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From Here Forward shares stories and ideas about amazing things UBC and its alumni are doing around the world. It covers people and places, truths, science, art, and accomplishments with the view that sharing better inspires better. Join hosts Carol Eugene Park and Jeevan Sangha, both UBC grads, in exploring solutions for the negative stuff out there — focussing on the good for a change, from here forward.
[00:00:00] Whitney Sedgwick: We want to support someone to be as well as possible as a human being first, athlete second. Lots of people blow their ACL in volleyball, they come to training and they're modifying their training for a while until their knee's back together. So, sometimes that happens as well with mental health and well-being. The needs that they have will fluctuate over time. But we want to be there to support them and provide quality, specialized care.
[00:00:28] Carol Eugene Park: Hello, friendly alumni. Happy autumn, happy fall, happy, happy, happy all around. And welcome back to From Here Forward, your favorite UBC podcast. I'm Carol.
[00:00:39] Jeevan Sangha: And I'm Jeevan.
[00:00:40] Carol Eugene Park: I mean, what a beautiful season to be alive in. The crisp breeze is here, the layers can commence, and pumpkin and apple, everything is finally here.
[00:00:50] Jeevan Sangha: I quite literally have never seen you this excited about anything before, Carol.
[00:00:55] Carol Eugene Park: I mean, what can I say? I am a hater of summer and a lover of fall and winter. I am ready to thrive again.
[00:01:02] Jeevan Sangha: Hey, I'm with you. There's something so beautiful about a hot drink on a cold day, the leaves changing color. I'm also ready for the seasonal change to commence. I love summer, but autumn is that girl. And since you're so chipper, why don't you get us started?
[00:01:16] Carol Eugene Park: Yeah, why don't I?
[00:01:18] So last month, many of us were glued to our screens watching the Olympics and cheering for our favorite athletes or countries. I mean me, I don't really subscribe to only rooting for Team Canada. I root for the women athletes because like, have you seen them? Icons, they are the moment. And with the Olympics or any sports for that matter, discussions, about athlete mental wellness is kind of always around the corner.
[00:01:42] So naturally, we had to talk to the people with the UBC Thunderbird Mental Health Initiative to learn more about the specific challenges student athletes on campus face. The new program helps to build out comprehensive, on demand mental health support for all UBC athletes.
[00:01:57] Jeevan Sangha: We connected with Whitney Sedgwick, a licensed psychologist who provides mental health support to the UBC varsity athletes, and Sam Pritchard, the senior manager of sports and sport medicine for UBC Athletics. It was an important conversation about mental health stigma that persists in the sports space. We hope you enjoy.
[00:02:12] Carol Eugene Park: Let's dive.
[00:02:14] Jeevan Sangha: Let's sport.
[00:02:16] Whitney Sedgwick: My name is Whitney Sedgwick. I am a licensed psychologist at the University of British Columbia in the province. And I work full time at UBC providing mental health, mental wellness supports to our varsity athletes. That also involves consultation with coaches and staff and outreach. And we have a program as well, training young adults to be mental performance consultants and counsellors in the field. I've worked with international populations and Olympic level athletes for about twenty-five years. And I really am excited to talk to you about the mental health initiative that we have at the University of British Columbia.
[00:02:55] Sam Pritchard: Hi, I'm Sam Pritchard. I am the senior manager of sport science and sport medicine at UBC Athletics. In my role, I oversee all of the performance services that athletes and coaches receive. So this includes strength conditioning, nutrition, sports psychology, sport medicine, sport therapy and sport science. And I work strategically with the staff and coaches to ensure that we have all the resources in place that we need.
[00:03:16] Carol Eugene Park: So in the last few years, a lot of young people have talked about mental health and illness as like kind of in a vast way, but to say that it's been completely destigmatized, I feel like that's quite not, we're not there yet.
[00:03:29] So what can you tell us about the student sports space and the mental health awareness, maybe, you know, in the last five years to now?
