What Sports Did For My Mental Health
Trina shares her experience as a Singaporean of Asian descent. She was actively training and competing in Netball from 2005 - 2017.
For 12 years, she has played for the following schools, clubs, and combined school teams in her 12 years of competitive netball - St. Margs Primary (2005-2006), St. Margs Secondary (2007-2010), U14s. Sneakers Netball Club (2010-2013), U19s, Ngee Ann Polytechnic (2011-2013), U21s, SRC Netball Club (2012), Esk Netball Club (2014-2015), University of Tasmania - Southern Unigames (2014)
Growing up, mental health was not something I knew about. As a kid and a competitive netball athlete of 12 years, my closest introduction to mental conditioning was through visualization. I remember my primary school coach teaching us the power of visualization and how it can help us perform better during a game. She gave us this exercise of visualizing everything from pre-game to warm-up to play-by-play action during game day.
This is how it went. While visualizing the crowd, the noise, the anxiety, we were taught to squeeze our fists into tense balls and to hold our breath. Once in a state of visualization, slowly release and let go of any tension and anxiety in our body. We repeated this over and over until our nerves, heart rate, and anxieties started to calm down.
This was one of the most immediate and effective strategies that worked for me in high-intensity and nervous situations. I found myself using it before a presentation or before an exam. Even though my life was practically all about netball, I found the weight of academics, people pressure, responsibilities, and duty hard to bear growing up. Netball became my escape and distraction. Sports gave me an avenue to focus my time and energy while being able to keep up with my peers.
Here’s more about my journey with Netball
When I was 10 years old, I started Netball as I was spotted by a P.E. teacher, she encouraged my twin sister and me to trial for the netball team. Surprisingly, we were selected and became part of the team. It was strange because sports was never a thing for me. Other than P.E. classes, I never had any inclination towards sports (Fun fact: I was initially in the choir). It was only after the trials that I discovered my love for Netball. If you’ve ever fallen in love with a sport, you’ll know the emotions that come with discovering your love for it at a young age. It’s as intense as your first love.
The school I was in was notably known for Netball and for placing top 2 in the region and national competitions. It was a level of expectation that everyone knew they were getting themselves into once you made it into the team. Along with that came a once-in-a-lifetime experience to perform at the highest level for our age group. The first two years gave me huge exposure to the sport and set me up for the next 10 years. In 12 years of competitive netball, I played for 4 schools (primary, secondary, tertiary, university), 3 clubs (2 in Singapore and 1 in Tasmania), and had been selected for 3 national combined school teams (U14s, 19s, 21s).
Safe to say my time was consumed within the netball community. The sport was my identity and my life. It gave me my fair shares of highs and lows. However, throughout my experience, I faced a consistent battle against my mental health. It was a very private and personal struggle that was always kept internally. I never articulated it, unless it showed in my performance and in my actions. Even then I had only spoken to a few people about it.
From 19 - 21 years, I had my university education in Tasmania and took that opportunity to have a fresh start. To start again. I was exposed to a completely new community that I did not know. During my time, I was able to explore and allow myself to be me (whoever that person was). Self-discovery is a funny thing, it seems enlightening once you realize and know things about yourself, but being in the journey is often filled with mistakes, failures, and the courage to try again. That was what it was like for me. During that time, I was able to rekindle my joy for Netball again in a completely new environment. I was able to play for a club and to join as an outsider with no expectations or history to ride on. I was able to trial for the Southern Unigames team as someone who simply loved the sport.
As I reflect upon my 12 years of competitive Netball…
Here are 5 of my major standouts:
Sports gave me an escape from my emotions and reality.
Between school, training, and tuition, my week was pretty much packed (Including Sundays). It was never a schedule I intended but given the circumstances every week was packed. At the age of 10, I’d grown accustomed to training 3 times a week, on top of that every recess or free time I had in school was spent playing netball. When I got older, the training just increased, at different points of time I was playing for 2-3 teams and had 4-6 training sessions a week. This would revolve around court work, stamina training, strength, and conditioning. I never hated it. It was a passion and purpose-driven pursuit for the sport. However, as I look back now I realised that the passion was also a distraction and an escape for me. In my downtime, I found myself in a dazed state. Often feelings of hopelessness and anxiety would be with me.
Sports gave me a sense of importance and identity.
When I first started netball, I was thrown into a team that had years of winning history. Being a part of that was huge and new to me. My peers had been training at least a year before me, and I was given the opportunity to play the first team right from the get-go. Having had much court time, it also came with a sense of duty and responsibility to the role. Our diet, leisure activities, and academics, all revolved around the honour of representing the school. As I continued playing in secondary school, tertiary, and clubs, I was given the chance to captain teams and that experience showed me the type of leader I was; one that was highly goal-driven. I remember being part of a ‘losing’ team during my tertiary education and graduated from polytechnic, winning the competition for POL-ITE (Annual polytechnic and ITE sports tournament). The 12 years built my character and showed me the level of resilience I am capable of with a team. However, without it, I was left lost and unsure of my character and resilience as an individual.
Sports gave me the opportunity to build connections with others who shared a mutual passion.
Given the legacy and history of teams that have passed through the school. It gave me an opportunity to connect with peers, juniors, seniors, and coaches that were part of the sport. It was never a distance felt despite the age gaps. This might have been attributed to having a brother who is 10 years older and a sister who is 6 years older but having a mutual passion between this community helped me to build memories and connections that have stayed with me to this day.
The losses help me to experience negative emotions and build resilience.
I remember losing my first game like it was just yesterday. The tears and the sadness felt were truly one of a kind. It was my first year playing competitively and we had made it to the finals for the zonal and national competitions. During the finals, we went into overtime and lost by a point. Having experienced so many wins during the tournament and to lose by a point, was guttering. It taught me the intensity of loss and sadness. Beyond that, it taught me to reflect and to ask myself the hard question “Ok we did our best, but we lost. So what are you going to do about it now?”. I remember feeling my feelings at that point and allowing myself to feel guttered. After that, I recall heading back into training with a renewed sense of drive and motivation to use that experience to our advantage. Little by little, I go for each training focusing on my love for the sport. That led us to double wins in the following year for both the zonal and the national competitions.
I was able to realize that there is more to life than just the sport.
At age 18, for two years I experienced a burnout season with the sport. I found myself extremely self-critical, anxious about every training/ game, and temperamental. It was then that I had suddenly lost interest in Netball. During that time, I felt extremely lost as I had spent most of my life identifying as a sportsperson and nothing more. It was then that I started trying new things - traveling, working as an outdoor camp trainer, volunteer work, dating (lol), working as a part-time bartender and server, etc… All of which I found joy in but lost interest soon after. I found that without Netball, I didn’t know myself. Some people call it a season of discovery but I felt lost and was only trying to get through each day. Looking back I realized that the sudden loss of passion for the sport helped me to realize a deeper disconnection with myself and my life as a full entity.
