Creating Trauma-Informed Settings for High School Sports, Activities

The COVID-19 pandemic was a form of collective trauma that shattered the basic fabric of society for everyone, including young people/adolescents. While the pandemic has been declared ‘over,’ it has a lasting hold on many individuals and communities across the country.

Dealing with the restrictions of the pandemic and possible loss of life to friends or loved ones has been a form of trauma. For many young people, this was their first experience with trauma, and so the lingering psychological, social, behavioral and physical health challenges were less familiar (Anda et al., 2006; Hirschberger, 2018). For others, feelings of anxiety and depression – along with somatic disturbances, emotional dysregulation and beyond – were all too familiar. For these individuals and communities, the pandemic had a compounding effect on their experiences of past or ongoing trauma.

This, most certainly, includes young people in the United States, with one-third of children under the age of 17 reporting at least one Adverse Childhood Experience (e.g., poverty, abuse, neglect, violence) before 2020 (HRSA, 2020). This pre-pandemic “baseline” on the prevalence of trauma for those under 18 years is likely much higher, given it only focused on individual trauma like abuse, neglect and violence. This overlooks other forms of trauma, which have a greater impact on communities of color, such as historical trauma and intergenerational trauma.

In this post-pandemic landscape, these rates of complex and developmental trauma are even higher (Anderson et al., 2022), with young people more likely to be experiencing toxic stress as a result (Harvard Center on the Developing Child, 2020).

The shared experience of the pandemic, coupled with the already high levels of trauma experienced by young people, make it fair to assume that students are showing up in high school sports and other activity program settings differently than before. This has to do with how their brains process stress. The experience of overwhelming stress (or trauma) can have an immediate and lasting impact on the brains, bodies and behavior of young people.

The stress response systems, which control our fight, flight, freeze, and fawn responses, become more sensitive to stress, which means that young people are likely to have disproportionately intense reactions to stress. They fight, flee, freeze and fawn in situations that would otherwise not elicit the same response. For example, being in the batter’s box during a high-stakes moment may have been manageable for an athlete before, but now the same athlete finds reactions hard to control.

The good news is that sport and physical activity, when intentionally delivered, can be a great environment for young people to recover from the changes caused by trauma. In fact, the combination of three things can make it one of the most powerful healing environments:

• Positive Relationships: Relational health is more predictive of outcomes for young people than the experience of adversity (Hambrick et al., 2018). Sport and physical activity should be full of positive relationships – with caring, predictable adults and supportive peers who help students feel safe (Whitley et al., 2018).

• Physical Activity: Patterned, repetitive, rhythmic activity regulates the stress response to minimize the disproportionate reactions that young people have to stress. The regulating power of movement helps counter the neurobiological response the brain has to stress and, over time, creates more manageable reactions (Barfield et al., 2011).

• Manageable Patterns of Stress: The opposite of overwhelming stress is not no stress, it is dosed stress. Stress that is controlled, moderate and predictable builds resilience, whereas stress that is prolonged, extreme or chaotic creates vulnerability (Perry & Winfrey, 2021). The challenge of learning or improving a skill should be that right dose of stress – the kind that challenges students to be better, but doesn’t overwhelm them. They build resilience every time they engage in these activities.

Given the high rates of trauma experienced by young people before the pandemic, combined with the various forms of trauma caused by the pandemic, adults should consider how to cultivate high school sport and activity settings that are trauma-informed. This not only makes sure students who have experienced trauma can benefit from these settings, but the changes below create a more inclusive, positive and developmental experience for all students. The adults in charge of the activities that the students are participating in should do these things to help improve their student’s chances of success:

• Create a Safe Space: Ensure that students feel safe. This has to be the first step, as growth and development cannot happen if students do not feel safe (Whitley et al., 2022). Once a safe environment is cultivated, focus on these next steps.

• Prioritize Positive Relational Moments: Create simple, yet intense, moments of connection (“therapeutic dosing”). This can change the brain, especially when these moments are regularly repeated. This means a nod of acknowledgment, a celebratory high-five, a brief conversation, or a team cheer can contribute to a student’s healing process (Perry & Szalavitz, 2007).

• Create Predictability: Be consistent so students know what to expect. This makes it less likely they will overreact to other stresses that arise in sport and activity. In other words, create a predictable bubble around the unpredictability of sport and activity. This can range from setting a consistent practice cadence and location and providing rituals to helping manage transitions and previewing what’s going to happen ahead of time. Ideally, make it a point to narrate any changes to the plan as they happen in real time (Bergholtz et al., 2016).

• Share Power: Give students decision-making power over some parts of their experiences. Also, ask for feedback and make changes based on it. This enhances feelings of autonomy and helps students build their capacity to act independently – within sport and in other settings (Ungar et al., 2007).

• Have fun. Seek out opportunities for students to have fun and laugh together! This decreases stress hormones and increases health-enhancing hormones (Yim, 2016).

• Be a Predictable, Safe Adult: How regulated adults are – or how well they can stay calm and predictable for the students – sets the emotional tone for the group. When the students know what to expect from the adults, students are more likely to let their guard down and show up as their whole selves (Perry & Winfrey, 2021)