Police woke Indiana State Athletic Director Sherard Clinksdale early on August 21 to tragic news. Two of the university’s football players and another student had been killed in a car accident.
Clinksdale immediately began coming up with a plan to comfort and support the deceased teens’ teammates and friends.
“There’s no playbook for something like this,” Clinksdale said.
But those who have experienced the unexpected death of a college athlete on their watch say the increased emphasis on mental health care in athletic departments and universities in general, spurred in part by the pandemic and lessons learned from other tragedies, help in responding to a crisis.
Pain struck the University of Virginia earlier this week. Three members of the football team were shot and killed on a bus returning to the Charlottesville campus from Washington. Two other students, one of them also a soccer player, were injured.
The suspect in police custody, Christopher Darnell Jones Jr., 22, is a student from Virginia and a former member of the football team.
Classes, academics and the college’s Saturday home game against Coastal Carolina were cancelled, and the school made counselors and therapy dogs available. Temporary memorials with flowers and stuffed animals have sprung up on campus throughout the week, including at Scott Stadium, where the Cavaliers football team plays. Classes resumed Wednesday, though the university said undergraduate students won’t have to complete any graded assignments or take tests before the Thanksgiving break.
Virginia athletic director Carla Williams said Tuesday that the department has three psychologists available for grieving teammates.
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“In our first meeting with the student athletes, we had a lot of counselors available who were there and available to work with the student athletes,” Williams said. “And not just our soccer student athletes, but all of our student athletes.”
Clinksdale said that after being informed that Christian Eubanks, 18, and Caleb VanHooser, 19, had been killed in a single-vehicle crash outside Indiana State’s Terre Haute campus, he went to the coach’s home in boss Curt Mallory to break the sad news for him.
Mallory took on the difficult task of informing the families of the players that their sons had been murdered.
Players and staff reunited just hours later, with a familiar face there to provide assistance: Dr. Ken Chew, director of the Indiana State Student Counseling Center.
“He’s been in charge of our team before,” Mallory said. “This was not a first-time presentation.”
While college leaders have signaled an increased focus on student mental health services, athletes seem less convinced. A 2019 survey of college and university presidents published by Higher Education Today found that 80 percent indicate that mental health was being prioritized more on campus than it was three years ago. About 7 in 10 college and university leaders said they were putting more funding into addressing mental health issues among students.
But only half of the 9,808 NCAA athletes who did a survey in late 2021 they said they believe mental health is a priority for their athletic department, even after universities worked to bolster services during the pandemic as lockdowns to prevent the spread of the coronavirus prevented students from accessing to resources. Among athletes surveyed by the NCAA, 53 percent said they believe their coaches take mental health issues seriously.
The NCAA doesn’t have the power to mandate how schools invest in and address mental health within their athletic departments, but its Sports Science Institute offers resources like mental health best practices, workshop templates, and planning tools.
In the past five years in Washington state, Cougars quarterback Tyler Hilinski committed suicide on January 16, 2018, and just over a year later defensive back Bryce Beekman died of an accidental drug overdose. Dr. Sunday Henry, the team’s chief physician, was part of the response to both tragedies.
“His primary care medical team and mental health team are activated and immediately assess the situation and how to respond,” Henry said. “What just happened? What do we need to do? For us it was getting everyone together. Tell them the news. And here are the resources available.”
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Henry said he believes that, in general, coaches have gotten better at encouraging athletes, who can sometimes mistake vulnerability for weakness, to be more willing to seek help if they have mental health issues.
Communication and interaction with students is vital. Henry said that athletic trainers, who spend so much time with athletes, can play an integral role in trying to determine which students might need extra help.
At Virginia’s news conference Tuesday, coach Tony Elliot spoke about “having eyes” on the players.
“Nothing can prepare you for this situation, and we just want to be there to support the guys,” Elliott said.
Toledo’s athletic director, Bryan Blair, was assistant athletic director at Washington State. He was hired shortly after Hilinski’s death and was on staff when Beekman died. He said that all members of the department who came into regular contact with the athletes were required to take a Mental Health First Aid course.
“All of us have a certain responsibility to be able to be a resource for student athletes,” Blair said.
Mallory, whose late father Bill was a longtime Division I college football coach, has been coaching since the early 1990s. He said that even before the tragedy at Indiana State, he was spending one-on-one time on Mondays with players off the field. Over the years, he has set aside more and more time for those meetings.
“Even if I felt like they were doing well, I still wanted to put them in front. You just don’t know it,” she said.
At San Jose State, freshman running back Camdan McWright was killed last month when he was struck by a bus while riding a motorcycle near campus.
Athletic director Jeff Konya said head coach Brent Brennan broke the news to McWright’s family and it was Brennan and the assistant coaches closest to the player who spoke with his family members throughout the week as a memorial was planned.
“And that was an extra burden, and rightfully so, placed on our coaches, who had the best relationship with the family through the Camdan hire,” Konya said.
The team’s game against New Mexico State was postponed, and instead the players and coaches spent time together watching football. The following week, before the Spartans’ homecoming game, McWright was honored at a ceremony attended by his loved ones. San Jose State defeated Nevada 35-28 in a cathartic victory.
Konya, who has been a college athletics administrator for 36 years, said he has seen mental health care become a priority on campus and in athletic departments.
“We are in a better position now,” Konya said. “But it’s not foolproof and events like what happened here and what unfortunately happened in Virginia, those kinds of edge cases will require very particular attention.”
AP Sports writer Erica Hunzinger contributed to this report.
