On Saturday, May 2, our Hidden Opponent club ran the Mindful Miles event to fight against mental health problems in athletes. At this event, there was fun for anyone attending. The event’s tickets were free for children under 5, $5 for elementary school and middle school students, $10 for high schoolers and $15 for adults.
This event is very important for The Hidden Opponent (THO) in particular because of how critically acclaimed they are in holding school events, as they are the only high school organization to have earned a grant from Adidas, who gave them $2,500 to continue their progress in promoting, advocating, educating and supporting the cause of THO.
THO adviser Meghan Gannon said, “Adidas gave us the money so that we could hold the event and the stipulations on that were we had to have an event that stood on the three pillars of THO, which are advocate, educate and support… We are also bringing in local community resources who are different mental health resources. We have Better Strength Company, Neighborhood Bar, and we’ll have a lot of different kids activities that will help promote mental wellness and physical wellness.”
Gannon’s goal is to give the money raised at the event back to the donation-based organization, The Grayson Murray Foundation, that uses the money to further their research in sports psychology.
“They have some of the best sports psychologists in the country, some of the best athletes in the world who are on their board of directors. All of this goes so that they can get deeper into the sports psychology world, and then it helps fund the campus captain program that’s all over the world,” Gannon said.
Her journey with mental health awareness through sports started around 2022 when her girls soccer team played to raise money for organizations solely to show awareness. This grew into them wanting to build their own chapter instead, going from eight members to about 40.
“I’m super passionate about it because the sporting world is very ‘be tough, don’t cry, don’t do this, don’t do that’ as opposed to ‘these are humans who are performing and don’t deserve to be told to be tougher.’ I’m excited because the kids are excited. They’re the ones who have done all of this work. I just advise when I need to advise and help when I need to help, but they’ve done all of the outreach, all of the planning, all of the organization. They’ve designed the t-shirts. So what I get most excited about is being able to see them when they see it all come together,” said Gannon.
