- Cassidy Caldwell, Paris Devers and Christian Steinbaugh are Central High seniors tackling mental health in student athletes for their DECA competition.
- They have created a brochure, hosted Ahman Green as a speaker open for their peers and are pushing awareness on their website and social media platforms.
- They are using their personal journeys to push themselves to do even more.
- The video shows the three students,
BROADCAST TRANSCRIPT:
OMAHA, Neb. (KMTV)
"It's not just about the game it's about the mental aspect too, because I feel like that is not talked about enough," said Paris Devers.
Cassidy Caldwell, Paris Devers and Christian Steinbaugh are seniors at Central High School, tackling a huge topic – student-athlete mental health.
"Our overall goal or idea is to let people know that they are not alone," said Cassidy Caldwell.
All three are members of Central’s DECA team, a program at many schools for students interested in business.
Their campaign is called 'Locked In'.
"We have a PSA and that showcases all different sports and all different types of athletes, and it talks about like just the story behind like the mental aspect of sports," said Paris Devers.
They also created a brochure with available resources and invited -- Ahman Green from the University of Nebraska Lincoln to speak to several students about his own journey as an athlete.
"I’ve just been positive feedback from them, they can say they relate because I relate, so I know they can relate,” Devers said.
As students, they know first-hand, all they are juggling – classwork, social life and extracurriculars.
Paris is on the varsity basketball team at Central.
"Me myself, I have realized that there are people that I can talk to, so I have reached out to people and got the help and like I said, varsity captain and it's been great," Devers said.
Christian is a member of the bowling team and said it was hard for him to reach out to people.
"At the same time, you do need and that's very tough to kinda get through, like it's not something you get through on your own,” Steinbaugh said.
Their personal journey's push them to do even more.
"There is no real deadline because mental health is all around. It never stops and a lot of people go through it. So, we are just going to keep working on it behind the scenes and try to get it out there as much as we can," Devers said.
To learn more about their mission visit the website they created.
