INDIANAPOLIS – The Great Lakes Valley Conference (GLVC) announced Tuesday the release of 15 school-specific public service announcements (PSA) for its
Someone to Listen campaign aimed at mental health awareness. The initiative stars a student-athlete from each GLVC member institution in powerful 30-second videos that were filmed over the course of the last few months.
Each video begins with the institution’s student-athlete, who was also featured in the
GLVC is ME campaign released last week, talking about the pressure they face during competition. They also show an understanding that all students deal with similar stress each day. Regardless of each person’s situation, talking to someone can often provide the greatest relief, yet it’s not the easiest thing to do. Each GLVC student-athlete stresses that there is always someone to listen, and adds that it is comforting that their team extends beyond their respective site of competition. The PSA ends with contact information for the school’s counseling services department to emphasize that all students on campus have a teammate willing to listen.
“We have been extremely fortunate and proud to produce compelling public service announcements in recent years, but we believe
Someone to Listen is our best work yet,” said GLVC Commissioner Jim Naumovich. “Mental health awareness and the overall well-being of our student-athletes is our utmost responsibility, yet this initiative also affords us a platform to speak directly to more than 50,000 students and faculty on our 14 campuses. If just one person having a bad day is impacted by one of these videos and motivated to seek out someone on campus to listen, then we have succeeded in our mission.”
At the annual GLVC Athletic Directors/Senior Woman Administrators Summit in late July, the Conference office staff sought feedback from the group in attendance and relied on current GLVC intern Beth Bowers, who graduated from Bellarmine University in 2018 following a four-year career on the women’s basketball team, to provide insight into the mind of today’s student-athlete.
Upon receiving their scripts for review, one student-athlete sent the following in an e-mail to the Conference office:
“…I am also very glad you guys are doing the piece on mental health. As a student-athlete, things really do get tough. This past year, I personally learned that it was okay to get help. It’s okay to not always be okay. I hope these videos will help others realize the same thing.”
The videos were produced by Greers N Motion, and will be shown on both GLVC Championship and regular-season coverage on the GLVC Sports Network (GLVCSN).
Below is a list of the 15 students featured in the videos, which can also be found in this
Someone to Listen YouTube
playlist.
- Bellarmine University junior basketball player and communications major Parker Chitty
- Drury University junior basketball player and psychology major Hailey Diestelkamp
- University of Illinois Springfield junior pitcher and business management major Brayden Jensen
- University of Indianapolis junior golfer and industrial engineering major Pilar Echeverria
- Lewis University sophomore runner and computer engineering major Dan Laskero
- Maryville University sophomore women’s soccer standout and exercise science major Alex Johnson
- McKendree University junior wrestler and education major Nick Foster
- Missouri S&T junior swimmer and mechanical engineering major Tim Samuelsen
- University of Missouri-St. Louis junior golfer and secondary education major Chris Ferris
- Quincy University redshirt-sophomore men’s soccer forward and marketing major Aubrey Reis
- Rockhurst University junior basketball player and communication science disorders major Madeline Ronshausen
- University of Southern Indiana junior softball pitcher and biology/pre-dentistry major Jennifer Leonhardt
- Southwest Baptist University sophomore linebacker and mass communications major TJ Morgan
- Truman State University junior volleyball standout and exercise science major Lauren Wacker
- William Jewell College sophomore thrower and secondary education major Taylor Golden