There are almost half a million college athletes across all divisions in the United States. Close to 250,000 of them sustain injuries annually — some greater than others — but are sidelined from their sport nonetheless. As they watch their teammates improve, they can only feel the roar of not only the physical pain, but the mental and academic battles that come along with injury.
According to the British Journal of Sports Medicine, in a study done on female athletes, 21% of whom reported pain caused by an injury, had an increase in reporting depressive symptoms.
While every injury sidelines athletes from their sport, there can be different outcomes when it comes to the severity of the injury. For example, an anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury can lead to greater emotional interference than a sprained ankle. In 1998, Olympic skier Picabo Street sustained significant leg and knee injuries, which sidelined her from both competition and training.
While every athlete’s injury story is different, the emotional and mental struggles that follow remain universal across high school, college, and professional athletes. Yet in these minor setbacks, when compared to the greater story, there lies a chance for each person to rediscover their self-worth and resilience in their mind.
‘A’ali’i Labato, a sophomore at the College of San Mateo (CSM), is studying Mechanical Engineering. He graduated from Carlmont High School in 2024, where he was a wrestler and singer. Labato went through the college application process during his senior year and was accepted into the United States Military Academy, also known as West Point.
West Point is a highly selective liberal arts university with an acceptance rate of only 14%. As his senior wrestling season came around, he went through the season without a worry, and as the Central Coast Section (CCS) championships came around, he got through the first few rounds comfortably.
“I go to step out to base myself and all of a sudden, all the weight of my upper body just came down on my leg and I just remember hearing a crack and a snap in my knee,” Labato said.
I go to step out to base myself and all of a sudden, all the weight of my upper body just came down on my leg and I just remember hearing a crack and a snap in my knee.
— ‘A’ali’i Labato
This injury slowed him down in the following rounds, but he continued to wrestle, and with each take-down attempt, he could tell that it was something serious.
As a result of the competition, Laboto developed an ACL injury. Following his injury, Labato’s acceptance to West Point was rescinded due to his inability to be active at the time that he would be enrolled.
According to Panorama Orthopedics and Spine Center, one in every 3,500 people annually suffers from an ACL injury, with 70% of them being non-contact. It is one of the most common injuries in the sport of wrestling.
As both wrestling and his acceptance into West Point were snatched away from him so instantaneously, he went through a very rough emotional patch.
“I personally would discourage athletes from finding their identity in their sport. I believe you should find your identity in something that’s going to last a lot longer,” Labato said.
From Labato’s experience, losing something so important and significant took a substantial mental toll over time. He was fortunate to have his family and friends to lean on for support.
“Turning back to my faith, and in doing so, also surrounding myself with people who were like-minded, people who also shared the same faith as me but were also kind of there to guide me through the experience,” Labato said.
As Labato’s injury completely altered his future, other athletes have also experienced these moments of uncertainty.
Recent college graduate Brock Kelly has been running since he was in fifth grade. Originally a swimmer, he was no stranger to endurance sports. When his mother invited him to run in a community race, the spark for running was ignited.
“I was like, ‘that was the worst thing ever. Like, I hate this, but it appears that I’m all right at it, so I kind of want to go try to do another one of these and just see what happens,’” Kelly said.
The impact of this first fun run was greater than he could have known, and it would influence the trajectory of the next few decades of his life.
“I ran another 5K and I was like, ‘yeah, it still kind of sucks, but maybe I could just keep doing this and just see if I get better at it,’” Kelly said.
Entering seventh grade, Kelly joined his school’s cross-country team and soon found that he was one of the top middle school runners in the state of Mississippi. With a lack of experience in the running scene, his coach, a marathoner, was pivotal in his early years of training.
Kelly has noticed that over the course of his life, things that he started and found hard, he continued to pursue and perfect.
“That’s been a theme in my life, and a lot of things where I hate something, and then decide, ‘okay, I think I’m going to continue to do this.’ And if you continue to do something you don’t like for long enough, you will become good at it. And once you get good at it, you develop more of a love for it,” Kelly said.
As Kelly entered college as a promising talent, he was quickly sidelined from running and had to rely on cross-training.
That’s been a theme in my life, and a lot of things where I hate something, and then decide, ‘okay, I think I’m going to continue to do this.’ And if you continue to do something you don’t like for long enough, you will become good at it. And once you get good at it, you develop more of a love for it.
