MBB HOKIES 17-18 | MEDIA GUIDE

Q & A WI TH DR. GARY BENNET T SPORT PSYCHOLOGIST Q: How has sport psychology evolved within the Virginia Tech Athletics Department over the years? GB: “It goes away back to the [former Tech AD] Dave Braine era when, back in 1995 or 1996, there was some trouble over here. President [Paul] Torgersen formed a committee to basically review everything that was going on over here, and one of the recommendations was to have a psychologist available. I sort of became the liaison for that, and then under Coach [Mike] Gentry’s leadership, got a part-time position with an office over here and then it just grew from there. “That first year, I probably saw 30-40 student-athletes up until this past year when I saw 282. So about half of our student-athletes came in for one reason or another last year. It’s [his position] gone from a half position, and in 2007, it became full time. In the last three or four years, we’ve added a second half-time position.” Q: How beneficial has the sport psychology program been to Virginia Tech student-athletes? GB: “It’s hard to measure. I think it’s beneficial to have somewhere for our athletes to go and talk about their problems. We have a culture here where it’s OK to admit that I’m having a problem, and it’s OK to ask for help. I see lots of athletes who, and I think this just goes with the culture of being an athlete, that you just suck it up and pull yourself up by the bootstraps. That works for some things, but it doesn’t work so well for our mental health issues. The more we try to do it ourselves sometimes, the worse it gets. “I think it’s hard to measure success or benefits, but one of my favorite measures is how many referrals we get from fellow student-athletes who are suggesting, ‘Hey, why you don’t go and talk to Dr. B? I’ve gone, and it was helpful.’ A lot of years, our biggest referral source is our other athletes.” Q: What is the biggest issue that you deal with among student-athletes? GB: “The biggest thing that I see is anxiety or stress. They say that their lives are so stressful, and I don’t know that people outside of here would appreciate what they have to go through, but to me, it’s like having two full-time jobs. They have little time during their day to relax and be a normal student between morning lifts, class, study hall, afternoon practice - they get home at 8 or 9 at night and then they’re supposed to study and they’re physically spent? That’s not an easy thing. “Depression is probably the second. Every year, we have a handful of student- athletes that we have to hospitalize because they’re so depressed that they’re having thoughts of hurting themselves. You don’t know what would have happened if we didn’t have this resource available, but we’ve seen what would have happened at other schools that don’t have a psychologist available.” Q: How often do you meet with a student-athlete suffering from anxiety or depression? GB: “It depends. Some, I meet with literally every week while they’re here. With others, it might be every other week, or a couple of times a semester. This time of year [late fall], the last couple of weeks, I’ve had 60 appointments a week. Paul [Knackstedt, a part-time sport psychologist] has another 15, so we’ve been seeing probably 70 athletes a week. That’s a lot.” Q: Where do you see the future of sport psychology within the athletics department at Virginia Tech? GB: “We need more staffing, and we’re working on that. Cook [Counseling Center] and our administration have a good relationship, and I’m still part of the Cook staff, so I get lots of benefits from being a part of that center in terms of psychiatric resources. So at this level, we need more staffing. “At a larger level, we need to keep getting the word out there that student-athletes aren’t immune from having mental health issues. They have a lot of the same issues that non-student-athletes have, and on top of that, the stress of being a student- athlete. The NCAA has released some good research that levels of anxiety and depression with student-athletes match that of non-athletes, so it’s a matter of getting the word out there and making sure that schools have the resources in place hopefully within departments.” #getB3 TTER #ThisIsHome 95