Hilinski foundation rebrands mental health week
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Andrea Adelson, ESPN Senior Writer
The Hilinski’s Hope Foundation announced Thursday it has changed “College Football Mental Health Week” to “Student Athlete Mental Health Week,” a rebranding founders Mark and Kym Hilinski believe better serves their message: prioritizing mental health for all collegiate athletes.
The Hilinskis created their foundation in 2018 after their son, Tyler, a quarterback for Washington State, died by suicide. As part of their efforts, they began “College Football Mental Health Week,” initially reaching out to football programs to help raise awareness and erase stigmas surrounding mental health, because that is the sport their sons played.
But after speaking to athletic departments across the country over the past several years, they started to get the same question: Do we have to play football to participate?
“We’ve always been inclusive of all the student-athletes out there,” Kym Hilinski told ESPN. “But some of the schools that didn’t have a football program said, ‘We want to be involved, too,’ and we said sometimes just that name could maybe be a deterrent for a school reaching out, and we didn’t want that to happen at all. We didn’t want our student-athletes, the coaches, the ADs to think that our week and what we were putting together was not about all the student-athletes.”
Now headed into Year 4, Student Athlete Mental Health Week initiatives will be featured Oct. 1-7, culminating on World Mental Health Day on Oct. 10. Those initiatives include participating in Hilinski’s Hope’s online mental health course to help reduce the stigma surrounding seeking help, participating in social media campaigns, assessing how participating colleges and universities are following best practices with their mental health programs, and hosting talks and trainings on campus for players, coaches, and staff — all while honoring Tyler’s legacy.
Last year, 125 collegiate programs participated in initiatives during this specific week. The Hilinskis said schools also created their own programming, including bringing in therapy dogs, additional speakers or creating team-specific events.
“It evolved on these campuses, which is the whole point — to make it more comfortable to talk about,” Mark Hilinski said. “We don’t want anybody to feel they can’t participate. When you sit down and think about it, we’re trying to save the next Tyler. So whether that’s 135 schools next year or 235 schools, the if we can get to that person and let them know that it’s OK to ask for help, then we’ve accomplished something.”
While the Hilinskis know there remains much work to be done to help raise awareness, one of their short-term goals is to have schools in all 50 states participate during their specially designated week.
“Mark and I aren’t mental health professionals. We partner with some great ones. We respect what they do,” Kym Hilinski said. “Our job as we see it is to just clear that path for the student athletes so that they’re able to reach out and ask for help. If this week is something that makes it a little bit easier for them because they’re all focusing on their mental health, that’s what we’re trying to do. Taking care of your mental health should never be a burden. It’s your health.”
ANAHEIM, Calif. — Boston Bruins defenseman Charlie McAvoy had surgery Wednesday to repair facial injuries and will be sidelined indefinitely.
McAvoy was hit in the mouth by Noah Dobson‘s slap shot Saturday in the second period of Boston’s 3-2 victory in Montreal.
“He’s doing good,” Bruins coach Marco Sturm said before Boston’s game against Anaheim. “He’s recovering right now at home. We still don’t know how long he’s going to be out for.”
McAvoy has 14 assists in 19 games this season.
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — The two-time defending Stanley Cup champion Florida Panthers are now dealing with even more injuries, including one sustained in a grilling accident.
And coach Paul Maurice, when looking at the big picture, is seeing all of this as a way for the champs to get even better.
Forward Eetu Luostarinen will be listed as week-to-week, Maurice said Wednesday, after what the coach described as “a barbecuing mishap.” But the already-shorthanded Panthers don’t seem to have a concrete timeline in mind for Luostarinen’s return.
“We don’t have a lot of experience with this,” Maurice said. “When he comes back and feels comfortable with the equipment on him, away we go.”
And forward Cole Schwindt, claimed off waivers last month to help with the Panthers’ injury problems, is now on the injury list himself. Schwindt will need surgery in the coming days to repair a broken arm, and the Panthers expect that he’ll miss two to three months.
Luostarinen and Schwindt become the latest entries on an injury log for the Panthers that already included long-term issues for captain Aleksander Barkov (preseason ACL tear), Dmitry Kulikov (upper body), Jonah Gadjovich (upper body), Tomas Nosek (knee) and Matthew Tkachuk (groin). Barkov, Kulikov, Gadjovich and Nosek all still have months to go in their recoveries; Tkachuk might start skating by the end of this month and could make his season debut sometime in December.
It is not at all what the Panthers expected to start the season. But that’s where Maurice sees opportunity; the roster depletions have forced Florida to change its playing style somewhat, and he thinks that could wind up providing valuable lessons.
“There’s an awful lot of good if you can capture, if you can learn some new things, things that you have to learn to survive,” Maurice said. “And that’s really in some ways what we’re doing, is trying to survive. When you get to seven guys out of your lineup, you’ve got a problem. We can survive that and then learn through the adversity of it eventually.
“We’re going to have, slightly after the trade deadline, the biggest movement in the league,” he added. “We’re going to get some players back. We can be a better team than we were going into the playoffs last year, if we can learn how to do this. It’s just going to be hard. It’s going to be uncomfortable right now. And we’ve got to be good with that.”
The Panthers expect that rookie forward Jack Devine, part of two NCAA title teams at Denver and twice a Hobey Baker Award finalist before turning pro last year, will make his NHL debut Thursday in a home game against New Jersey.
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