ExpostionSC: It’s all about the athlete


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ExpositionSC featured their organization regarding student-athlete’s mental health in a panel that included current and former Trojan student-athletes, including sophomore men’s basketball player Harrison Hornery. (Robert Westermann | Daily Trojan)

USC athletes lead busy lives, with mandatory practices, weight-lifting sessions and games alongside navigating their academic and social lives. With this heavy load, mental health becomes a concern for student-athletes navigating a hectic and ever-changing athletic landscape. 

As a result, USC Athletics has made mental well-being a primary concern of its program and has centered itself around the development of their student-athletes. 

“As a university, USC has put sports psych at the forefront of a priority for the athletes,” said Hayes Flanagan, chief operations officer of ExpositionSC, a nonprofit organization that aims to further assist USC student-athletes by allowing them to build and share their own stories. “Right when [the athletes] get here, they know who Robin [Scholefield] is, they know who the sports psych department is.”

ExpositionSC seeks to provide USC student-athletes with the means to manage their brand while allowing student-athletes to hear from one another about their own experiences. 

“We’re just really dedicated to helping these athletes share their identities beyond sport,” said Caitlin Cummings, ExpositionSC’s head of public relations. “Athletes, for so long, have just been depicted as such a single story, and I think that it is really important for us at Exposition to kind of build out the identity of the athlete beyond just their sport.”

Their first panel took place Tuesday night and featured three current or former USC student-athletes: graduate transfer track and field runner Michael Phillippy, men’s basketball sophomore forward Harrison Hornery, and former women’s volleyball standout and public speaker, Victoria Garrick Browne. 

Former Olympian Robin Scholefield, who currently serves as USC’s senior associate athletic director, was a panelist along with Yogi Roth, former USC football coach and current Pac-12 football analyst. Flanagan said they could not have been more pleased with how their panel went. 

“This [panel] was the first of its kind and it was honestly awesome to see and so rewarding,” Flanagan said. “Something like this, where you get the immediate reaction from the audience, you get the engagement, is something that’s so special.”

ExpositionSC has worked with more than 25 current and former USC athletes to provide them with a platform to create, share and learn from one another through writing, podcasting and videography. 

The hallmark of ExpositionSC is that it’s all about the athlete. Cummings said athletes reach out to ExpositionSC with their interest and, from there, the athletes engage in every aspect of the production process, such as writing, recording and editing, independently. ExpositionSC’s purpose is to serve student-athletes in a facilitator role and to help oversee the production of the athletes’ projects.

“What we’re doing at Exposition is allowing individuals to explore new topics about themselves [and] be more well-versed in the different facets of the student-athlete population,” Cummings said. “We’re really just exposing … this whole new side of athletes that’s never really even seen before. That’s not something that a sports psychology department can do … That’s something that comes from the athletes themselves.”

In the coming years, ExpositionSC will continue to provide a forum for student-athletes to discuss their experiences and, ultimately, develop a community at USC they’re comfortable and more open to seeking out help when they need it.