editor’s note: If you or someone you know is having suicidal thoughts or emotional distress, please contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255) or suicidepreventionlifeline.org.
CHAPEL HILL, NC — The sun beats down on Boshamer Stadium, not a cloud in the blue Carolina sky. Music reverberates throughout the lobby as the team lines up outside the dugout. From afar, it looks like a normal University of North Carolina baseball spring day, except for the golden tail poking out of the Tar Heels lineup.
Meet Remington, the first assistance dog in the athletic training room for not only UNC but also the Atlantic Coast Conference. The golden retriever’s official position is as a psychiatric medical alert center rehabilitation service dog, working alongside the baseball team’s head athletic trainer, Terri Jo Rucinski.
“Remington’s role is to be someone who calms people down, makes them laugh, makes rehab fun,” says Rucinski. “He helps de-stress people. I think that’s the most important role for him. And just to make people laugh and smile when he’s having a bad day.”
The duet day begins at 7:45 am in the physical therapy clinic. As evening arrives, Remi heads to the athletic training room at Boshamer Stadium and spends time with the athletes during their treatments. She’s not just limited to baseball; Remi also helps out with many other sports teams, including lacrosse, soccer, and gymnastics.
Rucinski says his assistance varies in the training room, from opening and closing the refrigerator to get the athlete a drink to throwing the ball back to him while they do throwing drills. But sometimes, he’ll just be a dog, climbing into beds with the players as they get treatments, sensing when they need him.
During his senior season in high school, UNC pitcher Dalton Pence injured his elbow and required Tommy John surgery. Remington was there when Pence got the news that he would be delaying the start of his college career.
“He was right there by my side, so knowing that eased some of the anxiety and stress. [It] it comforted me,” says Pence. “There are a lot of mental blocks that an athlete has coming back from a major injury, and he helped me get through some of that. i just won [back] trust through Remington.”
Courtesy of UNC Athletics
He is certainly more than a baseball dog. In fact, since he arrived at UNC during the 2017 season, Remington’s role has unofficially expanded, particularly in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and the mental health crisis hitting college campuses.
According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Preventionsuicides and suicide attempts have skyrocketed during the pandemic, particularly when lockdowns were in place, among ages 12 to 25. And by the National Institute of Mental HealthSuicide ranks as the second leading cause of death among ages 15-34.
Today, a dark cloud hangs over the Chapel Hill community as it mourns the lives lost last fall. Three UNC students committed suicide on campus, two indoors a 48-hour period on a weekend in Octoberprompting the university to cancel classes during midterms in order to provide students with a “wellness day”.
Scroll to Continue
In the wake of Naomi Osaka and Simone Biles leaving their respective sports for mental health reasons in the spring and summer of 2021, Dr. Jeni Shannon, director of mental health and performance psychology at UNC, has seen the dialogue shift around mental health and athletics. .
“It has opened the doors for much more real and honest conversations,” she says. “It has been incredibly empowering. We’ve had an increasing number of athletes saying, ‘I need help with this,’ like they used to because of a physical injury.”
North Carolina’s athletic community brought mental health awareness to the fore after the fall suicides.
“We really deepened the kinds of conversations we have about what everyone is going through and found a lot of opportunities to emphasize how much more important your life is than your grades, your performance, than anything else,” says Shannon.
Seven months later, another wave of suicides hit the university world, this time within the athletic community. Stanford football captain Katie Meyer, Wisconsin-Madison cross-country runner Sarah Shulze and James Madison softball star Lauren Bernett have all killed themselves in recent months.
“I think that made everyone stop, and it’s still very heartbreaking that something like that makes people stop to have that conversation,” says UNC women’s soccer player Madi Pry. “But what I have seen change in our team is that we take breaks or have meetings. They’re awkward meetings, because no one wants to be vulnerable enough to tell when they’re struggling. Our team just did a good job of changing the way we look at everything.”
Courtesy of UNC Athletics
Pry says that Remington has provided comfort to athletes during difficult conversations since Meyer’s death.
“On the one hand, just having something that’s comfortable when you’re having a difficult conversation makes it easier to open up about things like that. If you feel like you’re in a safe place, then it’s easier to have those conversations,” she says. “For me, Remington has become a shoulder to lean on if I’m anxious or nervous or just not having a good day. He makes me feel good about being vulnerable with the people around me.”
Pitcher Nick Argento echoed Pry’s sentiments about Remington. “We all go through struggles. Baseball is a game of failure,” he says. “So when you fail, you just go back and you can even go see Remi. He gives you that positive attitude. I really feel like Remi has superpowers.”
Shannon says that the golden retriever provides an avenue for “people to have a greater awareness of their own mental health and access to the idea that they might need some extra support.” She added that he will “anchor himself in people,” directing them to check in with themselves to see how they’re feeling. You can sense when someone is struggling, whether it’s from an injury or a terrible day. She brings comfort to people, opening the door for Rucinski to check in with the athlete.
Courtesy of UNC Athletics
“The most important thing is to find the ways that we can open doors for conversation and access to mental health support,” says Shannon. “Any avenue that gets us closer to people who get the kind of support they need, any avenue that gets us closer to real, open, vulnerable conversations, that’s the most important thing. That’s the best we can do.
“And I think Remi has been such a creative and unique avenue that I don’t think any of us ever expected to work exactly the way he did.”
!function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s){if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function()
{n.callMethod? n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)}
;if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;
n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version=’2.0′;n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0;
t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0];s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window,
document,’script’,’https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js’);
(function(){
fbq(‘init’, ‘1103097776498609’);
fbq(‘track’, ‘PageView’);
var contentId = ‘ci02a1a85710002709’;
if (contentId !== ”) {
fbq(‘track’, ‘ViewContent’, {content_ids: [contentId], content_type: ‘product’});
}
})(); .