— Brock Kelly
“I never got injured in high school, which was a blessing, but when I got to college freshman year, I immediately had an injury. I had band stuff where my knee just felt like it was absolutely on fire. I was lifting a lot of weights for the first time,” Kelly said.
As Kelly was out for a few months, he began to feel the isolation of not being at practice with his teammates, but he was able to persevere through the injury.
“That’s where most people would say, ‘I’m injured right now. I’m out. I have no more momentum. I can just walk away and quit.’ But for me, that was the thing that motivated me. I was like, ‘Okay, I’m at my lowest moment right now. Let’s craft a comeback story and get back into the best shape of my life,’” Kelly said.
As Kelly proceeded to keep his momentum going, he was able to find a mental outlet for the effect that his stress fracture had on him through his family, faith, and the drive to succeed.
“A lot of people will fall into this trap of putting their entire worth into the sport running, and you can’t put your entire worth in the sport,” Kelly said.
According to Premier Sport Psychology, many athletes find themselves putting their entire self-worth into their sport. Research conducted by their team on over 1,500 athletes showed that 26% of professional athletes were able to separate their self-worth from outcomes in practices, games, or races, while only 10% of high school athletes were able to do the same in these important aspects of their lives. This correlation between self-worth and sports was found to be most prominent in collegiate athletes, primarily due to the limited time they have left to play their sport at a high level.
“Even though I got hurt, that wasn’t where my value and worth were. However, many people invest their entire worth in the sport. You are just setting yourself up for failure, because things will happen that this sport can be stripped from you in an instant,” Kelly said.
Like Kelly, many athletes come to realize that these setbacks are not only physical, but also mental turning points in their journey.
Stanford sophomore Paul Bergeron, a distance runner for the men’s cross-country and track teams, is studying pre-med on the human biology track. As Bergeron came from Massachusetts to the West Coast, to one of the top academic and athletic schools in the country, he had to adjust significantly.
He came off of an impressive senior cross-country and track season, which included a seventh-place finish at the Foot Locker Cross Country National Championships, to winning the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association (MIAA) meet of champions men’s two-mile event in a time of 8:43.86, and the mile in 4:07.98.
Although in high school, he felt a sense of isolation, when he arrived to Stanford and found a group of like-minded teammates who were training at the same level, he found a sense of belonging.
But even as one of the top high school runners in the country, there came a certain amount of pressure to perform, especially coming into such a highly ranked program.
“Maybe you have a really good year, but you’re still at a really good school, and you’re a freshman, so maybe you’re, you know, sixth on the team, fifth, and that’s the year of your life. Or maybe you don’t have as good a year, and you’re 10th or 11th. It’s definitely difficult, and it can be a little bit of an adjustment. And like, maybe there’s some inherent beauty in that, that you have that ladder still to climb,” Bergeron said.
Following his junior year in high school, after committing to Stanford, he had never sustained any injuries, but coming off a huge summer of training at around 80 miles a week, he sustained a back injury, which put him out for a few months. Then, coming off his first race in the spring, he got a tendon and ankle injury.
“I ended up having a really good year, all things considered. But I had two pretty major injuries, which were definitely new, like I hadn’t dealt with that at the time,” Bergeron said.
Then, after his freshman year of college, he suffered a knee injury that left him uncertain of the outcome, causing frustration and a hiatus from his sport from January until July.
“I feel like everyone should go through it, because it’s the most important perspective shift, it’s something that you absolutely need. And I wasn’t really hurt at all before I even committed to the school. So, going into senior year of high school, it was my first one, which was even worse, because you’re not used to it. You’re just not used to not running, it just feels like that’s what everything was for. So it’s really important to focus on other aspects,” Bergeron said.
With the loss of almost six months of training, Bergeron shifted his focus to his studies. After speaking with his guidance counselor, he was able to take additional classes to fulfill his graduation requirements, which led him to discover something else that filled the gap left by running.
“I would say the main thing is it made me grateful for every run, because normally, you’re building back into things. It’s like I’m only doing 80 miles per week as a senior in high school, and I’m doing 50. As a sophomore in college, I want to be doing 100, but that’s the nature of it. It’s like I’m doing 50 and I’m content, because it’s more than nothing. So it’s like the fact that you’re fully healthy and you should definitely be grateful for that,” Bergeron said.
Across all levels of sport, from high school to elite universities, athletes like Kelly, Labato, and Bergeron share a common, unseen side to injury. While their circumstances and experiences differ, they all share a common understanding of recovering not only the body but also the mind.
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