Why we need more Victoria Garrick Brownes
Destigmatizing the mental health of college athletes will save athletes.
By DANA HAMMERSTROM
Content warning: This article contains mentions of eating disorders, suicidal thoughts and mental illness.
Picture this: On your walk to class one sunny afternoon, you see a five-foot-ten blonde girl crouched behind a bush across from the USC Bookstore. She is wearing a USC Athletics backpack with a tag that says “Women’s Volleyball.” You think you’ve seen her on Instagram posing on a beach in a bikini or at a tailgate with her sorority sisters. You’ve seen her in this paper for her dominance in her sport, too.
This seemingly perfect girl crouched behind this bush is sobbing.
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An athlete’s college experience is criticized under a microscope on social media. For women, these standards of beauty are impossible to achieve. For athletes who are women, the pressure of performance in one’s sport sometimes does not outweigh that of “perfection” online.
Victoria Garrick Browne — USC alum, former Division I volleyball player, motivational speaker and founder of the nonprofit The Hidden Opponent — was once just a girl crying on campus because of an overwhelming desire to change. She later became someone who sought out help and is now recognized as one of the leaders of the destigmatization of collegiate athlete mental health.
Browne spoke to a lecture hall at USC in October during an event sponsored by the USC Student Assembly for Gender Empowerment. Her opening remarks set the stage for her humanity to shine, and the USC students seated in front of her uniquely understood her story.
With the mood set, Browne dove into her intense journey as a student-athlete, her recovery path and her later success — all moments that started on USC’s campus.
“I came in thinking, ‘This is my dream, I’m on cloud nine, this is going to be amazing,’ and I don’t think I was quite prepared for the level of stress and the high-intensity environment that I would experience being a student here and being an athlete,” Browne said.
Browne was a women’s volleyball walk-on in 2015 and played in 128 of 130 sets her freshman season. She was an instant standout, finishing the season with 346 digs, third on the team. Her success wasn’t a coincidence, though. Browne’s work ethic and determination started as a way to prove herself but later grew into extreme pressure.
“In 2015, we were the No. 1 team in the country … It was the coolest thing ever, until reality sunk in and I thought, if I make a mistake, I could be the reason we lose the game, I could be the reason that the seniors have to come in and run the next morning,” Browne said. “And so I started to get increasingly anxious.”
This anxiety manifested itself into the beginning stages of an eating disorder — one that would change the course of Browne’s future forever.
“I was very reluctant to allow my body to gain weight, to gain muscle,” Browne said. “I was very insecure and very hyper aware of my weight, and the anxiety coupled with that [led to] restriction. I wasn’t fueling myself properly. I wasn’t allowing myself to eat what I needed to eat.”
Browne spoke about her day-to-day struggles with restriction, binge eating, comparison and finally, a breaking point. Browne was crouched down again, this time over a toilet at her sorority’s invite.
By the end of her freshman year, Browne was brought to a turning point. After turning to teammates for advice, she started seeing a therapist through USC Student Health and working with the team’s nutritionist to get back on track.
This wasn’t sustainable for Browne, though. Playing a sport at such a high level requires calories not afforded to women who look like the models little girls idolize in magazines. Sophomore year was a different beast — more pressure to hit expectations led to more restriction and, ultimately, Browne’s first glimpse of depression.
“It was the first time in my life that I ever really was depressed, and I never understood what it meant to be depressed until I felt it myself,” Browne said. “Depression can feel like you’re living in black and white and everyone else is living in color.”
This low point of depression was when Browne knelt behind that bush and cried. Her old self had shed its skin, and the skeleton underneath was desperate for help but had nowhere to turn.
“I would bike to the Galen Center from my dorm, and then in the morning before practice, and I would literally just think to myself, ‘What would happen if today I just swerved, and my day got put on pause, and I didn’t make it to practice, and I got a break,’” Browne said. “I was having those thoughts that were so out-of-body for me … I didn’t recognize my thinking, and so that’s when I really started taking the therapy seriously.”
The road to recovery was arduous, but the results were what Browne had been searching for her entire USC experience: self-satisfaction. Through her recovery, Browne regained love for her sport after taking an off-season break, despite it being a catalyst for the pain she endured years prior.
Browne began to share her story, first to friends and family, then to teammates, and finally to the world through a TEDxUSC Talk that has amassed more than 550,000 views since its release in 2017. The issues Browne faced during her time as a student-athlete are complex, but the lesson she learned is simple: Asking for help is not weak; it’s necessary.
“It is so important to prioritize yourself,” Browne said. “If you are struggling, you cannot help others. People might have thought that was a selfish decision [to take a break from the team] on my part. It’s what I needed to do, and I don’t have regrets.”
Browne’s words hit the ears of students from all parts of USC’s campus, and her truths are important for any student to hear — whether or not you are a DI athlete. The more voices bravely telling these stories like Browne, the more support student-athletes will receive in the face of their struggles.
Thank you, Victoria, for your honesty and your compassion. We need more people like you.
Dana Hammerstrom is a junior writing about the mental health of collegiate athletes and the emotional pressures they face in her column, “Heart to Heart,” which runs every other Tuesday.
