This story was published in print during the 2020-21 school year.

There’s no room for rest. Every day after school, senior Natalie warms up, stretches and then runs as fast as she possibly can. Stride after stride, the only option is reaching the finish line. For Natalie, a Whitman track athlete, running through the pain is simply routine.

Although daily training is standard procedure for student athletes, in excess, it can be overly exhausting and debilitating, Natalie said. When athletes are pushed beyond their limits, intense exercise, competitive environments and unreasonable expectations can take a toll on their mental and physical wellbeing. As a member of the Whitman track team, Natalie finds that the line often blurs between training hard and training to an unhealthy extreme.

Natalie began playing competitive sports at a young age, which is common for many student athletes. In middle school, she loved the fun, competitive nature of sports and craved the adrenaline rush that came from scoring a goal or sprinting across a finish line. As Natalie moved onto high school level athletics, the pressure rose, changing her perception of one of her earliest passions.

Training intensifies as athletes get older, and it consumes more time, which forces student athletes to specialize in and“pick” a single sport, said Dr. Frank Smoll, a former psychology professor at the University of Washington. By the time a student reaches high school sports, the stakes are much higher, due to the increase of social pressures to succeed and the prevalence of athletes vying for college scholarships. But even student athletes with smaller-scale goals become a part of the culture, quickly learning to value success just as intensely as anyone else.

“I feel a lot of pressure in football because I want to play, I want to do well and I want to win,” said Whitman football player Jack, a sophomore.

Often, students have to give up other interests and activities in order to devote time and energy to their sport. Almost all of Whitman’s athletic teams practice at least five days a week, forcing students to juggle academics, a demanding practice schedule and a healthy social life. To reach these high expectations, many student athletes are expected to over-exert themselves, which often leads to physical injuries, Smoll said.

“With more and more scholarships becoming available, many young athletes and their parents think specialization is going to be the road to a professional contract,” he said. “But when athletes start to specialize at too early an age and cut themselves off from learning skills of other sports, they’re really shortchanging themselves.”

For many athletes, burnout is a common consequence of early specialization of their skill set.

“As I got older, it was kind of a slow fade out from [track],” said former Whitman track athlete Julie Elfin (‘12). “ I was very excited about all the events freshman year, and then as I got older, I kind of just dropped off.”

While some students gradually lose motivation for their sports, others push themselves, in spite of anxiety, to perform. After spending hundreds of hours on the field or court — possibly paying thousands of dollars for training and expensive equipment — some student athletes begin to feel that their sport is their whole identity, leaving them trapped in their activity, said Kate, a former Whitman rower (‘20).

“I could never get away from rowing, even when I had issues and I felt like I needed space, because I didn’t have time for anything else,” Kate said. “There wasn’t anybody I could talk to or anywhere I could go without it being rowing related.”

For students, the team community is one of the most important aspects of playing a sport. When an adolescent is surrounded by a positive team environment, it provides them with approval and encouragement—even in circumstances where the coach is excessively authoritative and cold, Smoll said. This social support boosts young adults’ self-esteem, which acts as a deterrent against stress.

“Working with the team is the best part of football because everybody around you is pushing each other,” Jack said.

However, when students are trapped in an isolated team environment, they don’t have the same support systems that often boost confidence, Smoll said. The pressure-cooker climate in many Whitman athletic teams — driven by coaches, parents and teammates — can create harmful conditions which force some athletes to exceed their limits.

“People on the team had similar experiences to me where they thought, ‘I can’t handle this negativity that the coaches are bringing into my life,” Kate said. “‘I enjoy winning, but the coach is making me feel like this is not worth it.’”

According to Smoll, coaches generally tend to establish either an “ego” or “mastery” team climate, which differ greatly and affect athletes in unique ways. An ego climate enforces high performance levels and heavily emphasizes winning at all costs. A mastery climate, on the other hand, encourages athletes to set goals and focus on individual improvement. 

While some athletes believe that an extremely competitive environment isn’t conducive to achieving high performance levels, coaches often feel differently. 

“It’s individual to every athlete, but as a coach you try to play mental games with the athlete to motivate them and get them to work harder,” said Whitman track and field coach Stephen Hays. “You want to help the team come together because if I see you’re working hard, and I’m your teammate, I’ll try and work harder too.”

Some students say they’re more focused on the holistic team experience rather than individual results. For Whitman track athletes, camaraderie and friendships are important too, Natalie said, while coaches prioritize outcome. As a result, the line between pushing students to reach their fullest potential and pushing them past their limits can be hard to define. 

“There are athletes that aren’t as into the sport as I am, and that probably frustrates them,” Hays said. “I’m not going to excuse who I am because I think it makes the ones who want to get better, better.”

Over the past few years, many Whitman athletic teams have noticed that injuries are becoming more common; Natalie noted that almost all of her friends on the track team have experienced some form of injury, ranging from short-term ankle sprains and shin splints to more serious, debilitating issues, like torn muscles.

Additionally, feelings of guilt and an eagerness to return to competition too quickly are common among injured athletes.

“I don’t think the coaches directly put pressure on us to play through it, but the fact that they would think less of us pushed us to push through our injuries,” Kate said “When I got injured, I kept going because I was afraid the coach would think less of me.”

Along with injuries, athletes regularly force themselves past rational health limits during practice in order to fulfill coaches’ expectations.

On the Whitman football team, it’s not uncommon for students to be pushed to the point of vomiting or nearly passing out in hopes of improvement, Jack said.

Track athletes face similar conditions during practices.

“If we’re doing a workout on the track, there’s tons of pressure to do the whole thing,” Natalie said. “Even if you’re feeling injured, or feeling like you’re going to throw up or you’re just not feeling well, you have to finish it.”

For student athletes, it’s difficult to distinguish whether they should persist through a specific practice or drill, or if their sport as a whole is doing more harm than good to their bodies.

“It’s not the young athletes’ responsibility to be tuned into when they have passed their breaking point,” Dr. Smoll said. “It’s the responsibility of the coaches and the parents.”

When an athlete makes a commitment to a team, it’s easy to overlook the negative impacts — after all, team sports can make for an exciting and positive experience. And while many student athletes still have to deal with competitive environments and extreme pressures in their respective sports, the push to reduce the stigma against quitting is more prevalent in sports psychology today than it was 10 years ago, Smoll said. Many Whitman athletes have come to realize the importance of self check-ins on both the physical and mental level.

“One day I realized that my sport wasn’t good for me,” Kate said. “And I needed to start making sure that I was okay.”