[00:03:38] Whitney Sedgwick: So in terms of what has changed or evolved in terms of mental health and wellness, uh, I'll speak to my observations on the campus. I think in short, it's grown exponentially. I think we have a much greater awareness, so from peer to peer, athletes talk to each other. There is a general destigmatization with each other, in terms of, I need some help with X, and did you know you can go get it at Y?
[00:04:06] I think that our coaches and staff are doing a superb job to try to recognize when someone may be struggling. And to, we help them to differentiate, like, let's say you have a parent who's sick and very unwell, that's not necessarily a diagnosable mental health issue, right?
[00:04:25] But that may be impacting their sport performance and their school, etcetera. And then all the great resources that Sam oversees, we could help that individual so that they can meet with success on the field, off the field, academically, etcetera. I would say more broadly, uh, societally, yes, I think you're right. We're slowly de stigmatizing things.
[00:04:44] The challenge remains though, in my humble opinion, that sport culture is typically a tough it out culture. You push through physical pain and there remains, I think, a barrier to think, well, if I have to push physically and suffer, maybe I have to suffer mentally as well. That's not just a concern on our campus. I think that's, um, worldwide that we've got to continue to say, no, actually, you don't have to suffer.
[00:05:10] Also, I would say the peers have stepped up. There's some peer-initiated programs on campus in conjunction with this mental health initiative. So we have both professionally trained folks like myself and Sam and our colleagues, and then the peers are starting to support each other in ways that I think, they reach each other in a different way.
[00:05:29] Jeevan Sangha: What are some of the other unique mental health challenges that student athletes might face?
[00:05:34] Whitney Sedgwick: So, what we know from the research and my experience, I've been at UBC for twenty-two years, so I've met with a lot of university students. And so, in general, basically, we know young adulthood is a time of often quite profound transition, right?
[00:05:49] So there are individual variables, and then there's situational variables. So the situational, we all know, right? They often move away. Sometimes they're coming from other provinces or other countries. Um, we know developmentally, people are trying to figure out how to be young adults, right? And then there's individual variables.
[00:06:07] And it doesn't matter if you're an athlete or not, we have genetic predisposition to things. So someone may have a predisposition to, they may have a family that's rife with depression. That doesn't mean that they're going to develop depression, but that's what we call a predisposing variable. And then there's this things that can precipitate potentially problematic mental health. And that could be things like the move, could be a major injury like a torn Achilles. So that's a precipitating variable. And then we have things that can perpetuate difficulties.
[00:06:40] So let's say someone is predisposed to developing depression and they move to Vancouver where it rains for five months. That in conjunction with some other variables might suggest that they're going to be vulnerable to something. So I just want to start with, we're all exposed to these things. And it doesn't mean we all can't learn to cope and receive support if we need. We know that in North America, the top two presenting mental health issues across all campuses is depression and anxiety. There's different forms of both of those diagnoses.
[00:07:13] There's also just the natural, young adults get quote stressed. That doesn't mean that they're actually diagnosed with those mental health issues. But there's a lot of variables that are contributing to them leaving quote unquote stressful lives. Could be financial, interpersonal, and then some of those individual variables that they're bringing with them.
[00:07:33] Then you layer in being a varsity student athlete. Some of the really unique variables. They have to have a certain academic average, or they will not be able to be a student athlete. So, university student athletes, they have basically two full time jobs. They're training for their sport minimum twenty hours a week. Plus, they've got to keep these academic standards. They're physically tired from the training, they may be injured, they have a number of appointments to keep, physio, or maybe they're meeting with a dietician, or me. And then they're traveling, they're going to meets and games on weekends. And some of them, their seasons are very long.
[00:08:08] They may start in September and go till March. That's practically whole academic year. They need to sleep, they need to eat, both of those things sometimes fall by the wayside. And that can really impact functioning and wellness.
