Keeping Ashland Healthy - Episode 124 – Partnering for Change | Elizabeth HogeKeeping Ashland Healthy - Episode 124 – Partnering for Change | Elizabeth Hoge
Keeping Ashland Healthy
On the next episode of Keeping Ashland Healthy, I sit down with the fabulous Elizabeth Hoge from Ashland University Athletics. We talk about the real pressures facing today’s student-athletes—and what it takes to support their mental and emotional...
30:52•28 Apr 2026
Supporting Student-Athletes: Pressure, Performance and Mental Health at Ashland University
Episode Overview
- Early, face-to-face contact with every first-year student-athlete helps build trust and gives them a clear support person beyond coaches and lecturers.
- Simple structure like calendars, regular check-ins and good sleep habits can prevent academic problems from snowballing under athletic pressure.
- Relationship struggles, breakups and friendship issues are common stressors and deserve to be taken seriously rather than dismissed as trivial drama.
- Social media dynamics such as being left out of group chats or left on read can strongly affect mood, so students benefit from talking these feelings through instead of spiralling.
- Parents can best support young athletes by listening, teaching them to advocate for themselves with coaches, and avoiding stepping in to fight their battles for them.
“Don’t let a nap ruin your GPA.”
What are the common struggles and victories in student-athlete mental health? This conversation with Ashland University’s assistant athletic director and director of academic support, Elizabeth Hogue, gives a front-row look at life behind the jerseys. Listeners hear how over half of Ashland’s on-campus students are athletes, and why that makes support roles like Elizabeth’s so vital.
She explains how first-year student-athletes face a “band-aid ripped off” shock, especially autumn recruits who are juggling tougher practices, new living situations, and higher academic demands all at once. To steady that rocky start, she and academic success coach Dejuan Seward personally meet every first-year athlete and run study tables so students know, from day one, that there’s a safe adult who’s not a coach or professor in their corner.
Elizabeth shares very practical tools, from calendar planning and regular grade check-ins to one very simple warning: “Don’t let a nap ruin your GPA.” She also talks through sleep routines, cutting late-night scrolling, and using quiet wind-down activities like yoga or meditation to protect both performance and mood. The episode doesn’t shy away from emotional landmines either: injuries, feeling left out of group chats, being “left on read”, high-school relationships falling apart, and the pressure to be the best.
Elizabeth draws on years in residence life and on her experience as a mum of three athletes to show how early patterns in youth sports often resurface in college. She stresses listening, encouraging young people to advocate for themselves, and teaching them to talk directly with coaches instead of having parents swoop in. Counselling, representation, and the difference between needing a therapist, a sports psychologist, or just someone objective to talk to all come up in down-to-earth, relatable ways.
If you care about a young athlete’s wellbeing, this conversation might prompt you to ask: are you really listening to what they’re trying to tell you?
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