Bodycheck? How about mental health check?
Cariboo Cougars utilizing new MindRight program
Elite young hockey players are accustomed to looking after their physical well-being. To prepare themselves for peak performance on game days, they train on the ice and off and do their best to eat properly and get plenty of sleep.
A player’s mental well-being is no less important but, sometimes, gets overlooked. In an effort to make sure their players are just as healthy mentally as they are physically, the Cariboo Cougars have helped launch a new program called MindRight.
“MindRight is for the Cariboo Cougars team,” said coordinator Jessie Sprague. “It’s a wellness program, so we aren’t trying to diagnose or treat any mental health problems or mental illness. We’re just hoping to educate and bring awareness to mental health because we’re aware that this age group (15-year-olds to 17-yearolds) is at high risk of developing problems, for one thing because of their age – they have a lot of things going on.
“Also, a lot of them are experiencing being away from home for the first time and they’ve got a lot of stress just being in high school and then they’ve got this big-time pressure of being on a high-level athletic team,” Sprague added. “And nobody talks about (mental health) in sports. Nobody talks about it at all. And a lot of the coaching staff don’t have any kind of training or background in mental health. They spend more time with these boys than their parents do a lot of the time so (the MindRight program) just seems like a logical thing to do.”
As part of MindRight, the coaching staff of the Cougars is in the process of taking 15 hours of mental health first aid training through the Canadian Mental Health Association. And, when the South Island Royals arrive in town for weekend games against the Cats, players from both clubs will sit down for a three-hour session on Saturday before they step onto Kin 1 ice at 3:45 p.m.
“I think it’s called the Mental Health Toolkit, where it’s kind of an overview of the different kinds of mental health problems there are and then where to get help,” Sprague said.
The Saturday game is being dedicated to mental health awareness. During the contest, the Cougars will be wearing special green jerseys paid for by a grant from Make Children First, a provincial government program aimed at fostering the healthy development of kids. As well, information booths from local agencies will be set up in the arena. Admission to the game will be by donation.
Another component of MindRight is a website ( www.mindright.info) that provides mental health information and access to different kinds of help and support.
The MindRight website was developed by Sprague, Cariboo Cougar parent Don Mattila and Cariboo player Myles Mattila. It was the 17-year-old Myles Mattila, an advocate for youth mental health, who came up with the idea for MindRight and has now seen it become a reality.
Myles Mattila first became interested in mental health a few years ago when he read a newspaper story about Rick Rypien, a former Vancouver Canucks player who suffered from clinical depression and, at the age of 27, took his own life in August 2011. The story led Mattila to mindcheck.ca, an organization that sprang from Rypien’s death and has become a valuable resource for youth and young adults coping with mental health issues. Mattila, who also recognized first-hand the struggles being experienced by a friend and hockey teammate, became a spokesperson for mindcheck.ca.
This summer, Mattila came up with the idea of MindRight, which he envisioned as a place of help for youth athletes dealing with the same types of problems.
“When I was looking on the web, there was nothing for athletes and that’s what we needed to create,” said Mattila, a Cougars’ assistant captain and a Grade 12 honour-roll student at PGSS.
“Playing hockey or soccer or any kind of sport, there’s always pressure, and how you deal with the pressure is going to help you in the long run compared to having that pressure and not dealing with it in the right way.”
The Cariboo Cougars, as an organization, saw the value of Mattila’s concept and decided to partner with him. Mattila said he now hopes the 11-team B.C. Hockey Major Midget League, of which the Cougars are a part, will take notice of the MindRight model and adopt something like it.
“My goal is, hopefully the whole Major Midget League, or most teams, have a similar thing to MindRight because I think it’s a great resource and if they get the right connections – even partners with their local mental health association, it might be Canadian Mental Health or a local action team – I think it would be great if maybe once a month or once every two weeks they could talk to somebody about what is truly going on,” he said. “I think it’s interesting that Cariboo is partners with MindRight this year because it’s the Telus Cup year – lots of pressure. By Jessie and (Cariboo head coach and GM) Trevor Sprague partnering with MindRight, I think it’s a great idea. It’s going to take a lot of pressure off the athletes if they know where to go if they need help.”
The Telus Cup is the national midget hockey championship and will be hosted by the Cougars in April.