[00:08:19] Sam Pritchard: Jumping into sport, there's a lot of pressures on them, um, not just time management wise, but performance wise as well. Oftentimes there's whether or not they're going to keep a roster spot or they're going to make a starting roster as well. So I think that's a component of it and then travel as well. Canada West is unique across Canada in that our athletes compete from Vancouver Island all the way to Manitoba. You know, they may have one game on a Saturday, but that may be leaving Thursday night, missing classes on Friday, not getting back till Sunday.
[00:08:51] So that takes an extensive amount of their prep time, their study time away from them. And then the ebbs and flows of season also tend to line up with a lot of the pressures of school. So our fall sports have their national championships during midterm season in November. So there's a lot of competing pressures that line up in the calendar, unfortunately for them at the same time. Which just adds to, you know, if they do have any sort of struggles with mental health, it can be compounding at that point in the year.
[00:09:19] Carol Eugene Park: What are the specifics for student athletes to be full time students and athletes?
[00:09:25] Sam Pritchard: I don't know the grades that are required, but in terms of the course load. So to participate in Canada West and U Sports, which is the Canadian conferences that we participate in, they do have to take the three courses per semester or per term. And then if they're NAIA, which is the American conference that some of our sports also compete in, that one is actually a higher threshold at four courses per term.
[00:09:48] So, and we do have dual conference athletes, so our track and field, for example, will compete Canada West and NAIA. So they have to uphold the higher threshold throughout the entire season.
[00:09:59] Whitney Sedgwick: There's academic advisors for different faculties, and then we have academic advisors for athletics. And so, on the athletics end, they can try to be very supportive. On the academic end, it really, it does depend faculty wise. So, if a student is, let's say, in engineering, there's too many core courses that are required, let's say, in first year, so they won't be permitted to reduce, and then they'll have labs on top of their courses. And then they, that faculty may say, you need to have an eighty average in order to continue into the second year. We actually don't really care if you're a starter on a team.
[00:10:32] So athletics may be trying to support them and say, could you take it into consideration? I also just wanted to underscore a really valuable point Sam said about the comparisons athletes make with each other. And so sometimes, um, they're coming from the high school where they really, they'd work their way up in the poll and they were starters and lauded and exceptional in their town. And then they come to a university where the best of the best from all over are there. And so that identity piece of being an athlete and sometimes that over comparison to each other. And sometimes a hesitation to maybe ask a coach, oh, how come I'm not starting? Or when will I be able to start?
[00:11:14] Carol Eugene Park: So it sounds like for student athletes who are recruited and they go to university and they have all these things that they have to meet. Which, you know, some might argue that other students might also have to do, they may have a full-time job too on top of school stuff, whatever.
[00:11:28] But because there's so much pressure, it almost sounds like student athletes kind of are at a disadvantage before they even get to university. Is that a fair statement? Like, it's almost like the system's kind of against them because they have to do the three courses, they have to hit these benchmarks just because they are passionate about the sports that they're playing. Or am I completely off?
[00:11:50] Sam Pritchard: I don't know if they're at a disadvantage per se because we're also more intentional about the supports that they have access to. So as Whitney alluded to, we have academic individuals within athletics that help guide that. So they won't give, say, the degree advice that's for the faculties, but they'll help them navigate who do you talk to. How do you get that information?
[00:12:14] And so, I would say they're potentially on par with the average student. You know, the average student may be taking a full course load at five versus three and working a full-time job and our full time job is athletics. So, I would say there's pros and cons to both. As a general student, I think everyone has an exorbitant amount of pressure, whether that's involved in clubs, full time job, other extracurriculars, as well as the course load of, you know, a full course load compared to maybe those slightly reduced at three to four that student athletes have.
