Head Coach of the UNI Men’s Basketball Team
Photo taken by UNI Athletics
Coach Jacobson has been coaching the UNI Men’s Basketball program for the last 18 years. This week, I got the opportunity to sit down with him and hear his take on athlete mental health at the collegiate level.
There has never been a time that Coach Jacobson hasn’t been around basketball. Starting at just 3 years old, he began his journey with basketball. Now, he coaches at the Division 1 level for college basketball at the University of Northern Iowa.
Jacobson explains that he feels, “really lucky, really fortunate,” to be where he is today. His collegiate career started at the University of North Dakota, where he played for 4 years and then proceeded to get his first coaching job in collegiate basketball at UND. Back when he was a player himself, he recognizes that the term “athlete mental health” was not as heard of as it is today.
With any young person, there are struggles that arise. One that sticks out to Coach Jacobson is social media. “With the impact of social media, that’s an area that is challenging for young people. Whether that’s in athletics or outside of athletics.” We all want our teams to win, and players themselves always want to win, but it is important to keep in mind that they are human just like the rest of us.
“In a lot of ways it’s certainly more comfortable, more natural to keep that to yourself,” Jacobson says when talking about the mental struggles of athletes.
College students in general have many struggles that they face, but the typical student doesn’t usually have their lives put on display. Being a student athlete, especially one at the D1 level, it can be especially challenging to talk about your mental health when everything you do is in the public eye. To the public, you are just a player, and they don’t always care about what struggles you may be going through. But again, those athletes are just like any other 20-something year old, and go through the same struggles.
Basketball is just a sport. “It’s what they do, not who they are,” Coach Jacobson says.
As the conversation around athlete mental health continues to increase, Jacobson hopes to see more resources for student athletes on campus, to help them feel more comfortable talking about their mental health.
To hear more about athlete mental health, head to these articles:
One thought on “A Coaches Perspective”