Toughness was one of head coach PJ Fleck’s favorite topics last offseason, so it came as no surprise when the topic resurfaced in his postgame comments Thursday night.
“We’ve talked about how fast we are, how athletic we are, how long we are, but I’ve told all of you this piece of toughness that we talked about. And that’s not a tough macho, just this tough ‘macho man’. That’s not the hard part,” Fleck explained. “Can you be hospitalized? Can you control your emotions? Can they challenge each other? Can you trust? Can you focus? And I think I saw it tonight. I thought I saw a tough soccer team out there.”
It came up again Monday at Fleck’s weekly news conference, when he announced that Saturday’s game against Western Illinois is the show’s mental health awareness game, drawing attention to what he calls “one of the biggest growing concerns In our world”.
“I think sometimes they tell our guys that men don’t talk. We keep everything inside. That’s not how we talk about toughness and being a man. It’s being responsible for yourself, no matter how you feel, and finding a way to control those emotions by letting others help you do it.”
As for how the Minnesota soccer program addresses mental health with its student-athletes, Fleck praised the efforts of Dr. Carly Anderson, director of sports psychology services for the athletic department, and her staff. He compared having psychologists on staff to hiring a strength and conditioning coach, a nutritionist and academic tutors. They are all essential.
Fleck also touted the show’s longstanding association with Rachel Baribeau, a former sportscaster whose “I’m Changing the Narrative” initiative challenges collegiate athletic programs to foster encouraging and supportive environments that promote positive mental health.
If you need a real-life example of how invaluable these resources can be for student athletes, look no further than Minnesota running back Mohamed Ibrahim.
Two plays into the Gophers’ first offensive possession Thursday night in their season-opening win over New Mexico State, Ibrahim took the pass from quarterback Tanner Morgan and quickly ran through an arm, followed his blockers and stayed on his feet fighting through another plate before being knocked down at the end of a 16-yard gain.
It was a vintage led by Ibrahim, making his 548th career start with the Golden Gophers. You would never have guessed that it had been almost a year since his last charge and that he had spent that time recovering from a ruptured Achilles tendon in his left leg.
Since suffering his season-ending injury against Ohio State last year, Ibrahim has been open and honest about the struggles he faced in his recovery. During a postgame interview with the Big Ten Network after the Gophers’ 38-0 win over the Aggies, in which Ibrahim rushed for 132 yards and two touchdowns, he shared how weekly meetings with a sports psychologist in Minnesota helped him. to work through mental health. recovery aspect of it.
“We just talk about everything I’m going through, and it helped me get through it,” she said. “Just expressing my emotions and understanding that it’s okay to feel that way.”
Ibrahim’s willingness to talk about his own struggles speaks to the culture of openness and connectivity that Fleck has sought to create in Minnesota, and he hopes his coaching staff will lead by example and use their personal experiences to connect with players.
“I think the more open you are about your life, the better,” Fleck said. “You can see things coming [these student-athletes] they don’t necessarily see yet because they haven’t experienced it yet. Some of these young people have lost their grandmother and that could be the first person they lose in their family. I mean, probably you or I probably lost a lot of people in our life. And we can tell you how we overcome that.”
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