[00:12:45] Whitney Sedgwick: Yeah, and I would layer in commute. Vancouver is one of the world's most expensive cities, so many students, not just student athletes, may choose to live at home if they're from, say, the lower mainland. I would agree with Sam. I tend to frame it, and actually it's a trick that works for all of us. If we frame it as a challenge, a challenge that we can try to face, it's very different than, oh my gosh, I can't handle all this.
[00:13:06] Carol Eugene Park: Something that I thought of when you said that during midterm season, they might have a game. You know, if you have a full-time job, you could potentially take a PTO. But if you're an athlete, it sounds like you don't have a choice, but to do both during midterm seasons or exam season.
[00:13:20] Sam Pritchard: Yeah, they definitely have to try to balance it. We do have really great relationships with faculties to try to help accommodate. So if they are away at nationals, say nationals are in Toronto, which they often are. Sometimes they'll get exams or midterms invigilated on the road by a staff member or they'll get that deferred. Which not always great, get it deferred to your final exam and increase the pressures on final exams. But there are other avenues for them to help balance those pressures and that's part of our academic team at UBC.
[00:13:51] They advocate and educate the faculties on what it entails to be a student athlete so that when these pressures come up, there's a lot more empathy coming back to the students when they're asking for accommodations from different units on campus.
[00:14:06] Whitney Sedgwick: And if there is mental health issues that are emerging and we are aware of it. You know, unfortunately, there's lots of people that do experience things and do not seek help.
[00:14:17] A, they may not understand what's going on, they may think it's going to pass, or they just don't want to or aren't able to. Those that come into the counseling center, or meet with me, or perhaps see one of our sports medicine physicians. You know, if in fact, yes, they are struggling with something. And it could be ADHD, it could be, as I said, depression, anxiety, substance use, eating issues, an early psychotic break. Which young adulthood is the age more likely if you're going to have a, uh, develop a more serious mental health issue like schizophrenia is likely to be in one's early twenties.
[00:14:50] And so if those things are, um, present, then just to build on Sam's point extra resources are required, you know. So we want to support someone to be as well as possible as a human being first, athlete second. If the athlete is amenable, I always say to them, you know, you don't have to tell the coaches what you're dealing with.
[00:15:11] But if you want me to support that, I'll back you up. I'll say there are things going on that are, that we expect will impact their ability to play and to do some school. So I'd like you to take that into consideration. And our coaches, you know, they are far more sensitive, I think that they were five, ten years ago to be respectful, to understand that, oh, hmm, yeah, I noticed some things too.
[00:15:34] They were coming late, or they were tearful, or we've seen some decrease in their performance, or they have told me they're not sleeping. And so the coaches are gathering this information and trying to help support a student as we go through a process of what might they need. Sometimes students have to step away for a while, and then they might rejoin, as they do with a physical injury. Lots of people blow their ACL in volleyball. They come to training and they're modifying their training for a while until their knees back together. Sometimes that happens as well with mental health and well-being. The needs that they have will fluctuate over time, but we want to be there to support them and provide quality, specialized care.
[00:16:14] Jeevan Sangha: I'm curious about how the UBC Thunderbirds Mental Health Initiative came to be. Can you describe its mission and some of its successes since it's been formed?
[00:16:24] Sam Pritchard: The Mental Health Initiative really came through a variety of discussions, primarily with counselling services here on campus. We've had a great partnership with them over the years. So we've been working with Whitney and another psychologist for eight or nine years now. And so that was through more of an affiliate partnership. So it was, you know, some access and things like that and some mental performance. But it wasn't a dedicated access point for psychology services. And so we had gone through some discussions and I think as everyone is aware, especially since the pandemic, you know, mental health has come to the forefront.
[00:17:01] You know, we've been seeing increased demand, increased conversation. And it became really apparent that student athletes are one of the primary users of mental health support through the counseling office at a higher rate than other subsets of groups on campus. So it really highlighted for us that we needed to do something a little bit different than just call counseling.
