It all started with a phone call before the start of last year’s season.
The Metropolitan Riveters were one year away from their 2021 professional women’s ice hockey season inside the COVID pandemic bubble, and the mental health of the athletes was paramount. For Madison Packer, the team captain, the problem was deeply personal, after losing loved ones to suicide and substance abuse. Hoping to find resources for her team, she reached out to her general manager at the time, who was also her wife, Anya.
Packer remembers saying, “This is something that is getting closer and closer to home. I really think it’s important for us to have resources as athletes, not just to be better athletes, but to be better people.”
Within weeks, the Riveters hosted their first Mental Health Awareness Night at a home game against the Boston Pride. The event symbolized the beginning of a new partnership between the team and Baker Street Health and Human Performance, a Paramus-based medical group that has agreed to provide the team with medical support, behavioral health services, mental skills training and more.
“It just slowly, week after week, built into this bigger thing,” Packer said. “They have given us more access to resources that I don’t think we could have imagined. We can go to therapy as many times a week as we want, and we never get a bill. That is unheard of. everything arose from [Baker Street] acknowledging that there were these athletes who needed help.”
The partnership between Baker Street and the Riveters, who hosted the season opener at home at the American Dream over the weekend, is groundbreaking. The association also highlights a larger problem in professional sports, where women’s teams are often under-resourced due to lack of funding or investment. This partnership can be seen as a step towards creating health equity in sports, with a particular focus on mental health at a time when those resources are critical.
Baker Street has a history of working with professional sports teams. The group’s client base includes the Brooklyn Nets, New York Red Bulls, New Jersey Devils, New York Liberty and Gotham FC. In recent years, the group has changed its focus to work more with professional women’s teams to deliver equity.
“One of the things that we know as a group that we can deliver is health equity,” Baker Street co-founder Joe Galasso said. “That is something that is very achievable. Our group could provide the same healthcare that we provide to the men’s teams to the women’s teams, so we have made that our initiative and have begun looking for women’s teams that are interested in partnerships to achieve those goals.”
Although Baker Street has experience working with NWSL and WNBA teams, the group’s association with The Riveters, a member of the Premier Hockey Federation, is the most extensive of the bunch. That’s largely because the league is still in its infancy, and many players are juggling their professional ice hockey career with another full-time job. For comparison, the NWSL just finished its 10th season, and the WNBA is the oldest women’s professional league in the country, having completed 25 seasons.
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Through the partnership, Baker Health provides a liaison at each practice who stands by for the team when needed. The group’s medical staff is also available to them 24/7. The group offers performance psychologists who can provide group workshops or one-on-one sessions. There are physical therapists, athletic trainers, massage therapists. The partnership includes “a lot of triage” to find any medical professionals the athlete may need as the season progresses.
“In terms of a fully integrated performance, behavioral and medical system, clinchers have embraced the complete package,” Galasso said. “And I think that’s why we’re most proud of what we’re doing with them, because they’ve given us carte blanche to really apply all aspects of our services to this team, and it’s been very well received.”
For Galasso and Baker Street, forging this relationship with the Riveters is their way of setting an example for other companies to invest in women’s sports as well. One of the biggest obstacles preventing women’s leagues from achieving equity in various aspects is a lack of investment or funding, and medical services, especially for mental health, can be very expensive.
“I can’t help on the pay side. I can’t put butts in seats, I can’t help with ticket sales, but I can make sure the players are well taken care of. I can make sure their families are taken care of and make sure they feel better,” Galasso said. “And we know that if the players feel better, they will perform better and there will be a better product on the field. And if there is a better product in the field, there will be more butts in the seats, so people will pay more attention.”
For Packer, having mental health resources available to Riveters ties into a larger goal. In recent years, Packer has become a strong advocate for mental health. In June, he shared his own mental health struggles through a personal essay on the University of Wisconsin athletics website. The partnership with Baker Street, in many ways, is the culmination of Packer using his platform as a professional athlete to further that conversation.
“Personally, I think every professional sports team in every sport everywhere should have some type of sports psychologist on staff, whether or not you just have a league sports psychologist that people can refer to,” Packer said. “It is something that is not always valued as much because you can look at someone who is very depressed and it may seem fine to you, but if they break their leg, the doctor will not clear them to play.
It’s about “getting everyone in the sports world to recognize and agree that mental illness and mental health is just as important as physical health, and allocate resources and funding to that area,” Packer said.
