Hokie ClubLauren Naldo and Paul Knackstedt are both, coincidentally, originally from Harrisburg, Pa. Knackstedt and Naldo arrived in Blacksburg in 2016 and 2018, respectively. They both meet with individual student-athletes, coaches and support staff on a daily basis. Both are former student-athletes themselves. Naldo was a cheerleader at Mount St. Mary's, while Knackstedt played baseball for William & Mary. The two of them sat down for an interview on May 5, 2023, to discuss their outlooks on their careers as well as the strides Virginia Tech Athletics is making in mental health.
You both said this was such a busy time for Counseling & Athletic Mental Performance, why is that?
LN: Mostly because our student-athletes are getting ready to transition out for the summer, whatever that means. Some of them stay and train, some of them are still in season. Then we're preparing student-athletes to graduate and lose their athlete identity. You know you never really lose that, but they're coping with transitioning out of sport for the first time, and that becomes really challenging and difficult. There's that process of getting them ready for whatever is coming next in their lives. It's busy because we have those students going through transition, and then we have those that are returning. We are trying to get them into treatment over the summer or help them find what they need, whatever that is.
PK: There's a lot of work to connect people to services, I think over the summer that we need to do some groundwork for leading up to what next fall will look like. That is all in addition to the work we're doing every day. It causes us to have to dig deep and find some time to prepare, in addition to all the other things that we're doing here on campus.
What's a typical day like for you guys?
LN: Mostly, we have back to back sessions all day. We're busy, which is great. I think we are making strides at being a normal part of our student athletes lives. Over 50% have seen us. Those are individual counseling sessions that we have back to back and some people we see every week. There are also things that come up and we have to see some people in crisis as well.
You said 50% of the student athletes have seen you guys at one point or another?
PK: I think it's a little over 50%. Over the last five years we've averaged seeing between 50% and 55% of our student-athletes each year.
Why do you think that number has grown?
PK: I think for a lot of reasons. I think there's decreased stigma around seeking mental health services. I've worked at other schools where that number was between 10% to 12%. And the stigma around asking for help or seeking support regarding mental health related concerns, or even performance related concerns in your sport was a lot higher, they were much more likely to say: "I'm just going to do this myself, I'll figure it all out." As an athlete, we have a tendency to over complicate things when it comes to dealing with emotions. They're kind of told to shove those away and not deal with them. And I think we help athletes be aware of those emotions and work with emotions differently, to really get to their best performances and have more positive relationships in their life.
As we continue Mental Health Awareness Month, what would donors' gifts be going towards if they made a gift to CAMP?
LN: We have a biofeedback machine. They're very expensive, so it would be great to add another, which would make that service more accessible to additional student-athletes. The marriage between technology and performance is growing. Technology in our field continues to develop and those developments take resources to acquire.
PK: Biofeedback is a way that we can take our internal physiology, and have it displayed in front of us. We can take that information and develop strategies to use, this technology can help us control what these internal experiences are. So usually how it plays out is if someone has some performance anxiety before a competition. And they're really having trouble, managing that anxiety before a game. Eventually, we may talk about biofeedback as a way to monitor their heart rate, breathing rate, sweat response and some of their other physiological markers. And then we introduce some coping strategies like breathing, meditation, self-talk as well as some other ways to reduce some of that physiological fight or flight response.
LN: We would also love to have more interns, which would increase student-athlete involvement in our program. There's so many student-athletes interested and motivated in mental health awareness, and we want to have the resources for them to work with us. In addition to some of these various resources, we would like to pursue additional training courses to get certified in some cutting-edge practices to best serve our student-athletes.
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