[00:17:23] And so through some conversations, as well as through, um, some philanthropy from another foundation, that's kind of where this idea came to be of a fundraising initiative targeted towards embedding mental health resources directed to student athletes at UBC. And so that started in the late 2022 and then we were able to get Whitney in place in the fall of 2023 full time in athletics, providing dedicated mental health supports.
[00:17:51] So win number one is we went from accessing mental health supports through counseling to having Whitney embedded in our program and dedicated to our student athletes with some other stuff that she's doing on the mental performance side of things. And really what we're looking to do is grow that access. One psychologist for all of our student athletes is not enough. We do need more, and we also need other things, so programming growth as well. We're very much in our infancy and really building out that vision, but the goal is more mental health dedicated access for student athletes.
[00:18:23] Whitney Sedgwick: And I would echo that when I look at what the best practice guidelines are across North America or, for example, in the NCAA, and they have programs that have a diverse staff of professionally trained counselors, psychologists, social workers, psychiatrists that can work with the student athlete population that recognize these unique needs.
[00:18:45] We have very rapid access, but as Sam said, I'm an N of one. So it would be really exciting to keep expanding. I'm a female identified Caucasian woman, so that an athlete, let's say somebody would prefer a language preference or to speak to a male. And also someone who understands and is trained and really gets the experience of a student athlete. These are the kinds of capacities that we want to be able to have for the student athletes.
[00:19:11] I think that's really important for the listeners to know, and also to know that, sounds like such a cliché, but these student athletes, they are our, they're the next generation. They will be sitting in meetings with some folks that are listening to this. The research shows that people that are varsity athletes go on to hold leadership positions, to be active in their communities. And there's such a transferability of the positive skills of being an athlete that really can shape and contribute to people being active, healthy members of their communities and their businesses and their lives.
[00:19:44] Sam Pritchard: I also want to highlight with what we're doing is actually also supporting staff and coaches. Whitney's doing a lot of great work with our staff and our coaches to help upskill individuals. So, you know, coaches are in the environment day in and day out with athletes. Um, some of our staff are very front facing, so upskilling them as well to understand how to deal with some of these situations. You know, you have an athlete who presents crying, very upset. What do you say? How do you support them? How do you move them through resourcing? Things like that. Not just supporting the individual who is going through the mental health issue or crisis but also upskilling those that are around them. So they're better supports and they can feel better supported through the entire journey.
[00:20:27] The initiative is, yes, directed at student athletes, but we're also trying to target all of the different avenues that can help support athletes, not just direct service, but indirect service as well.
[00:20:37] Carol Eugene Park: So, for family and friends who have a loved one who is wanting to pursue sports, um, or become a varsity athlete. What are things that people can look out for?
[00:20:48] Whitney Sedgwick: A former student athlete and her father, who's a psychologist on campus, created a website called UBC Athlete hub. And I encourage listeners, if you'd like to see some things on there, there's a really good screen there about recognizing distress. And there's also a number of stories, personal stories from athletes, both now in the pro levels and national team.
[00:21:07] So lots of us are late, lots of us have trouble sleeping or eating, or may appear irritable, or may not be performing as well. That could be on the sports field, and that could be, say, in our jobs. Lots of us may seem to not be enjoying life. What I say to folks is, the more of those qualities you see, and or the intensity of them, and or how long they last.
[00:21:33] So in athletics we use a FIT acronym, Frequency, Intensity, and Time. So I don't want people to jump to and misdiagnose and stigmatize things just because someone may have one or two of those variables. But the more of them that someone might see, or even just one that is so pronounced, like let's say an athlete just goes missing. They don't tell the coach, or the trainers, or the assistant coach, or their friends where they are. And they just miss training for two days. That's concerning, I think. Lots of things could be going on, and the athlete is just not telling you. Like, the culture of sport is, you keep it together. So, they may be showing up on time, but behind the facade, there's a lot of pain and suffering and struggle.
