Just Keep Swimming

Winning is highly valued in athletics. There are no grades or honor roll; winning is the main success that at an athlete can achieve in their sport.

At Westside, winning is an expectation. Westside athletes push themselves to uphold the strict expectations of achievement, but how far are athletes willing to go, and should winning be their only form of accomplishment?

According to Healthy Living instructor and varsity football coach Brody Schmaderer, kids today are putting too much pressure on winning, and not enough on their mental health. He believes that this can result in physical and mental harm.

“Anything that takes you to a far extreme [is] putting you at a great risk of some type of a disorder,” Schmaderer said. “Whether it’s an eating disorder, or to the point of depression and anxiety.”

Eating disorders are extremely common among athletes today. In a study conducted by the National Collegiate Athletic Association, it was reported that 33 percent of high school female athletes have symptoms and attitudes, making them at high risk for eating disorders. Schmaderer believes this correlates to the need to win.

“I don’t think sports cause [eating disorders], but I think they can up the chance of it happening,” Schmaderer said. “I think there are lots of people that play sports [and] don’t have eating disorders, but because sports has gotten to the point where winning is everything, people are doing whatever it takes to get there. For something like gymnastics or ice skating, it’s about being in incredible shape. Sometimes drastic measures are, in their minds, the [only] way to be successful. Students are taking incredible risks to get [a preferred body].”

Schmaderer believes body expectations for each sport are different, especially between men and women.

“For a lot of male sports, kids are trying to be faster, stronger, eat more, [and] lift more,” Schmaderer said. “So I think [what] they want to see their body do is grow and get bigger and stronger. It’s the opposite for ladies sports; they still want to get bigger, faster and stronger, but they

REDEFINING don’t want to be able to see it on their bodies.” Sophomore, and dance team member, Cadence Higgins believes that eating disorders and poor body image are common WINNING in the dance world. “I think everyone in dance struggles with [body image],” Higgins said. “The image of dance is to be really skinny, have longer legs and to not be too muscular. I got injured earlier this year and without training, I did gain weight and got really frustrated. I

How Westside is worked really [hard] to lose the weight in a healthy way, but I did struggle for a while, because, when your weight changes in dance, prioritizing mental it changes everything. Weight changes your center of balance, how you turn, how you leap. Keeping a good weight balance, and keeping health in sports it healthy and eating the right foods is really important.” According to the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders, eating disorders are more common in athletes who are involved in judged sports, such as gymnastics, figure skating, and dance. Thirteen percent of athletes in judged sports have eating disorders opposed to three percent in refereed sports. Higgins believes an environment that has an expectation of only winning, like a competitive sport, plays a huge role in an athlete’s mental health. “At my old studio, my dance teacher was always comparing me to other dancers,” Higgins said. “[The teacher] likes [to] win a lot [and] you need to be like her and it was really frustrating. I hated when relationships

would be ruined because of those comparisons. [She] really did base everything on winning; it felt like the main goal sometimes. Sometimes there would be eight hour practices because the dance didn’t look good enough to win. It was just unhealthy amounts of training to where you lose the drive for [dance].”

At Westside, there are steps being taken to prevent the mental health decline of athletes. Coach Garet Moravec, nicknamed The Wizard, is the creator and coach of “Wizard Wednesdays.” “Wizard Wednesdays” are football sessions with Moravec that focus on improving your mental health on-and-off the field. “Wizard Wednesdays” began last year in hopes of improving the players mental game before each game on Friday.

Moravec is a certified sports psychologist and worked with the Central Intelligence Agency and Secret Service with cyber security blending and behavioral science. He was trained to shape and influence adversaries to make decisions that would be detrimental to their intended purposes, but he wanted to flip that and help people for good, so he and his wife, a counselor, started Visionary Dream Makers. “We provide mental skills, body, mind, spirit and a holistic view of how you can improve your performance and your mental state of being,” Moravec said.

It started with 20 minute lectures each session for the football team. The whole team comes together in a classroom and tries to focus on thought process, and Moravec introduces a new, relevant mental skill each week to improve performance. The sessions were so successful that the program has now spread to the track, basketball and wrestling teams, as well as the District 66 leadership teams at Westside.

Senior Grant Guyett has been on the varsity football team for three years and enjoys “Wizard Wednesday.” He believes that it has improved his mental game on the field.

“Wizard Wednesdays are when we focus on the mental side of the game and we take a break from the physical side,” Guyett said. “I feel like it’s helped me have a stronger mind set and not let things on the field get to my head as much.”

To Moravec, winning shouldn’t rely on the scoreboard.

“Winning is [asking]: did you perform better than you did last time or perform to your best ability, even if you made some mistakes,” Moravec said. “When we just measure ourselves and not worry about the other team, we seem to also have a nice scoreboard.

Higgins learned to truly find happiness in her sport once she experienced a change in mindset and environment by changing her dance studio.

“Winning feels great [and] I tend to win a lot,” Higgins said. “Now, it never pushes me over the edge. When I’m dancing, I just go on stage and dance. I don’t really think about anything else and I know that if I do my best, I’m going to get a good outcome.”

Schmaderer believes that, to further prevent these mental and physical issues, we need to begin to bring a new perspective to winning.

“Redefining winning. Redefining what success is. Redefining what our goal is,” Schmaderer said. “Don’t get me wrong, I want Westside to win as much as anybody, but it’s also about having that right perspective. If we stay grounded and central in what our focus is, we have [a] less likely chance of having problems. I think there is an ultimate goal of winning everything and winning at all costs. I believe that that is not the case [and] there is a lot more that goes into it. I think that being successful is way more than just winning.”

Moravec believes that the recent increase in athletic success has to do with the shift in the team prioritizing mental health.

“When the scoreboard turns out, everyone is happy,” Moravec said. “But we are working towards the players continuing to be happy when the scoreboard isn’t what they want. We won the state championship in football last year and we haven’t won that in 38 years. It wasn’t anything magical, it was just having them look differently in the mirror and at themselves.”