After a long three-hour practice, Ana Gigitashvili would speed straight home and immediately start working on schoolwork that was piling up.
By the time she finished homework, studied for her tests, and prepared for the next school day, it was often past midnight. The routine of her going to school in the morning, practicing in the afternoon, and working on assignments late at night, repeated itself nearly everyday.
For Gigitashvili, balancing athletics and academics became more than just a packed schedule, it became mentally exhausting.
Even during stressful moments, Gigitashvili rarely spoke openly about how overwhelmed she felt. Shes never felt comfortable being that vulnerable but recently, has made a change to try and improve it.
“Personally, I don’t feel very comfortable talking about stress and burnout. I’ll usually just sit in my room alone and cry and get over it,” Gigitashvili said, “Recently I’ve been a lot more exposed to talk about mental health recently and I think it has been beneficial because it lets me know that it’s normal and okay.”
For most student-athletes, feeling overwhelmed is very common. They feel that they can’t talk about it because they feel the pressure to appear strong. With all of that built up stress, it’s important to feel like you have someone to go to.
Luckily, for most students, they have their coaches that they can turn. For Gigitashvili, she was able to feel at ease during her tennis season.
“As for tennis, our health is always the number 1 priority, so I feel a lot more at ease during tennis season,” Gigitashvili said.
While having coaches who put your mental health first helps her feel better, her parents are play a major role in helping her feel better. She feels that having her parents support helps her so she stays as mentally healthy as she can.
“My parents always help reduce my stress because they understand that I’m trying and they’ll let me do what I need to do to stay mentally healthy,” Gigitashvili said.
Even though she has a support system consisting of friends, family, and coaches it doesn’t mean that it completely eliminates the stressful days. She still has days where she feels more overwhelmed than others.
She may not have the best habits but is trying her best to do whatever she can to break them.
“After a stressful day, I usually go doom-scroll on tik tok for a couple hours. It’s a bad habit and I do want to try to break it, but it really distracts me from what has been happening,” Gigitashvili said.
Shes also been aware that having good mental health helps her in school, but she more so realized it hands on last year. She was starting to feel more and more stress each day due to wanting to perform well in both class and sports.
Shes become aware of the fact that her staying balanced helps retrain her brain into feeling more relaxed and less stressed.
“For every student it’s different for staying balanced, but for me that means I spend at least some part of the day being productive, being social, and relaxing. If I have all three of those things in one day it’s a good one,” Gigitashvili said.
Through all of her stress and mental struggles, Gigitashvili has still found ways to be more and more like herself each day.
Mental health struggles in high school are tough. You constantly feel like something’s wrong with you because you don’t seem as happy as everyone. You start getting angry at the smallest things due to stress constantly building.
Gigitashvili struggled to get into the right mindset but once she convinced herself it’s okay to not be perfect, her mental health started becoming better. She has advice for those who are feeling the same as her and wants everyone to remember they’re not alone.
“Once I realized that it’s ok to miss one or two assignments, to not perform my absolute best at every single game and practice, the load was a lot lighter,” Gigitashvili said, “you just have to make it to that realization. Once you’re able to let go of perfection in every field life becomes a lot more enjoyable.”
