Lawmaker seeks mental health aid for UNM athletes
A New Mexico lawmaker wants to push legislation to fund mental health initiatives for student-athletes at the University of New Mexico.
In the wake of recent deaths of two men with direct ties to the UNM football program, State Sen. Mark Moores, R-Albuquerque, said he will seek funding to launch an extensive interactive program designed to help student-athletes cope with the rigors of everyday life, on and off the field.
He tried to get a similar measure approved in the most recent legislative session, but his proposal of $357,000 in a supplemental appropriations bill to provide nutrition and behavioral health services to UNM athletes was vetoed by Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham.
Each state senator was given $357,000 to put into the fund of their choosing. House members got smaller figures. All of them were dropped into a bill that was sent to the governor, who could can exercise her constitutional right to approve or veto any item without explanation.
“Speaking first-hand as a former student-athlete, I lost two of my teammates when I played,” said Moores, an
offensive lineman at UNM from 1988-91. “It really is this group of tight-knit kids, young men and women of these teams, and they go through a lot. They need this service.”
Moores’s original proposal came just a week after former Lobo football player Romell Jordan died of unspecified causes during the most recent legislative session in February. UNM athletic director Eddie Nuñez approached Moores to, in part, get state funds provide services to benefit all of the school’s athletes.
“We feed their minds and train them and everything; make sure they get their grades and academics taken care of but we’re not taking care of their mental status,” Moores said.
Moores said he feels compelled to try again after Lobos defensive lineman Nahje Flowers appears to have taken his own life on Nov. 5. The Office of the Medical Investigator has yet to release an official cause of death, but the Albuquerque Police Department said last week that Flowers likely died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
The school provided grief counselors and therapists for the football players and coaches, but Moores said that’s simply not enough.
“When they’re being sent to counseling it is foreign to them,” Moores said. “It’s not part of the team and the environment, just like the athletic trainers and academic advisers and everyone just part of that support network. So when they send them away it seems like it’s punishment or something’s going on. Having that on-site resource as part of their support network I think is very important.”
Moores wants a full-time counselor who works exclusively inside the athletic department and has direct access to players, someone who can build a rapport with athletes and have a baseline relationship before any needs arise.
After Flowers died, some of the football team’s captains scoffed at the notion of talking to anyone outside the team dynamic.
“At that age,” Moores said, “I was as guilty as anyone. We’re invincible, we’re the strongest, most athletic, biggest, toughest guys on campus so you don’t need help. But you really need that because of all the emotional pressure, especially if you’re coming from an inner-city background or might be first generation in your family to go to college. There’s a lot of pressure on these kids.”
At the behest of Nuñez, Moores is prepared to try again. He has reached out to Secretary of Higher Education Kate O’Neill seeking an alliance to create a groundswell of support to appropriate the funds. He did it on his own last year.
“I was, like, let’s work together so we can get this money back in the budget,” Moores said. “Hopefully — not hopefully; I’ve already talked to the secretary of [higher] education and said we need to get this in.”