TAMPA, Fla. — Confetti. Cutting down the nets. March Madness glory.
All the rewards a college basketball player and her teammates dream of are within reach at the 2025 women’s Final Four. So, on the biggest of stages, several of the game’s biggest stars reflected on their mental health journey and how they handle the pressure of the moment.
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Lauren Betts, a center for No. 1 overall seed UCLA, took time away from the team last season to seek mental health treatment, and she continues to be open and honest about her mental health journey.
“I just don’t feel like I have to really hide this anymore,” Betts said on Thursday.
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Not 50 paces from the microphone Betts sat behind, South Carolina’s Chloe Kitts shared a similar sentiment.
“I feel like it’s OK to talk about,” said Kitts, who noted it took some maturing to realize seeking help is what she needed. “I mean, I’m just now talking about it because I’m just now taking care of myself.”
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Prior to the Gamecocks’ Elite Eight contest, Kitts shared with ESPN how she uses a coloring book and her headphones – without music – to calm her nerves in the moments before game time. Kitts, with the help of her therapist, tried many strategies to ease her pregame anxiety before landing on her this routine.
“The breathing techniques didn’t really help for me,” Kitts said. “But I feel like my therapist just let me find something that was best for me and I haven’t looked back since.”
Texas guard Rori Harmon spoke earnestly on the subject as well, highlighting that mental health doesn’t have a one-size-fits-all solution.
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“Some people, it’s hard for them to talk to therapists, so they just talk to their friends,” Harmon said. “Or some people need to talk to someone who actually has a solution to their problems.”
Harmon’s reflections around mental health followed a season-ending ACL injury last season. She called the injury and recovery process the hardest thing she’d experienced in her life thus far.
“I am a D-I athlete, and I can get through anything physical because that’s something that we do every day,” Harmon said. “But as far as, like, taking a mental toll, that’s not something that we’re always used to.”
With stressors coming from the game itself as well as the new attention the sport has garnered, UConn players Paige Bueckers and Sarah Strong recommend deleting social media apps. Alternatively, South Carolina players Sania Feagin and Raven Johnson find positives in being on social media.
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“I think some of us, we need TikTok,” Johnson said. “If you eat, sleep, breathe basketball, you’re honestly going to be depressed and stressed about it. I think it helps us, gives us a little laughter, makes us enjoy things other than basketball.”
A common thread between most players is the need to find some sort of outlet beyond the sport they love. For Kitts, it is coloring books. For Feagin, it’s building Lego sets or painting.
“I think people forget that basketball isn’t like who we are,” Harmon added. “It’s just something that we do … something that we take pride in, we love doing, but we’re humans, too.”
On the other hand, UConn’s Kaitlyn Chen, a graduate transfer from Princeton, pointed to the game of basketball as her outlet from the anxiety-causing parts of regular life.
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“Basketball has played a big part in being sort of a stress reliever for me,” Chen said. “Because it’s a break from school and a break from every other daily stressor, and it’s just something that I still find to bring me a lot of joy and something that’s really fun for me.”
The strategies players use to take care of their mental health differ, but all of the players were in agreement about the importance of a support system.
“For every 500 people that love you, there’s going to be five that hate you,” Bueckers said. “So it’s just focusing on the people that are important.”
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Makenzy Wolford is a student in the University of Georgia’s Sports Media Certificate program.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Women’s Final Four stars open up on taking care of their mental health
