Content warning: This article contains mention of depression and disordered eating.

A quote from a Tampa Bay Times column brought me into a world far darker than the one I walk each day.

“They no doubt asked the question I have asked myself many times: Who are we without sports? Without the number on our backs, would anyone care for us?” said Duke senior softball catcher Kelly Torres. 

Daily headlines, sent straight to your inbox.

Subscribe to our newsletter to keep up with the latest at and around USC.

Torres’ story is one I had never heard before. And Torres’ struggle with depression almost took her life — a struggle that too many athletes fail to recognize they have while playing sports at a high level.

For athletes attempting to break into the world of collegiate sports, not only do they need to be good enough to be noticed by a college, but it has to be a good college that people have heard of. This goal combines the elements of a traditional college applicant — good grades, extracurriculars, leadership — but adds on the skills required to be an all-star athlete.

You not only need excellent athletic ability but also perfect grades and a wealth of involvement. And once you get into that school, you need to be good enough for a scholarship because all of those advanced club teams you were put through weren’t free, your parents say. And once you finally make the team, there is the inevitable challenge of making the starting roster.

Success in all of these fields is tangible proof of perfection. But this perfection comes with a price — mental freedom. Athletes are restrained by the chained bounds of their sport. Time is one thing, but the energy, focus and drive required to excel in all facets of life is enough to hollow a person out until they’re simply skin and bones.

The pressure from not only Torres’ sport but also her academic ability and looks physically destroyed parts of her humanity. Torres experienced mental and physical pain brought on by the feeling that she was not enough. And after her freshman summer, she lost 30 pounds.

As the endless tormenting thoughts tore through Torres’ mental health, her teammates started to take notice. It was a post-Covid era where communal rooms were required, and time alone was few and far between. There was nowhere for Torres to go except back into her own head.

Often overlooked in the life of a collegiate athlete is their life outside of sports. As young people, our impressionable minds are trained to view perfection as a goal — one that is attainable and not to be disregarded. Perfection is baked into our identities: we are told that we need to be perfect students, teammates, children and humans. We see perfection as validation for our hard work, and any other option as a symbol that we don’t deserve the coveted title of perfection.

The end of that season brought no relief for Torres. She returned home to Florida and was faced with her reality: she couldn’t hide her pain anymore. The catcher told her family when she got home, and the question she posed at the beginning of this article started to get answers.

“It killed me to tell my parents that the angel they raised was far from perfect,” Torres said. “They weren’t surprised. They noticed the old me was gone before I did.”

Torres sharing her story with her parents proved to be one of the most difficult parts of her journey to recovery. But through this battle, she started to remember her happier self. Understanding that she was more than just her sport may have been what saved her.

This striving for perfection — a goal seemingly positive in product — led to Torres’ depression.

Junior year started tumultuously: Torres felt the thoughts she struggled with so much creep back in. Therapy appointments continued and were supplemented with medication. Torres emphasizes that struggles with mental health do not provide linear solutions; it is a constant battle of high highs and lower lows.

What I’ve learned from Torres and the other athletes I have had the pleasure to report on through this column is something that has been instilled in me since I was young: you never know what someone is going through behind the scenes. No spectator or teammate realized how Torres’ mental health had declined, and no reader of her story can fully understand how hard it was for her to recover her happy self.

That being said, I believe that the more stories we read and the more experiences we share, the more likely we are to save these young athletes’ lives.

Dana Hammerstrom is a senior writing about the mental health of collegiate athletes, as well as the emotional pressures they face, in her column, “Heart to Heart,” which runs every other Friday.