[00:22:16] What do you do about it if you're a parent, or if you're a coach. If you notice something, I think it is absolutely legit and fair and kind to ask. Now, lots of athletes will say, no, no, I'm fine. But if you see those things still going, or substance use is another issue, or certainly talking about death or giving up on life.
[00:22:36] These are more red flags for sure. A, I would encourage people to ask about it. Use behavioral examples. Say, I care about you and let's see if we can get you some help if in fact that's needed. And if someone says, no, I'm fine. Thank you very much. I'll be on time tomorrow. And they are on time tomorrow. It doesn't mean that the conversation never gets brought up again. It just remains, you still be observant. You still be kind. And, you know, I liken it to a physical injury. If someone's limping, you say, hey, I noticed you're limping. And then they say, no, I'm going to keep doing my stretches and my exercises at home, or they start limping again. Maybe we go to another step and we get someone to help look at their ankle. Sam, I don't know. Are there things that you would see in your office or through coaches that I miss?
[00:23:19] Sam Pritchard: I mean, at our level, there's definitely like, we try to build the full picture. So if they're missing appointments, so they're missing their physio appointment, they're missing doctor's appointments, they're missing their tutoring session, they're not showing up to class. If there's younger athletes out there and parents are concerned that they're, you know, missing school, not showing up to things, that compounding with kind of the things that Whitney has said around frequency, intensity and time, we try to build that bigger picture.
[00:23:48] Jeevan Sangha: You know, we've talked a lot about the mental health challenges that some student athletes might face. Are there any positive mental health benefits of pursuing performance sports? And if so, can you explain them a bit?
[00:24:01] Whitney Sedgwick: When I saw this question in advance, I was sort of speechless because I'm like, yes, like absolutely, I wanted to use the word foundational. Participation in sport, right from little league on up, like healthy youth onto university, varsity, recreational in later years of life.
[00:24:20] The research is really clear, it can be absolutely health promoting, health sustaining, and I say that from a physical and mental well-being. So to answer your question with this population. So for university students, yes, there's such, the best case scenario, building community, understanding, effective communication and interpersonal skill.
[00:24:45] How's that going to help you as a human? Like, the stuff that we teach athletes from a mental performance or psychological basis. They'll take that and they'll go hopefully have healthier conversations with their partner, their parents, their boss, their children down the road. So there's community, uh, there's increased self-awareness, and then coping, variable.
[00:25:04] Well, these are skills we all need. They need them when they're going to a national championship and it's coming down to penalty kicks. You got to manage your emotions and your adrenaline. But they're also going to need that when they get bad news in life and they have to figure out how am I going to deal going forward.
[00:25:19] So there's awareness, there's coping, there's community building, there's leadership, there's taking the qualities that make them very exceptional humans to be high level athletes and high-level students. Taking those qualities and saying what's important to me. Do I consider myself a determined, resilient human? Well, how do I translate that into action? And so I rambled a bit there, but I think it's foundational. Sam, what would you add?
[00:25:45] Sam Pritchard: Yeah, I would agree as much as there's a lot of challenges that come with it, there's definitely a lot of benefits. I think community is first and foremost. I think what our athletes walk away with, you know, a lot of them will say, when you ask them, what are you going to miss the most? And it's going to be my brothers and sisters or my teammates, because those are also the people that helped them get through those tough times. So they're also walking out of here with learning what a network can do for you, learning what a support system can do. And hopefully learn to build those things in their lives as they move forward.
[00:26:15] So I think this teaches them a lot of skills that they may not realize affect their physical and mental well-being. But later on in life, I think will help them be those more resilient humans. Because they've had the ability to learn those skills at a younger age. Where I'm sure there's many of us out there that, you know, you look back and go, oh, I wish I learned that when I was twenty-one, or wish I had access to that when I was eighteen.
