The NCAA News - News & Features

CHAMPS/Life Skills enjoys big turnout for third orientation

BY SHELLY SHEPARD
SPECIAL TO THE NCAA NEWS

The NCAA CHAMPS/Life Skills Program continues to expand, as an additional 64 members were welcomed into the program July 9-12 in Kansas City, Missouri.

Ninety-two people attended the third annual orientation, representing two conferences and the new member institutions. The number of schools joining the program has increased each year, and the total membership now has reached 169 institutions.

"The purpose of orientation is to introduce coordinators to the CHAMPS/Life Skills materials, present them with options for administering the program and delivering the courseware, and provide a forum to learn from and network with experienced coordinators," said Emily R. Ward, NCAA education resources coordinator.

She said the focus of the CHAMPS/
Life Skills Program's third year is to complete the process of rewriting materials, begin to support selected instructional materials with different media and increase technical assistance to institutions.

New courses

Progress on the first prong of the program's focus was apparent during orientation, where the two newest courses were presented in addition to two other courses developed earlier in 1996.

"Too Fit to Quit: Preventing Disordered Eating," and "What to Do When Life Gets Hard: Dealing with Depression and Grief," are the newest courses.

While all of the orientation sessions were well-attended, the audiences at these two presentations were particularly vocal about their interest in and concern for the topics. And the general consensus of those attending was that both courses are overdue.

Presenting the disordered-eating materials were Mary Thomas, research psychologist with Creative Courseware, Inc., which is developing materials for the program, and Randa Ryan, assistant athletics director for student affairs at the University of Texas at Austin.

"Disordered eating patterns are outward, behavioral expressions of inner conflict," Thomas noted. "They have nothing to do with food."

She also suggested that when broaching the subject with a student-athlete who may have a problem, it is a good idea to discuss the effect on the athlete's performance. Thomas said student-athletes initially may see improvement in sports performance, but ultimately will not achieve the output they want if they do not fuel the body properly.

Depression and grief

Lisa Reboy, instructional developer with Creative Courseware, presented the depression and grief session.

Reboy said there are many reasons for offering the course: to help fight stereotypes; help student-athletes deal with a variety of losses that many don't view as losses; because depression and grief negatively affect one's physical performance; and because student-athletes often think about depression and grief but, until the creation of this course, had nowhere to go to talk about their feelings.

"By (schools) offering this course, it implicitly says the staff cares and it's OK to display emotions -- emotions that student-athletes are typically supposed to hide," she said.

Much of the audience voiced concern about differentiating between clinical and regular depression. Reboy stressed that it is not a facilitator's responsibility to determine from which form of depression the student-athlete suffers.

"You must use the resources available to you, such as the campus counseling center," she said. "It is best to talk with them before you start the class, and then go to them if you even suspect a student-athlete has clinical depression."

Sharing experiences

A panel format was used to present many other orientation topics, such as how to start and administer a CHAMPS/Life Skills campus program and how to develop a successful community-service program.

Representatives from institutions that joined the program in 1994 or 1995 sat on the panels, sharing their collective experiences with the new members.

Many of the coordinators were excited about getting their programs started -- so much so that during breaks, pay phones often were occupied by eager coordinators calling their staffs to pass on ideas or give them projects to begin working on.

Wichita State University's representatives were as eager as anyone.

Each institution received two large boxes filled with courseware and other materials, which the NCAA shipped to schools when orientation ended.

But for Wichita State student services director Becky Endicott, shipping just wasn't fast enough.

"That's one of the reasons we drove," Endicott said, "so we could take the stuff with us, rather than wait for it to be shipped."

"I've already started going through the materials and picking out which ones I can use in my classes," added Trudy Lakin, academic advisor at Wichita State.