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Avery Spell can smile now.
But that wasn’t the case nearly two years ago.
The Kellam High soccer player was hurting, not only physically, but mentally.
Since she was 4 years old, she played soccer year-round.
But in December 2022, she tore her ACL, which took her away from the game she loved.
In her words, she had lost her identity.
“We start playing club in August, and then after club, we go right into high school soccer,” she said. “So, that whole period, I had to find something I liked to enjoy other than soccer.”
She admits it was very difficult, but she got through it.
“Honestly, the people that I surrounded myself with was the main thing that helped me through it,” she said. “I also hung around people who were going through the same thing, and we just kind of came together. We created a little ACL group and it was helping us.”
Now she wants to share her story.
On May 20, the Youth Sports Mental Health & Wellness Alliance will host “Developing The Youth Athlete — A Team Approach.” The free event will be held at Old Dominion University’s Big Blue Room at Chartway Arena. The program begins at 6:15 p.m.
“I’m really excited about it just because I think there’s a lot of people who are going through the same thing and they don’t really understand it because we hide it,” Spell said. “As an athlete, we try to hide how we actually feel about certain things. I want to talk about those little things that helped me through it that aren’t really talked about that much.”
Will Driscoll, the executive director of the Virginia Sports Hall of Fame and the co-chair of the Alliance, said he’s looking forward to this event to help others.
He will lead a panel discussion that includes Spell; Demetrius “Pete” Allen, a former All-Tidewater quarterback for Granby High who played in the NFL and Canadian Football League; parent Michelle Hedspeth; Michael Kennedy, UFL and NCAA Division I football official and director of training for the Southeastern Football Officials Association; and Sonja Lund, the associate athletics director of student-athlete mental health and well being at ODU.
The evening also will include an athlete breakout session targeted to middle and high school athletes, with Virginia Wesleyan field hockey coach Ryley van der Velde.
“We’re hoping that this becomes the first of multiple events that we will carry on throughout the year and years forward,” Driscoll said. “We just want to make sure that kids continue to play sports and that they have positive experiences. At the end of the day, that’s what we want to do.”
Allen, the division head of athletics and special services for the City of Norfolk, said this event is important because conversations about mental health and athletics need to be addressed.
He remembers when he was young, talking about mental health as an athlete was taboo.
Instead, athletes were told to “suck it up” and be “mentally tough.”
Things have dramatically changed from those days. Many athletes, including NBA player Kevin Love, Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps, Olympic gymnast Simone Biles and tennis player Naomi Osaka have been outspoken about mental health in sports.
“Sports are good for character development and the life skills that you learn, but it also comes with some challenges as far as being able to deal with it,” Allen said. “You have to be able to lose as well as win, and deal with disappointment. It’s important to be able to navigate that process. It’s important to have the resources to be able to deal with that.”
Also helping with the event is Sam Fabian, the community outreach manager at Children’s Hospital of The King’s Daughters.
In 2020, the Virginia Sports Hall of Fame and CHKD came together to create a platform to focus on mental wellness for youth athletes.
“Mental health was always an issue,” Fabian said. “We often got it confused with mental toughness. We didn’t realize these kids were suffering in silence. In a sense, it was always there. After COVID, we were more attuned to kids’ overall mental health and their ability to function day in and day out.”
Fabian, who played softball, field hockey and volleyball in high school, said it’s important for athletes to address this issue.
“If you bury what’s tripping you, it’s just going to keep popping up,” she said. “Having a bad day to bouncing back is much different than having several days or weeks where you don’t want to go to practice now, or you don’t have the energy to go to practice. You have this high anxiety of making a mistake and you can’t get over it. It doesn’t mean you have to go to counseling, maybe you just need to talk to somebody.”
Spell, who will play college soccer at Christopher Newport University next season, also credited her brothers, Landon and Bryson, for getting her back on track. Landon plays football at Virginia, and Bryson plays basketball at Liberty University.
“If I didn’t get help, I don’t think I’d be playing college soccer. If I didn’t have the help, I would have come back, but not as strong as I did,” she said. “I know it’s cliché, but it’s OK to not be OK. It’s OK if you don’t want to show up every day because I know how hard it is. But if you force yourself to show up, there might be a blessing at the end.”
To register for the event, go to https://events.com/r/en_US/registration/developing-the-youth-athlete—a-team-approach-norfolk-may-930427
Larry Rubama, 757-575-6449, larry.rubama@pilotonline.com
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