'Everyone has a hard time:' UGA athletes navigate careers with mental health in the balance

— Editors note: This is Part One in a series about mental health and college athletics. Here is Part Two and Part Three 

This series contains discussion of suicide. If you or someone you know may be struggling with suicidal thoughts, call the suicide prevention hotline at 800-273-8255 .

In September of her senior year at Crean Lutheran High in Newport Beach, Calif, Eva Merrell committed to swim for Georgia over Cal.

A month later, she was hospitalized.

Merrell aspired to make the Olympic team as a sprinter in the backstroke and butterfly but she was diagnosed with an eating disorder at age 15.

It came after her club coach — someone she was close to — told her she was “too fluffy,” something she thinks sent her into a “spiral” to her eating disorder.

Years later, she says she doesn’t hold any resentment about the comment.

“I think that was the first time that anyone had referenced my body and why my body could have made me perform negatively,” she said. “It changed my perspective in how my body should look which was kind of the catalyst for the eating habits and the kind of body dysmorphia and stuff along those lines.”

Merrell felt nervous eating food that “felt bad,” and limited her diet to bland foods — rice, fruits and vegetables and chicken.

Her performance in the pool declined even though she trained as hard as ever. She felt fatigued all the time and couldn’t swim like she wanted.

She got bloodwork done and medical testing and concluded she had an issue with food. Her hair was thinning and stomach hurt and she often felt like she would pass out.

“I was very malnourished and that’s why I couldn’t even make it through a practice sometimes,” she said.

She graduated high school in 2018 and UGA set her up with an eating disorder specific therapist and a sports dietician and she also saw a psychiatrist to manage her meds for anorexia nervosa.

About 44 percent of Georgia athletes had at least one individual meeting with a Georgia mental health and performance clinician in the 2021-2022 academic year, according to the school.

The tough times while wearing the red and black challenge and change them.

Even before she got to UGA, Merrell connected with a care team at the school to stay on top of her treatment and talked to then coach Jack Bauerle.

“I had regular phone calls with Jack and he was very supportive,” said Merrell, rated the nation’s No. 1 recruit for 2018 by SwimSwam.

Merrell never swam competitively for Georgia. She worked to build up her endurance in the pool her first semester, relapsed and was hospitalized for five weeks her second semester after having cardiac arrest.

She took a medical redshirt, but when she returned from treatment, she tore an ACL in the second semester of her sophomore year in 2020. She took a medical disqualification, ending her college career.

The energy demands of swimming were too much.

“I had to plan out my days basically by the hour to make sure I was consuming enough and that I wasn’t overtraining my body,” due to the heart complications.

Nearly 29 million Americans will have an eating disorder in their lifetime, according to the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders. More than a quarter attempt suicide.

“I never got to that point,” Merrell said. “Having an eating disorder is a daily, minute by minute, hour by hour process in my life and there are times where I feel super low and I get really upset that I have this part to my brain, that it’s just there. But I’ve never gotten to a point like that. Even in my lowest moments, I have a really good support system that I can lean on to help me get through it.”

That includes her family, her boyfriend and his family in Georgia, close friends and her UGA treatment team — a therapist, dietician, doctor, and psychiatrist.

Merrell now is a mental health advocate, working on the leadership team and overseeing social media for the “Hidden Opponent,” a nonprofit founded by former Southern Cal volleyball player Victoria Garrick. There are more than 800 athlete ambassadors including swimmer Abby McCullough, a campus captain at UGA.

“You have a lot of demands on your plate,” said Merrell, who will graduate in December with a degree in sport management and policy and then will pursue a master’s. “You’re a full-time student and a lot of these sports, practice and training and competition, it’s what you’re there for. You want to compete and play well. I think a lot of those demands that student-athletes have it can really wear on your mental health. Whether it turns into a diagnosable condition like an eating disorder or clinical anxiety or clinical depression or even if you just struggle with general mental health like you feel down, I think a lot of athletes feel those range of emotions at any given time.”

Merrell is one of many mental health stories of Georgia athletes past and present. Here are some of them:

Not ‘soft’ but finding balance 

Juwan Parker earned not one but two master’s degrees from UGA in sports management and family financial planning. He also endured not one but two torn Achilles’ while playing basketball for the Bulldogs from 2013-18.

“It’s a long injury and recovery process just playing through pain,” he said.

Parker had some rough spots. He said he turned to God and leaned on then coach Mark Fox who suggested he see a sports psychologist. Parker was hesitant, but then ended up going. He tried to keep it quiet, not even telling his girlfriend at the time.

He didn’t want anyone to consider him “soft,” or that he was “out of my mind.”

