The Wolf Weekly

Dear NRHS Community.

I hope this message finds you doing well. We are officially half way through the school year as today marks the beginning of 3rd quarter and second semester. Just before February Vacation, our freshman, sophomores and juniors will receive teacher recommendations for next year's courses and will meet with their counselors for course sign up. The updated Program of Studies will be available by the end of this week for reference.

Upcoming Events/Dates:

• Monday 1/29 - Junior College Night
• Wednesday 1/29 - Nashoba Sings! Performance at 6:30pm NRHS Auditorium
• Friday 1/31 - Quarter 2 grades due in Powerschool

Have a wonderful week!

Warm Regards,

Dr. Kate Boynton, principal

Recently, 5 Nashoba students participated in the CDMMEA Honor Ensembles Central District Concert at Mechanics Hall. The students prepared for and auditioned to be a part of the ensembles. Congratulations to: Senior Amalia Nagale (Choir), Senior Eleanor Stanton (Choir), Junior Theo Kramer (Choir), Senior Jack Fleury (Concert Band), Junior Sarah Giger (Concert Band). We would also like to congratulate Senior Peyton Mora Zuffante (Choir) and Sophomore Zoe Hubbard (Concert Band) who also earned spots in the ensembles.

This past Saturday, Eleanor and Peyton moved on to compete in the state level for the MMEA All-State ensembles.

Congratulations!

By Lexi Prybyla and Rachel Abrutyn

Why It’s Important

Mental health is a key component of an individual's well-being. People between the ages of 14-24 are the most impacted and need the most help but don’t get it. Being an athlete in high school comes with immense pressure, potentially leading to a bad mental state. According to the Jed Foundation, between 24% and 36% of athletes have claimed to feel “so depressed that it’s difficult to function.” To make matters worse, many people don’t like to discuss mental health: on average, a person struggles with mental illness for 11 years before reaching out. Less than half of teenage athletes feel comfortable contacting a professional or a guidance counselor at their school.

Our personal mental health struggles inspired us to raise awareness about mental health and athletics in the Nashoba community. We have both had negative experiences with stressful schedules, strict coaches, and performance pressure. When we realized that we had gone through similar issues, we knew that many other students in our district were likely going through the same things..

Our goal is to raise awareness of the struggles that even the seemingly strongest athletes face regarding their mental health. We want to reduce any negative stigma that surrounds this topic and create a school district that is open about mental health. We also want to provide resources to help people and their friends. We want to show that it is okay to talk about these things and that people are willing to help.

What We Are Doing

Last November, we hosted an all-school assembly to discuss mental health and ways to help yourself and your teammates. Jim Johnson from KyleCares is the first person we reached out to to come speak at our assembly. KyleCares was founded after Jim’s son Kyle Johnson, a seemingly happy and successful student-athlete, committed suicide. His mission is to show that student-athletes like Kyle may be struggling without anyone knowing and that there are ways to combat this. We also brought in Ashley Gustafson from Navigating Through Quicksand. She has been working with Nashoba Athletics for several years on team bonding exercises, so we brought her in to discuss her story. Her organization was created after she recovered from teen addiction all alone; so her goal is to prevent other athletes from struggling alone and to create teams that support each other. These stories strongly resonated with us and matched our goals, so we were able to create a fulfilling presentation with statistics and resources.

We created presentations and posters to present our ideas and experiences to 8th graders at FSS and HMS and high school business classes. Creating these presentations has allowed us to reach even more people and further drive home our goal. We want to make people feel more comfortable discussing these things and therefore, the more we present, the more we get the conversation going. We also run an Instagram account @nashobamentalhealth to share inspirational statistics and uplifting ideas. If you would like to learn more, you can listen to our appearance on the Great Road podcast here. We were lucky enough to join Jed Stefanowicz and Natasha Dirsa to discuss our DECA project, goals, and next steps.

We have successfully reached out to, and helped, a large number of people and we plan on continuing our mission to reach as many people as we can. We have had great student and teacher feedback stating how our project has been impactful and helpful to them which just further motivates us to keep working and continuing to help others.

What Others Are Doing

We are not the first to speak out about mental health in athletics. We talked to other seniors at Nashoba Regional to see what else has been done surrounding this topic.

Ava Wyman has consistently advocated for mental health awareness throughout her time at Nashoba. “I’ve struggled with my mental health since sophomore year, and a lot of it stems from my experiences in athletics,” Ava told us. “I was part of a team with a really unhealthy culture. A coach who picked favorites, unfair playing time, cliques, and mean teammates made it an incredibly hard environment to be in.” Despite her struggle to give up the sport that she has loved her whole life, she managed to find a safer space for herself within the community - the wrestling team. With welcoming players, new coaches, and a supportive group, it was much healthier for her: “That kind of environment has been so important for my mental health—it reminds me of how impactful a positive and inclusive team culture can be.”

Ava spoke up and shared her journey on the Hope for Athletes Instagram account, which is breaking the stigma of mental health through storytelling. She is also an ambassador for Morgan’s Message and works with them and the boys’ lacrosse team to raise awareness. “Mental health awareness is so important because I know what it feels like to feel invisible or stuck in an environment where mental health isn’t taken seriously,” Ava shared. I don’t want anyone else to feel the way I did—to feel like they have no one to talk to or that their struggles don’t matter.”

Graham Hart and Brennan Kelleher have also been working to break the stigma by creating an Active Minds chapter at our school. Active Minds is a nonprofit organization that gives young people across the country a voice to reduce the stigma surrounding mental health. “We understand how stressful balancing school work and athletic or extracurricular activities can be, and an Active Minds chapter provides students with a place to talk about all they are experiencing and feeling,” said Graham. The boys are also planning a Mental Health Awareness lacrosse game with custom kelly-green jerseys. “Mental health became an important topic to me once I realized its severity and prevalence in our community. I've seen friends, classmates and even family members struggle with mental health so it was important to me to attempt and destigmatize the topic, encouraging difficult but helpful and healing conversations around the topic.” Nashoba’s Active Minds chapter had their first meeting on January 30th, and you can find more information on their Instagram @nashoba_activeminds.

Overall, Nashoba students have demonstrated that discussing mental health in an athletic environment is essential. Together, we feel more connected to the other athletes in our school district after opening the floor to being vulnerable. Having that new level of compassion and understanding allows us to connect more with the people around us. Jim Johnson shared an impactful story with us that fits our goals perfectly: A young girl was walking along a beach upon which thousands of starfish had been washed up during a terrible storm. When she came to each starfish, she would pick it up, and throw it back into the ocean. She had been doing this for some time when a man approached her and said, “Little girl, why are you doing this? Look at this beach! You can’t save all these starfish.” The girl bent down, picked up another starfish, and hurled it as far as she could into the ocean. Then she looked up at the man and replied, “Well, I made a difference for that one!” We want to continue to be like this little girl, helping as many people as we can. We learned that we truly can make a difference in other people’s lives, whether it is one classmate or a whole generation of Nashoba students.

https://arbiterlive.com/School/Calendar/15599

Email: kboynton@nrsd.net
Website: https://nrhs.nrsd.net/
Location: 12 Green Rd, Bolton, MA 01740
Phone: (978) 779-2257