In Fall 2022, Jack Lucido was a rookie football player at Wesleyan, adjusting to the new demands of college athletics while keeping up with academics and starting a new life away from the familiarity and comfort of home.
Wesleyan was RADical Hope’s first athletic partner starting in 2021. Since then, Wesleyan has delivered RADical Health programming to all of its first-year student-athletes for six consecutive years. Through the program RADical Health, the entire student-athlete freshman class gain support in recognizing their individual principles and priorities, and tools to aid stress management, resilience, emotional intelligence and connection.
Fresh off a move from his home state of Massachusetts, Jack hoped to find a community of support in his first few weeks on campus. Even though he built bonds with his teammates, Jack still felt something was missing.
Like every other rookie athlete that fall, Jack began attending RADical Health sessions led by upperclassmen peers. Jack recalled that during the four weeks of programming, his two peer Guides created a safe space for him and his fellow freshmen to navigate their new environment, stressors, and values. The connection he’d longed for clicked into place.
“[We had] conversations about things like self-care and stress management. Important topics like that helped me, as a student-athlete, succeed in college. It really sparked my interest in the RADical Health program, and I was able to develop a strong relationship with the mentors that I had,” Jack recalled.
As Jack continued his academic and athletic career, his time in the RADical Health program and the connections he built helped him better understand why mental health mattered, especially as a student-athlete.
“Mental health is just as important as physical health. A lot of this program focuses on taking care of yourself.”
While certain weeks of RADical Health ask its participants to look internally at their most valued principles and priorities and stress management tactics, other weeks focus on peer-to-peer connection. For Jack, the lessons and tools he learned over the four weeks really took hold because of the support system and connections he made with his fellow student-athletes.
“When I was younger, sometimes I might have been a little nervous or afraid to reach out to someone if I did need support,” Jack said. “But through this program, I felt that I gained a lot of valuable skills in really leaning on your support network. I was able to really understand the importance of having people that you can rely on.”
The sense of community Jack developed during RADical Health opened his eyes not only to his own mental health, but created an awareness of the mental health of others.
“It’s obvious how valuable and important it is for people, in general to care about mental health, but athletes specifically, to be really cognizant of it. Not just their own, but also other people’s mental health. It’s an essential aspect of holistic wellbeing.”
Jack built his Wesleyan experience around football, psychology and service. He continued to show up for others even after the RADical Health program was complete. As a psychology major, he found passion in focusing on elements of confidence, self-efficacy and team culture. He expanded beyond his own team and became Wesleyan’s SAAC (Student-Athlete Advisory Committee) President, advocating for student-athlete well-being connection and trust. He focused on his newfound community as a Team IMPACT fellow, helping build meaningful relationships between Wesleyan Athletics and children facing serious illness.
When his senior year approached, he found himself in a full-circle moment, wanting to make the same impact on incoming student-athletes that his RADical Health Guides had on him.
“As I moved through my first year all the way to my last year at Wesleyan, I really wanted to be the person that people felt comfortable reaching out to if they ever needed support or a conversation. I found a lot of value in that.”
This Fall, Jack is heading back to school to earn his Master of Arts in Mental Health Counseling at Boston College. He hopes to focus on the intersection of mental health and sports to continue serving those around him.
