NORFOLK, Va. (WAVY) — It is Mental Health Awareness Month, and the Virginia Sports Hall of Fame created a free event geared toward the mental health of student-athletes, their parents, coaches, and officials. The event is called “A Youth Sports Forum – Developing the Youth Athlete, A Team Approach.” It’s all part of the Youth Sports Mental Health and Wellness Alliance created by the Hall of Fame in 2022 in partnership with Children’s Hospital of the King’s Daughters.

The forum is scheduled for May 20th in Norfolk, but people from throughout the Commonwealth are welcome to attend. It’s focused on creating a more positive atmosphere in sports programs.

“The event is kind of two pronged,” said Will Driscoll, Executive Director of the Virginia Sports Hall of Fame. “We’re going to have a panel discussion that features a youth athlete, a parent of an athlete, a coach, a former professional athlete, and an official. The panel discussion is going to kick off the event, and what that’s really going to do is it’s going to highlight how mental health has become a normal conversation in all facets of sports, among all of these stakeholders. After the panel, we have two separate breakout sessions, one for youth athletes really targeting middle and high school athletes and one for parents and coaches that will actually be led by a representative from the Positive Coaching Alliance. What we’ve found throughout this whole process is we obviously want to provide support for youth athletes. We want to make sure that they’re having positive experiences through sports, but it’s the adults in the room who also need to understand how they can do that. That’s the parents. That’s the coaches, because the message flows down from the adults. So, through the panel, you’re going to learn about mental health in sports, you’re going to learn how to recognize and react, but through the breakout sessions, it’s going to be a much more targeted approach.”

Driscoll says the mental health of young athletes is paramount to their future success and well-being.

“The Hall of Fame honors the best of the best. We are the official Hall of Fame for the Commonwealth of Virginia, and we have 360 plus great athletes, coaches, and contributors in our Hall, but we also know that they all started somewhere. You have to really promote the benefits and values of sports participation, and you have to make sure that kids want to continue to play. So, creating community initiatives like the Youth Sports, Mental Health, and Wellness Alliance, like our scholarship program, it energizes the kids, and it shows that whether or not you make a dollar playing sports, either through scholarship or through professional athletics, the values that you get from positive sports experiences can last a lifetime, and that’s something that I think gets lost a lot in the conversation about sports, especially youth sports these days, which is very revenue driven and not so much developmental driven. We want to get back to the developmental component of youth sports, and creating that positive atmosphere, especially around health and wellness, is paramount in doing that,” said Driscoll.

He said getting adults in the room like coaches, parents, and league organizers is paramount to creating future success in youth sports.

“You start to bring all of these stakeholders together, and you you start to understand, okay, what are we missing? It’s officials. A lot of games are being canceled because you can’t find an official or a referee to do it because they’re being driven away because of some of the toxicity around youth sports. So, we brought the officials to the table, and they’re talking about this at the youth level, at the collegiate level, at the professional level. So, it’s just really important that we get all of these stakeholder groups in the room together, in this alliance at this particular event, because it provides perspective that somebody might not have understood before. So, if you’re that parent who wants your kid to succeed, you might think a second time about maybe offering up some opinions about the referee or the umpire at your next children’s game.”

Driscoll says they goal of the forum is to increase the conversation, but decreaswe the stigma around sports and mental health.

“The best part about these Youth Sports, Mental Health and Wellness Alliance events is that this is a community event, and we understand that it’s still a difficult discussion to have. It’s a difficult approach to bring people to the table. So, that’s why we offer these events for free. We’re very fortunate that we have great supporters who allow us to do that. So, please bring your team, bring your athletes, bring your coaches, bring the league administrators, but the event is free, and we really think it’ll be impactful and hopefully propel us to even more of these events and workshops in the future,” said Driscoll.

The upcoming forum will feature former professional sports players, coaches and current student athletes. This includes Demetrius “Pete” Allen, a former NFL player.

“I keep talking about stakeholders, and I keep talking about the different groups that are involved and seeing the alliance grow from its birth in 2022 to 2 years later, now 2024, and having this first event kind of be our kickoff as part of Mental Health Awareness Month is really important. So, having a student athlete, having a parent, having a coach, having an official is is really the thing that makes us most proud at the alliance to see how this is grown, But the most important thing about this is while May is Mental Health Awareness Month, the conversation should not be confined to May. We have to talk about this issue 365 days a year, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. We need to make it comfortable for people to talk about mental health, whether it’s their own or whether it’s somebody that they work with, and that’s the most important thing,” said Driscoll.

Developing the Youth Athlete – A Team Approach is scheduled to take place on Monday, May 20 from 5:45 p.m. to 8 p.m. at the Chartway Arena.

The event is free to attend, and food and refreshments will be provided from 5:45 p.m. to 6:15 p.m. To register for the event, click here.