A Winning Mindset

BY SUSIE ZIMMERMANN

Mental wellness and student support has long been a focus at SSSAS. Establishing a wellness initiative in the Athletics Office was, therefore, a natural addition, and when Chief Advancement Officer Jennie Wills recognized an alignment between donor and alumni interest and departmental need, it proved to be a perfect match.

“Sports are so high-pressure these days,” explains Trae Humphreys, associate director of athletics for student development and leadership. “Between recruitment, comparison culture, and the constant pursuit for perfection—especially with social media—student-athletes are not just comparing themselves within their communities but also with people around the world.” He knew that helping athletes to manage this stress would benefit them both on and off the field. 

While SSSAS coaches have long supported the mental health of their athletes, the Athletics Office sought to more systematically integrate mental wellness and competitive readiness into the athletic program. The goal was to equip student-athletes with the tools to succeed now, into college, and beyond. 

Meanwhile, Summer Crabtree ’99 discussed similar observations with Head Lacrosse Coach Kathy Jenkins. Summer and her sister, Shana Crabtree ’96, were three-sport athletes all four years at SSSAS, and both went on to play Division I lacrosse in college. The sisters pursued careers working with children; Shana as a pediatric pulmonologist and Summer as a teacher and coach. They both now serve as officers of The Phyllis P. and Scott A. Crabtree Family Foundation.  They fondly remember their father’s positive motivation, pep talks, and game-day engagement and wondered how they could support today’s Saints, who face an entirely new level of pressure. They envisioned a wellness program that could extend beyond recruited student-athletes to support all students, parents, and coaches. “If you address a problem from all angles, it’s more likely to succeed,” says Shana. 

The Foundation and the Athletics Office worked together to develop the program with two organizations. Z-Winning Mindset focuses on athletic performance by mentally preparing students for competition and providing tools and techniques to maximize opportunities for success. Trae, who also coaches wrestling, explains that “the program helps students identify what they can control—preparation, effort, attitude—and surrender the outcome, which they cannot control.”

The second partnering organization, Person Before Player, offers a data-driven and holistic approach to responding to unfavorable results and developing balance and resilience. It provides mental wellness toolkits for communication among coaches, athletes, and parents. “Sports are great, but they can also be detrimental to mental health,” says Trae. “They demand a lot of time, generate positive and negative feedback from many directions, and involve relationships that can become pressurized by exterior forces.”

The program provides the vocabulary, tools, and context students and coaches can use to gain a fresh perspective within a research- and data-driven framework.

After several events with individual teams, parent groups, and classes, the wellness initiative evolved from a speaker series into a comprehensive program that now works regularly with all these groups. “Students don’t always have the foundation or tools to take what a one-time speaker offers and immediately apply it to their lives,” explains Trae. “Instead, we want to establish a foundation and provide ongoing activities that help students build skills and integrate them into their daily routines.”

The Foundation and the Athletics Office intentionally designed the program to create a long-lasting impact without placing additional burdens on the coaching staff. “We didn’t want it to be a check-the-box activity,” says Trae. Instead, they emphasized a thoughtful, phased rollout that would not be rushed and would allow participants to “go deep enough to be truly helpful.”

Z-Winning Mindset is working with four teams each year, integrating mindset training into practices through worksheets, reflections, and other activities, and helping coaches and players apply workshop concepts during competition. The goal is to rotate through all the sports over the course of four years so that every team has at least one engagement with the program.

A Person Before Player presentation last spring for the entire high school was followed by preseason work with all fall athletes, and then continued with specific teams. Additional sessions with Middle School students and parents have also taken place, with more planned.

This longer-term commitment aligns closely with the Crabtree Foundation’s interest in supporting sustainable community-improvement efforts that generate impact well beyond the project itself. “I wish I had learned these topics and life lessons earlier,” says Summer. “It’s great to be providing that knowledge to the next generation.”