Sophia Shiroff: My Experience as a Campus Captain

TW: death

I’m going into my fifth year in the Hidden Opponent Campus Captain Program. The program has been with me since my sophomore year of high school, when I was experiencing overwhelming symptoms of undiagnosed PTSD, depression, and anxiety, and has continued through my first year of college, where I founded a chapter of The Hidden Opponent at my university. I didn’t know it at the time, but joining the Campus Captain Program was, in its own way, just as important as running has been in saving my life and supporting me on my personal mental health journey. Becoming part of a community of individuals from across the country who understand how difficult it can be to navigate the intersection of athletics and mental health has fundamentally changed who I am as an athlete, student, and human being.

In athletics, conversations around mental health are often viewed as being in opposition to the goals coaches and athletes strive toward: winning, maintaining strength, and showing up with your game face on. As someone who grew up in the endurance running community, where individual success is often based on mental toughness and pushing through pain, admitting I was struggling and needed help was terrifying. The same semester I joined The Hidden Opponent, I also began therapy. At the time, I didn’t tell any of my teammates because I was afraid of how they might react. But the THO community surrounded me with consistent, positive messaging about mental health, and eventually, I found the courage to tell my high school coach what I was going through. Contrary to what my anxious thoughts had convinced me, he didn’t see me as any less of an athlete. Knowing what I was navigating made him a more supportive and understanding coach.

The constant positive dialogue around mental health that I’ve been exposed to through The Hidden Opponent has slowly helped me address the stigmatization and shame surrounding my own mental health. In my junior year, my therapist recommended that I consider taking antidepressants to help relieve some of the trauma symptoms that I was experiencing. Like many athletes, the suggestion of medication, specifically antidepressants, was terrifying. I was worried about how medication might impact my body and how possible side effects could interfere with my success as an athlete. I was also terrified of what my teammates or coaches would think if they found out I was taking antidepressants. In The Hidden Opponent, we were already having conversations about destigmatizing the use of antidepressants by student-athletes. Being exposed to this positive dialogue around medication use led me to visit a psychiatrist, which eventually improved both my mental health and my athletic success. 

As a freshman this past year, I brought The Hidden Opponent program to my college, filled with the ambition to establish a chapter on campus. It was already scary to be at a new school across the country with people I didn’t know, and talking about something as vulnerable as mental health was another level of scary. I started by telling my coach about my activism within The Hidden Opponent and how I wanted to bring the conversation to Allegheny College. It was easiest to start with my coach first because we’d already had honest conversations about my mental health, and I knew that he cared about his athletes as human beings, and not just based on how fast they could run. Having a coach who was supportive of me from the start and who made sure mental health resource sheets were in our team locker rooms made me feel more confident in my advocacy on campus. 

Most recently, my college head coach died unexpectedly, and my whole team and athletic community have had to navigate a situation that's painful and uncertain. Like many

people, my first reaction when experiencing heavy emotions like grief is to self-isolate. It can feel so much easier in the moments after a sudden, traumatic event to want to hide from all the painful feelings and avoid addressing how the event will change your world now. As soon as The Hidden Opponent heard the news about my coach, they reached out to me. Being reminded, yet again, that there are people who support me and my community in times of mourning and that I am not alone has made navigating this grief feel ever so slightly easier. 

As a long-distance runner, running has always been a meaningful outlet that has helped me get through all types of trauma, but I’ve also realized that it hasn’t just been my sport; it’s been The Hidden Opponent community that has helped me recover and become a better version of myself. Within every interaction with The Hidden Opponent, they remind student-athletes that the most important thing in life before sport, school, and activism is that we’re human and that we are not alone in whatever life throws at us. I hope everyone can find a space as special as The Hidden Opponent in their lifetime. The joy, courage, resilience, and sense of community I experience within The Hidden Opponent family are something I strive to seek and cultivate everywhere life may take me.