Providing a platform for athletes struggling with mental health

When an ankle injury while playing pro soccer in Sweden derailed her athletic career in 2019, Gabbie Ewing felt bereft and unmoored. Ewing, an NCAA Division II All-American and the 2017 Great Northwest Athletic Conference player of the year for Portland’s Concordia University, hadn’t realized how much her identity and self-worth were wrapped up in soccer.  

Ewing saw her mental health unravel, adding to an eating disorder she had in college. 

“I didn’t know what I wanted to do career-wise. I didn’t really know who I was outside of my sport … I lost a lot of my self-confidence,” she said in a phone interview from Western, where she was hired in April as assistant athletic director of marketing. 

While back home in Hawaii, a discussion with younger brother Austin, a collegiate football player who endured three anterior cruciate ligament tears, revealed he was struggling, too. 

That sparked The Athlete Confidential, a website (athleteconfidential.com) and podcast Ewing created in 2021 where athletes from around the country lay bare their mental health struggles in hopes of helping others talk about them. Ewing said it was scary.