Sadie Moyer: Pressure

To the young girls who believe that their identity is tied to how they perform, this is for you.

During my freshman year of high school, I was so excited to be on the varsity basketball! I couldn’t be more excited to experience being one of the only two freshmen on the varsity team. Basketball was my whole life. But my first two years of high school basketball were not easy.

My head coach was mentally abusive. After losing a close game by one point, she threw a high heel, hitting two of my teammates. She would tie our identity to how we performed, and as a 15/16year old, this shaped my whole basketball career. At the end of my freshman year, we had lost one of our teammates to cancer. And a coach who was supposed to be supportive showed no support to the players. My sophomore year of high school was when the words got worse. Calling my teammate a “cancer” of the team after losing Moe. Telling me “you didn’t play well today, and no one likes you because of it”. At a young age, I was taught that if I played badly, I was a bad person. That’s when I started to experience panic attacks. I couldn’t breathe, and I was freaking out when I didn’t play well. But no one noticed, because I have to bring my best everywhere, I had to be the happy, fun teammate. 

After getting a new coach in my junior year, the trajectory of my career drastically changed. He sat me down and told me I could play in college. He believed in me. I was a key player in high school, and although I felt the pressure hit, my head coach helped me navigate through it and channel it into my performances.

Fast forward to college. Everything was going AMAZING. Playing my freshman year, and loving my teammates. But in the back of my head, I still believed the lie that my identity is tied to how I perform.

Then COVID hit.

Any athlete who played through COVID knows the struggles that came from it. We only played half a season, being tested 3 times a week, quarantining all the time in dorms by yourself for 14 days, playing with no fans, and playing with the fear of getting sick. That’s when depression and anxiety hit, because we were all alone. All of these factors took me straight back to being in the room with that first high school coach as she told me I was a bad person.

This affected my mental health after I started to feel the pressure. But this time, I did not know what to do with the pressure. Becoming a key player in college felt different; I felt alone. The pressure felt like an elephant sitting on your chest, and any mistake was under a huge microscope. Although I was playing well, my head was not in the right place.

That’s when I experienced my first panic attack on the bench. I wasn’t playing well, and all the lies came back. As I was sitting on the bench, I couldn’t see straight, and I couldn’t feel my hands. I felt alone. But no one noticed. As athletes, we can’t have off days; we have to be positive and supportive at all times.

I was known as the player who always smiled on the court, but didn’t know who I was off the court. On April 25th of 2023, my season was over, and I couldn’t handle the pressure anymore.

That night, I accepted an award for being a joy on the court, but in the back of my head, I didn’t know what tomorrow looked like. I didn’t know what the next step was.

Until someone noticed. And this person watched in tears as I accepted this award, knowing where my head was at. Every day, I thank that person for checking in on me and listening to me. 

Check in on your athletes. and teammates. We don’t have it all together because we are human. Let us not be perfect and love them. We know that we are blessed to play at a college level, doesn’t make us any less human. Your identity is not in your performance. Lucky for me, I know my identity is in Christ. Basketball will always be a part of my story, but never who I am. Athletes are more than their sport. God sees us as sons and daughters, His creation, where we get to glorify Him in it all. Remember that your identity is not in your sport, and that is okay. Keep pushing forward and check in on yourself. The athlete should always be more important than the sport.