[00:26:39] So, yeah, I think there's a lot of benefits and, you know, from the young age, if it's done in a healthy, constructive way, sport can do a lot and is often an outlet for a lot of people. It is a lot of people's safe spaces as well. So keeping that environment positive and healthy, I think really helps humans all the way through life.
[00:27:00] Carol Eugene Park: So Sam, I hear you are at the Olympics.
[00:27:04] Sam Pritchard: Yes, I was.
[00:27:06] Carol Eugene Park: Which is pretty cool. Um, so what are some of the things that you took away while you were at this global event, um, and conversations about stigma or praises for mental health endeavors?
[00:27:19] Sam Pritchard: Yeah. I mean, I work in the performance technology group, so we're a little bit siloed from a lot of things. We are, similar to my role here, we are a support resource, just in a very specialized way when we're at the games. Fun little anecdote, and this is the first time I've ever had this happen, but with performance technology, we do a lot of video work. And we actually had a team come to us for audio. And that was because they were going to be facing a French opponent and they knew that it was going to be loud.
[00:27:52] They were going to be booing, um, when they announced the Canadian team. And so they wanted the audio to help mentally prepare them for walking into that environment. And I thought it was a really cool experience to have coaches coming in to say, hey, can we get the audio from, you know, whenever the French are announced and how the crowd interacts with their opponents? Because we know we're going to face them in the future and we want to prep our athletes to know what the sound is going to feel like when they walk into that sporting facility. So I thought that was really cool.
[00:28:24] Jeevan Sangha: That is so interesting and so smart. Like, I just think that that's such an interesting way to prepare. And I can't imagine stepping into that environment and just having no clue of how the audience is going to respond to you. So very cool. It sounds like a really awesome experience.
[00:28:41] Going back to the Thunderbirds Mental Health Initiative. How can alumni and listeners support this initiative?
[00:28:50] Whitney Sedgwick: Because it is a initiative, the word donate comes to mind, right? Money talks, and we would use that money to best serve these student athletes in multiple ways. Dietitians and mental health supports and physical health supports, we need it. There's hundreds and hundreds of athletes and a very small staff working to best support them. And I think we're doing a good job with what we have, and we could do even more. I think spreading the word, helping people to listen to this, we hope that we've provided um, at least some basis for what we're doing day in and day out.
[00:29:28] And the other thing I would say is if you have the ear of an administrator, support that, you know, mention to them that you think that more would help with rapid access and supports for athletes. Four years is a really long time. Some stay for a fifth year of eligibility, right? And so it is to be expected, as Sam said, there's going to be ebbs and flows in their life.
[00:29:48] Carol Eugene Park: Amazing. Thank you so much, you two, for the insights. This was a great conversation.
[00:29:53] Sam Pritchard: Thank you so much for having us. This has been really fun.
[00:29:56] Whitney Sedgwick: Yes, thank you so much. Thanks for taking the time.
[00:29:58] Jeevan Sangha: T Birds!
[00:29:59] Carol Eugene Park: Go T Birds!
[00:30:02] So I don't know about you, Jeevan, but I envied all the varsity athletes during uni. And I always wished my parents had pushed me to keep up with competitive swimming after high school. Uh, because, you know, I have a lot of respect for athletes because of that mental resilience, you know? Like, she could not be me.
[00:30:18] Jeevan Sangha: For real. I mean, it takes a lot to push through and open up to the people around you when there are so many commitments to juggle as a student athlete. On that note, the UBC Mental Health Initiative is currently seeking donations to support this crucial resource for UBC athletes.
[00:30:32] Check out our show notes to learn more about how to help them meet their fundraising goals.
[00:30:36] Carol Eugene Park: Thanks everyone for listening! Make sure you catch our next episode by subscribing or following our show on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. And if you're feeling your fall autumn feels please drop us a review. You can find me on Twitter @CarolEugenePark.
[00:30:51] Jeevan Sangha: And me @JeevanKSangha. From Here Forward is an Alumni UBC podcast produced by Podium Podcast Company.