“Between God and the psychologist, I had plenty of people to talk to,” he said.

Parker said the psychologist had an office in Stegeman Coliseum. He saw her for up to eight months and then more sporadic when he felt the need.

“It really helped me process a lot of stuff,” Parker said. “Athletes, I think we tend to trend towards perfectionism. When things go wrong, we tend to blame ourselves, especially me. It just helped me to realize that some things are actually outside your control. She was a good sounding board to help me logically work through any issues I was having.”

William “Turtle” Jackson, a teammate who starred at Athens Christian, also turned to a sports psychologist his sophomore and junior years after having knee surgeries.

“It was just talking about life, everything going on in life,” he said before his UGA career ended. “Being in a new stage in life, just taking her advice and just learning how to learn from someone that does that for a living.”

Parker is now assistant varsity coach and head JV coach at Landmark Christian in Fairburn and an author of “The Guide: How to Win the Game of College,” on how to have success getting into college and then while there.

He tries to find balance in his life now through meditation, prayer, breathwork, yoga, working out, reflection and walking.

“It just helps me stay grounded and realize that things aren’t as all over the place as they seem,” he said. “Just have to take it one at a time.”

Sport wasn't refuge from life's curveballs 

Sara Mosley made clutch plays in big moments on the field for Georgia softball in her sophomore season. She drove in a run to force extra innings in a win over No. 1 Oklahoma and homered and scored the winning run in an NCAA regional final against No. 13 Duke in 2021.

Off the field, things were too much for her.

“I was going through a lot of stuff at home,” she said. “I was going through a hard breakup. I was doing all kind of stuff. It was the snowball effect. Once everything went wrong, it was always wrong.”

Her coach at the time, Lu Harris-Champer, brought her into the Georgia softball office.

“Tell me what’s going on,” Mosley remembered her saying. “I just lost it. …My home life made softball hard. So to me, softball was always my getaway and my go to and it was just something I could always get away from and softball wasn’t that for me anymore. That’s what made it really hard.”

Harris-Champer told the third baseman from Ellijay to reach out to Georgia athletics’ mental health team and Mosley got the help that she needed.

“I’ll be forever grateful for Coach Lu and the University of Georgia for helping me out,” Mosley said.

Tony Baldwin, an assistant under Harris-Champer who was promoted to head coach after the 2021 season, says he talks about maintaining perspective every day to his players.

That wins and losses aren’t everything. He wants them to find joy in the process.

“I feel like if you’re waiting for something to happen to talk about mental health, you’ve missed the boat,” he said.

'You’re supposed to be mentally strong’

Since he was 5 years old growing up on the east side of Atlanta in an area known as the Beltline, football was always a part of Amarlo Herrera’s life.

He played some soccer, too.

“Everything was always based around football and being able to play football,” he said

Herrera became a four-star inside linebacker at North Clayton High and a four-year starter for Georgia, leading the team with 115 tackles in 2014.

After the Colts drafted him the sixth round, Herrera spent two seasons in the NFL.

Then it ended.

“We all go through something,” Herrera said. “How athletes go through it is a lot different than a lot of other people. You go through it so quickly. Most people that play at a high level, they go through that transition quick. You’ve been on top of the world and then trying to figure out what you want to do in life. …You don’t know what your identity is because your identity is stripped away from you.”

Herrera tried out for WWE wrestling. He went back to UGA and graduated with a degree in sociology.

Then he got into financial planning.

The transition from elite athlete to life after football is tough.

“Everyone has a hard time,” he said. “You’re lying if you don’t have a hard time. …Who doesn’t want to have all the glory, all the game, all the money for something they put their heart into their whole life. Everyone deals with the struggle and everyone has that struggle dealing with it and a lot of people deal with it differently.”

Herrera wrote a book titled “Was it worth it?” looking at what athletes deal with mentally and physically when their careers are over.

He said when he was at Georgia there was pressure to play and be successful, do well in the classroom, make his family happy and keep a spot on the depth chart.

“You don’t know how much that weighs on people mentally because they are expected to play,” he said. “Staying mentally strong is definitely something that you have to do and everyone isn’t mentally strong and that’s why you get a lot of people leaving or transferring. They deal with their pain differently.”

Herrera was concerned he was going to lose his starting spot, but said he did not seek out any clinical help when he was struggling and considering leaving.

“I didn’t even know what the hell they offer, honestly”, he said. “You don’t think about that type of stuff.”

Herrera said he spoke to team chaplain Thomas Settles and used his faith and beliefs to get him through the rough patch.

“Growing up, everybody who plays football, plays sports, you’re supposed to be mentally strong,” he said. “You think that being mentally strong means holding onto your emotions and holding onto your feelings.”