By: Joshua Choe, Opinions Editor

All sports possess a competitive nature; it’s how sports are supposed to be. Most of the time there are two types of competitive behavior you can find. There’s a natural competitive nature from each athlete’s personal competitive level in wanting to win or play well in a game. Then, there’s a competitive nature that’s most often taken on from professionals. Players from any sport look up to professionals in their respective sports, and will pick up some of the same behavior and habits,  such as yelling at a teammate excessively over a bad play or perhaps a missed basket. However, throughout all of these “competitive” natures, a common theme of toxicity is found, and it’s often too much.

In a study conducted by Montana State University, it was found that 21% of male athletes and 28% of female athletes had some varying level of depression, along with anxiety and stress. Involvement from a multitude of subjects contributes to these statistics, and among one of the top involvements was stress/anxiety induced by toxic teammates and mindsets. All athletes feel pressure to perform well on the team and in games yet will not always be able to indeed do so. Bad performance will almost 100% of the time result in trash talk or maltreatment from teammates. This is only natural within competitive sports, yet, at the same time, it is downright horrible for the subject of this maltreatment, especially when this continues for extended periods of time. Losing the will to play and self-doubt manifests, thus causing even worse performance, and another cycle of maltreatment.

Teammates often lack the compassion or thoughtfulness to think about the reason behind a bad performance. It could be stress from a personal situation, something wrong at home, or even simply that the athlete was simply just not “in it” that game. Someone in any one of these listed situations is not always willing to open up to someone else about it. Of course it makes it worse, when they are already feeling down and to be put down further by none other than the very team that’s supposed to be supporting them. 

There definitely needs to be some change and a higher emphasis on athlete’s mental health. It’s not only the victims that receive harsh words and energy from teammates but those responsible for these actions. It’s understandable when teammates that are better than their peers are often more prone to yelling at their teammates or treating them badly for making more mistakes, yet it still does not justify it. Positive mindsets should be established so that athletes support and build each other up.