Whether 

you’re an athlete 
or not, it hovers 

over you.”

“We have to try to 
help other people.”