Project 3 - Rodriguez, Bibianna

PBR Rodriguez wants to discuss the importance of athletes' mental health on a podcast. They believe that the mental side of the game is often overlooked and that athletes face constant criticism and pressure. They emphasize the need for young athletes to have fun and not define themselves solely by their performance. PBR Rodriguez shares their own experiences with performance anxiety and wants to teach younger generations about teamwork and self-confidence. They believe it is important to bring awareness to these issues. Hi, my name is PBR Rodriguez and I want to come on this podcast and talk about the importance of athletes' mental health. I think this is something that I've always struggled with and seen a lot of people struggle with just through my connection through sports. So I've been playing sports, a variety of different sports, since I was three years old and I think it's really important to just talk about how important it is just as an athlete, more the mental side of the game. I think a lot of the times the mental side of the game is really overlooked because of the performance aspect, you see a lot of big time athletes that really just are criticized over and over and over again on social media and by the critics, their fans and everything of the above and I think that's something that is really important to talk about, especially the highest level. Growing up I think it was really hard to stay focused and kind of just have fun at the end of the day playing youth sports and I think that's really hard for a lot of kids to understand that sports is ultimately to have fun and there's things that you need to get done and everything like that but it is hard to just really talk about the mental side of the game, especially with youth sports. You see a lot of kids get younger and younger as they progress through sport and put more pressure on themselves. You see a lot of rankings coming out in youth sports, whether it's travel ball, club ball, anything like that. You see national rankings, state rankings, you have ages young as six, which is insane and I think that pressure within itself really, really puts the pressure on athletes and I think being a Division 1 athlete myself who has been in a place such as, you know, I've been at the Power 5 level and now play softball at the ball and I think it's really important to talk about just the mental side of the game and I think it's something that is not talked about enough, especially at this level. I mean, I've had my own experiences with performance anxiety and things like that and I think it's really important to just talk about and bring awareness to how important it is to really just start younger and have a lot more kids have fun and just bring out the best in sports and learn different life skills such as like teamwork and confidence and just not defining your performance as an athlete on who you are as a person and I think I've fallen a lot into that and that's something that I've wanted to teach other generations of athletes and to kids all around is that you are not defined by the person that you are on the field and you are defined more by the character and how you treat your teammates and everything above so I just wanted to talk about that and I think it's really important to bring awareness to that and that's really all I got. Thank you.