Rhiannon Eldridge

`Professor Arini

English 102

February 5, 2021

Motivational speakers
 Racheal Flatt and Victoria Garrick have very similar stories of mental health problems

they’ve encountered while in sports, the time they’ve experienced, and when they’ve noticed

that it’s affected them. Racheal Flatt is an only child, born July 21, 1992, in California. She

currently resides in North Carolina. She began figure skating at the age of 4, and by the age of

13, she started her 4-year plan of goals. Since she has won the 2008 junior championships, she

has won 4 silver on the Grand Pix series, and the 2010 U.S. National Championship. Racheal

Flatt talks about her personal experiences and insecurities she had gained at such a young age

because of stereotypes of how a woman athlete’s body is expected to be. Victoria Garrick is the

youngest of 3, born April 30, 1997, in Chicago. She began playing volleyball with the Red Rock

Volleyball Club In Redwood City, California, for 5 years. The next 4 years of high school she

played for Sacred Heart Preparatory in Atherton, California. After high school, she continued her

volleyball career as a walk-on with the Division 1 USC volleyball

team. Victoria Garrick talks about her personal experiences and

difficulties learning to adjust to college as a student-athlete of

finding time in her schedule to do homework and getting enough

sleep before morning practices. She also talks about the mental

health issues that college students begin to obtain due to stress

and anxiety.

In Rachael Flatt’s ted talk, “Changing The Culture of

Mental Health in Sports”, she has an audience of teens and

young adults, she walks in a very subtle manner, and talks very calmly but with confidence, and

seems a little anxious. She shows a picture of her 4-year plan of goals she had written at the

age of 13, to prove that she had big goals she wanted to accomplish (logos). She continues her

talk, and 4 years later she competes in the Olympics, and had given an amazing performance,

but minutes later she had received her marks, she was devastated. She felt as if she was on top

of the world and that the years of training, suffering, and sacrifices were done for. She continues
talking about athletes who take a step back from their sports and get into a faze that life is “all

downhill” from there, that they believed that their life has peeked already at such a young age,

that they fall into depression. Making transitions of stepping down from a sport, to completely

stopping, or from high school to college, or moving to a new town and adapting to new things,

even the environment plays big roles in mental health disorders. Rachael Flatt uses pathos and

talks about her own experiences which then explains her exigency. Her skating environment

wasn’t the best. She didn’t have the typical expected body type that professional figure skaters

had, such as being thin, curvey, and toned. Although she has won many medals and awards

she still continued to be bodies shamed by the audience and even coaches would tell her “If

she’d get through her programs if she’d drop 10 pounds, and her flow would improve.” She

explains that these comments could’ve easily turned her to an eating disorder or a mental health

disorder. But she had such a strong support system and worked against her odds. She

continues, This is her moment of exigency, she talks with confidence and an urge to express

“That about half of the people in the audience are estimated to develop a mental health disorder

during their lifetime, and so when you need the help, you might not be able to access that

person, on top of that it’s costly, and in rural areas, you don’t have a mental health care

provider. On top of that as a student-athlete, many times one mental health care provider for

many of them, and they’re traveling, or they’re too busy.” “we know that mental health impacts

mental and physical performance, now that we know that, yet nothing is being done, it’s time we

change that.”

In Victoria Garrick’s ted talk, Athletes and Mental Health: The Hidden Opponent, she has

an audience of young adults or student-athletes. She walks and speaks in a very confident

manner. She begins her talk with a very great example of what it’s like being a student-athlete.

She talks as if she was the voice inside your head. She goes over statistic based studies, that

one in four people suffer from a mental health disorder. She uses pathos and explains her

personal experience of struggling with mental health disorders as an athlete. She wasn’t a top
recruit, but a walk-on for USC volleyball. She got her spot and her freshman season she started

and played every pack 12 match, and they won the championship. At first, she was happy,

exhilarated, but after a while, she began to be anxious. She was more cautious than ever, she

had 5 alarms just so she wouldn’t miss practices, but she didn’t need them because anxiety

woke her up an hour before. She worried too much, she was afraid to play or make a mistake.

She couldn’t handle everything piling up such as classes, 5-hour practices, finding time to eat,

office hours, finding time to study for exams, and 6 a.m. morning practice, also Sunday and

Saturday for out of states games. She continues to explain her experience, she had battled

depression for half a year and she didn’t even realize it, she described it as not having energy,

for practices, she despised the day, drained, and exhausted. She was confused, she couldn’t

describe it, she wanted it all to stop, she wanted a break. She explains that our culture has

created astigmatism for mental health. In her moment of exigency, she explains that she wanted

it to stop, but volleyball wasn’t just a sport or a hobby, it’s who she was. She continues by

saying “The culture of athletics is toxic, whether you don’t puke, faint, or die, keep going”. Such

as mental illnesses are portrayed as a weakness. Mental health is brushed off, a physical injury

is treated more seriously than a psychological injury, change needs to happen, as an athlete

you’re looked down upon because you missed a practice or you don’t want it enough as the

others.

Rachael Flatt and Victoria Garrick are both very confident women to come out about

their own personal experiences. They fill their ted talks with pathos, their tones, and word

choices are very confident and calm but yet straight forwards. They explain mental health issues

as if it were the audience’s own experiences. It’s very clear that they both want and expect a

change to happen within society and stop portraying mental health as a weakness but as a way

of being strong and putting themselves first.

Work cited

Victoria Garricks

● Garrick, Victoria. “Athlete and Mental Health: The Hidden Opponent | Victoria Garrick |

TEDxUSC.”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sdk7pLpbIls, 2 June 2017.

● Athletics, Trojans. USC Athletics, 2018, usctrojans.com/sports/womens-

volleyball/roster/victoria-garrick/8539. https://usctrojans.com/sports/womens-
volleyball/roster/victoria-garrick/8539
 ● Garrick, Victoria. “Real Pod.” Victoria Garrick, www.victoriagarrick.com/real-pod-project.

https://www.victoriagarrick.com/real-pod-project

Rachael Flatts sources

● Flatt, Racheal. “Changing the Culture of Mental Health in Sports.” Changing the Culture

of Mental Health in Sports , 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7lumbNhZeM

● Flatt, Racheal. Twitter, 2020, twitter.com/DaemonColl. https://twitter.com/RachaelFlatt?

ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor

● “Where Are They Now: Catching up with Former Olympic Figure Skater Rachael Flatt.”

Medill Reports Chicago, 29 June 2020, news.medill.northwestern.edu/chicago/where-

are-they-now-catching-up-with-former-olympic-figure-skater-rachael-flatt/.

https://news.medill.northwestern.edu/chicago/where-are-they-now-catching-up-with-

former-olympic-figure-skater-rachael-flatt/