Apr 19, 2020 4 min read

These are difficult times.

The country has taken a gut punch from the coronavirus and many places are under stay-at-home directives.

The death count rises every day as does the number of infected individuals.

It’s enough to drive someone crazy.

To help make sure that doesn’t happen, California University has been offering an online graduate certification program that deals with those issues.

It’s called the Sports Counseling and Student Mental Wellness Program and its thrust is to help student-athletes who are dealing with the repercussions of upheaval in their lives, such as a pandemic.

“A lot of our students who are in our clinical mental health counseling program or our school counseling program will take the certificate,” said Robert Mehalik, assistant professor in the department of education. “We also have a high proportion that comes from outside the university who are interested in the certificate alone and are interested in working with that population.”

The program was established for nearly a decade and is a 12-credit certificate and a course was recently added in student-athlete mental wellness.

“That was in response to a big push by the NCAA, where one of their major initiatives is mental wellness,” said Mehalik. “They came out with their best practices that had different checklists for different divisions that needed to be followed by different institutions as far as mental health and mental wellness are concerned. So I felt it was a needed addition to that program.”

Bill Hughes is a counselor in Trinity Area School District working at Trinity North and Trinity South elementary schools after working as a counselor at Intermediate Unit 1. A Trinity grad, he did his undergrad and postgraduate work at California University. He took the course in summer 2012.

“It was something I wanted to do because I am so passionate about sports,” said Hughes, who moonlights as a newspaper correspondent. “Sports is right up my alley so I thought I have to do this.”

Hughes said he has been able to use what he learned in many different ways.

“When I was in grad school, I was the varsity assistant boys basketball coach at Belle Vernon High School, and then at Geibel,” said the 43-year-old Hughes. “I was able to use many things I learned in the Sports Counseling program to help my student-athletes. Even now, when I’m doing feature stories, I have that sports counseling perspective. When a student-athlete asks me a question, I might take it to a different direction based on what I learned in the program.”

One example Hughes gave was dealing with an athlete whose college aspirations were ended when he suffered a severe injury.

“Mentally, it helped him prepare for life without athletics, and he did well,” Hughes said. “He is graduated and is on his way to becoming successful at a young age.”

Even though the classes are empty because of the governor’s shutdown order, Hughes still has the same responsibilities but under more trying circumstances.

“Understanding that every situation is unique, going through the program at Cal helped prepare me to work with these kids at these times,” he said.

Mehalik said one of the biggest issues to deal with now is the cancellation of seasons.

“There is this idea of a student-athlete that it’s very much a part of their identity, who they are,” he said. “So when you are canceling entire seasons, there is a sense of loss there. I think there are a lot of student-athletes who are experiencing a lot of grief with this pandemic. That affects them at their core.”

Mehalik said people who work closely with athletes and coaches and professional counselors who have an interest in athletics are likely to pursue this certificate.

“This certificate can be used if folks need credits to become license-eligible professional counselors,” Mehalik said. “Some students come back to work on the credit amount so they can work on their becoming a professional counselor.”

Hughes said other counselors reach out to him on a confidential level for assistance with student-athlete concerns.

“We’re there to listen to them and help them help themselves,” Hughes said.