MASON, Ohio — As Mason High School’s football team takes the field for their first game of the season, they have a new tool in their pocket they hope will bring success on and off the field.
This year, the team will train with the Restoic App, designed to help train athletes, particularly young athletes, to grow their mental and physical health. And according to Mason’s coaching staff, introducing the programs couldn’t have come at a better time.
What You Need To Know
- The Mason Football team is using a mental health app this season
- Restoic focuses on building physically and mentally healthy habits and developing coping skills
- The app is designed specifically for athletes
- Across the country, teens have reported a drop in mental health due to the pandemic
- The football team will try the app this season and the district may expand it to other programs if it proves valuable
It’s an issue assistant coaches Alex Beurket and Brandon Sethi are all too familiar with. Beurket, as a psychology professor, and Sethi, as a former mental health professional through Children’s Hospital, understand helping students transition from hospitalization back into normal high school life.
“My background with that, kind of lent itself naturally to have these conversations about goal-setting, mental toughness, and mental development,” Sethi said.
Both coaches are tasked with helping roll out the app throughout the season. They already started with a short four-week program over the summer.
“We do different conversations with the team, there’s goal setting and different like assignments that relate to the mental health components of each week,” Beurket said.
The app focuses on the intersection between physical and mental health, helping users navigate thought exercises and learn coping skills they can take with them on and off the field.
“The past two years, it’s been traumatic,” Beurket said. “It’s still trickling through and rippling through so we’re still seeing the effects of that happening."
The pandemic and its closures brought unprecedented disruption to children and teenagers across the country, on top of the normal stresses of high school life. A 2021 report from the Centers for Disease Control shows 37 percent of high school students reported poor mental health and 44 percent reported feeling hopeless in the past year.
“We think that sports is a great avenue to have those conversations and connect with these young men in a way that they may not feel comfortable having these conversations at all,” Beurket said.
The Mason football team will the first in the district to put the app to work. They plan to enroll in its twelve-week program over the season. If they find it valuable, the district may expand it to the rest of the athletic department or anyone in the district who may want to give it a try.
“Those stressors can be pretty grueling on a kid so being in a district that actually puts its money behind what they’re trying to do is pretty special,” Sethi said.