Professional sport can be a dream with its perks, profile and getting paid for your passion. But when it ends – sometimes suddenly due to injury or non-selection – it can be challenging for athletes to adjust, and mental health can suffer. Seven Sharp’s Rachel Parkin discovers a new course run by retired athletes that is helping retiring athletes embrace life after sport.
It was Sunday morning; early doors and the puffing was intense.
“Only 800 to go!” wellbeing expert Kim Tay called to her team. Her cheeks flushed pink like her workout top, and a smile somehow just as bright.
Tay and team “Prime” were part-way through a HIT session, battling it out against team “Transformers” on dewy grass out the back of Christchurch’s Hagley Oval.
Among the ranks, a former Black Cap, a World Cup-winning Black Fern, two ex-Super Rugby players, two retired Black Sticks and more.
This wasn’t a sweat session for a big event, though — it was about wellbeing and keeping life after elite sport just as golden.
“We're pretty low on mountain climbers; should be able to pump those out,” retired Crusader Ged Robinson urged his team with a grin.
“Phwoah!” came the grunted response, peppered by laughter.
Robinson, retired cricketer Todd Astle, and Tay have been working toward delivering their first ‘athlete transition course’ for the past year. The course is an extension of the work Astle, Astle’s brother Ryan and Robinson do through their charity, BetterMan.
“Rather than an ambulance at the bottom of the cliff, we're trying to be that fence at the top… which is helping people and asking, ‘when you're at your best, what does it look like?” Astle told me.
“And using framework around positive relationships and meaning and purpose because they are your gold and help you be at your best and flourish in the future.”
What that means is helping athletes learn to fly before they fall.
Unfortunately, too many find changing gears to life after pro sport too much — the sudden lack of structure and support that sport provides impacts mental health and relationships.
“Sport gives you an unbelievably high wellbeing framework, but you're taught it's a high-performance framework,” Robinson explained as we sat in the stand of the Hagley Oval Pavilion.
“None of us has this lens that ‘this is actually really good for my wellbeing’, or how I flourish, it’s ‘this will make you win games’.”
“Ah,” I said as the penny dropped. Of course.
Wellbeing for the win
“So, part of me doing this is saying, ‘Hey guys, let's lift the lid on this. Those team bonding sessions when you go out for dinner, and you have coffees with each other, and you play those mini team games, and you’re having a laugh, that's high wellbeing’.”
And as the teams broke into pairs for a full-body paper, scissors, rock hit-out, it was wellbeing for the win and endorphins through the roof.
“Yes, Kendra!!” urged retired Black Stick Nick Haig, as former Black Fern Kendra Cocksedge psyched up to take on Canterbury Rugby’s player development manager, Jonelle Quane.
The applause when Quane took the title of Team Prime was just as raucous.
This course is about giving sporty souls a new team and a positive psychology toolkit.
“It was great hearing about your heroes, highlights and hardships. What was the common theme?” asked Tay once everybody was back inside. “It was people. Wasn't it? Those connections with people.”
Tears formed (mine included) as each person shared a hardship – like they’d known each other for years.
David Wakefield’s hardship was hard to beat.
For 26 minutes, the Christchurch cricketer turned solicitor was unresponsive after suffering cardiac arrest during training.
“And it took six defibrillator shots for me to be responsive again, so then they put me straight into an induced coma, and I was in a coma for three days.”
Years later – after learning to read and write again – Wakefield still has a battery and high voltage cable in his chest, keeping tabs on his heart.
The most extreme end to sport imaginable, but there Wakefield was, baring his soul, reinforcing that we all face challenges.
“So obviously health [challenges] was hard, but also coming to terms with having built me up to [almost reach] pro cricket… and I just couldn’t do that anymore.”
Even those who retired on their terms, with a plan, say they missed the friendship and structure.
For so long, sport had been their "why".
“We're all in a waka, and we're all on a journey in life. But if we don’t have a rudder, where are we going? Robinson said. “This is the big problem when athletes don’t have a rudder anymore.”
The hope is that this course would provide that rudder and that teams formed would keep in touch.
"To have that support moving forward is the real gold for us," said Astle. "And we're hoping once they finish, they can continue with those check-ins. It might be an email nudge or a phone call."
And there is an end goal.
"The goal is to make it sustainable,” Astle explained as teams Prime and Transformers crafted away behind him on vision boards.
“To be able to run these two or three times a year in the north and south around pinnacle events, like we’ve got the Olympics coming up.
“And knowing that whilst this is for athletes, it can be for anyone.”
After all, we all face change sometime in our lives.
We all need a toolkit. We all thrive on connection.
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