They met for coffee one day last fall, two Oregon State athletes coping with the suicides of former teammates.
What was supposed to be a 30-minute chat turned into a half-day brainstorm.
The brainstorm turned into a campaign, and #DamWorthIt was born.
If all goes well, it will turn into a revolution in the perception of mental health within student-athlete communities.
“The way the conversation began,’’ recalled Beaver gymnast Taylor Ricci, “was that we wanted Oregon State to have a full-time sports counselor. But then we started asking: ‘What can we do? What’s in our power?’
“Well, we can help end the stigma. We can help them get through the door. We’re not trying to solve mental health. We’re trying to get people to talk about it, to hammer home that they’re worth it.”
By the time they wrapped up that October day, Ricci and Nathan Braaten, an OSU soccer player, had formulated a plan to bring mental health out of the shadows — to provide education, resources, awareness and comfort for student-athletes in quiet, private struggles.
Three months later, and with the backing of Oregon State’s athletic department, Ricci and Braaten went public with their initiative.
In May, the Pac-12 threw its full support behind #DamWorthIt with a grant from its Student-Athlete Health and Well-Being Initiative (SAHWBI).
“We went to them and said, ‘Please apply for a grant,’’’ said Kim Harmon, the head football physician at Washington and chair of the conference’s student-athlete well-being board.
“It was off-cycle for us, but the fact that their project is peer led — I could talk about mental illness all day, and it wouldn’t make nearly the impact as if it’s coming from a peer.”
The SAHWBI isn’t well known among mainstream fans, but it’s one of the conference’s most important endeavors.
Created in 2013 by commissioner Larry Scott, in conjunction with the university presidents, the initiative is funded by a sliver of the conference’s windfall from the College Football Playoff.
Each school diverts $300,000 annually to the grant program, according to Harmon. Applications are accepted annually and subjected to a robust, multi-stage review process. The number of approved projects differs by the year, just as the funding levels vary by the project.
Most initiatives focus on injury prevention and treatment.
“The criteria is: What benefit is there to the student-athletes?” Harmon said.
#DamWorthIt was one of six projects to receive funding in 2018 but different from all the others, ever, in one respect: It’s the first student-run initiative — one created by two athletes dealing with the tragic realities of mental illness.
Both Ricci and Braaten had lost teammates to suicide within an 18-month span. Ricci had flown to Texas for the memorial service and recalled holding it together, until the end. In the parking lot, she broke down.
“I should have done more,” she told assistant coach Brian Amato.
His response: “You have the power and the voice to change the situation for someone else.”
It took weeks for Amato’s words to sink in. Once they did, Ricci connected with Braaten — to that point, they were merely acquaintances — to discuss mental health within the student-athlete community at OSU.
They agreed to meet at Coffee Culture near campus. They talked for five hours, Ricci said, and “put pen to paper,” creating three pillars for their campaign: education, resources and awareness/comfort.
“When you enter sports, you get labeled physically strong and mentally tough and resilient,’’ she explained.
“But depression hits who it wants to hit, and there’s a tension that arises: ‘I’m struggling, but I’m an athlete and I need to be tough.’”
Ricci and Braaten planned to go public with #DamWorthIt — Dam is a play on the school’s beaver mascot — in the middle of January, on the day of a men’s basketball home game against UCLA.
Two days before launch, Washington State quarterback Tyler Hilinski committed suicide.
Hilinski, it turns out, was suffering from early-stage Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, or CTE, a degenerative brain disease linked to head trauma in athletes and responsible for the suicides of several former NFL players, including Junior Seau.
Hilinski’s parents, Mark and Kym, have started a campaign similar to #DamWorthIt: Hilinski’s Hope, a non-profit foundation designed to raise awareness of mental health and promote wellness in college athletes.
“I’m grateful to (Ricci and Braaten) for taking the initiative to help others and proud of their ability to reach success in funding,’’ Mark Hilinski said via email.
“I also wish this was done 10 years ago, so that Tyler might have benefited from the work they’re embarking on.”
Rocked by the news of Hilinski’s death, Ricci and Braaten went forward with the long-planned launch of #DamWorthIt.
At a series of OSU sporting events through the winter and spring, they handed out wristbands and flyers, talked about mental health with athletes and non-athletes alike and plotted to spread the word beyond Corvallis.
According to Harmon, one-in-three college students will experience mental health issues, while the NCAA reported that up to half of all college students feel “overwhelming anxiety” in a given year. Many believe frequencies are higher among athletes because of the pressure to perform.
“We never call ourselves professionals,” said Braaten, who will be a senior in 2018-19, “but in an impromptu way, we’ve become voices of mental health. If there’s anything we can do, we want to do it.”
Ricci, who just graduated, said the number of OSU athletes seeking counseling has increased in the past six months, but specifics are elusive because of student-privacy laws.
Anecdotally, #DamWorthIt has been a rousing success. Ricci and Braaten have handed out more than 5,000 wristbands and are stopped frequently by strangers offering support, including a waiter at a sushi restaurant. This spring, they were honored for civic leadership by the Institute for Sport and Social Justice.
With a portion of their $60,000 grant from the Pac-12, they plan to visit every campus this winter to conduct seminars on mental health and make sure athletes in every sport understand their lives are worth it.
#BruinsAreWorthIt
Ultimately, they want to take their message nationally, to athletes across all sports, all conferences and all NCAA divisions.
#UtesAreWorthIt
“Mental health has negative connotations that deter people from getting the help they need,’’ Braaten said. “We want to attack that stigma.”
#SunDevilsAreWorthIt
No pillar of their campaign is more important than awareness, Ricci said, because resources are meaningless if athletes don’t recognize signs of mental illness in themselves and, just as significantly, in their teammates.
#BearsAreWorthIt
“It’s OK to not be OK,’’ she added. “Being mentally tough is asking for help.”
#DucksAreWorthIt
After all, depression does not discriminate between a 130-pound golfer or a 300-pound left tackle; it does not consider statistics or trophies; it does not care about future earnings.
It is insidious, relentless and difficult to stop one-on-one.
#CougarsAreWorthIt
“If Tyler does it by suicide,” Mark Hilinski said, “and given all you know and continue to hear, this can happen to anyone.
“We need to establish mental health on equal footing as much as nutrition, weightlifting, running and skills improvement — in all collegiate and professional sports. And high school is NOT too early to start getting this message to schools, athletes, administration and coaches.”
#EveryoneIsWorthIt
For more on #DamWorthIt, use this link or contact Ricci at @TayRicci and Braaten at @NathanBraaten
Information on the Pac-12 Student-Athlete Health and Well-Being Initiative can be found here.
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