Story of Parker Albright
This is the story of one Parker Albright. MaryHelen (Parker) Albright was ranked third in the country at race age 13, and first when she was race age 14 and 15. At race age 16, she was ranked second after she aged up to Junior Elite. At Salinas YOG Qualifiers, Albright won the race, but at the Youth Olympic Games she dropped out of the race due to a panic attack. Even at the top, athletes still face depression and anxiety. Nobody is excluded.
“The week leading up to it I was doing great,” Albright said. “The morning of the race I felt great in my warm up and on the pontoon. Someone grabbed the neck of my wetsuit and pulled me back. I inhaled a lot of water and started to hyperventilate. I caught my breathe then tried to swim back up to the front and then it happened again. I was still worked up from it and that was the worst panic attack I’d ever had.”
From the top to the bottom, from the best to the rest, the little things can be our downfall.
“And that’s when all the self-doubt starts to rush in,” Albright said. “Like ‘Oh I’m not supposed to be here,’ or ‘I need to stop’.”
One of the greatest advisories to athletes is their mind. The mind is the only thing that truly tries to break us down.
“That’s the first time that’s ever happened to me during a race,” Albright said. “That’s the first time I ever had to get pulled out of the water. That’s the first race that I’ve never not finished.”
Every athlete has the race that makes or breaks them, and sometimes the break isn’t about the race itself.
“So, I’ve been diagnosed with depression and anxiety,” Albright said. “I was self-diagnosed for two years for (mild) depression. It got bad right after the Youth Olympic Games and nationals though.”
For many, including Albright, mental issues go in waves. From being okay and in the clear, to the washing machine at the swim start.
“The two weeks in Brazil and Ecuador was like a super high,” Albright said. “I was having such a great time with all my friends then when I got home it just all fell for me. I had an incident and I didn’t make a very good decision and my dad found me hysterically crying in the bathroom and that’s how my parents found out about my depression.”
Depression, and any mental issue, is not something to ignore. Ignore for too long, and it’s a shadow plaguing the mind.
“It was, at first, mainly because of school,” Albright said. “Which sort of affected my triathlons because I wasn’t motivated for anything. I went to elementary school in the city and when I moved to the country I lost my friend group. I didn’t really have any close friends.”
Like all athletes, there’s pros and cons to the sport. The sport weighs a lot on the mind and sometimes the best athletes feel it the most.
“Triathlon didn’t start hurting me mentally till after Ecuador,” Albright said. “In Richmond last year I had a little outbreak like ‘Hey I need to have a little break’ then I took a three-day break and I really wanted to get back into it and that helped a lot.”
Great athletes always listen to their bodies and minds. They know when to exceed their limits and when to take a recovery.
“Once I got back from Ecuador I wanted a little bit of a break,” Albright said. “but I didn’t really get much of one, and that’s when it started to get bad again.”
The amount of pressure put on youth elite athletes can push them past their breaking point. No athlete should feel boxed in by everyone’s expectations.
“There was so much pressure on me because I needed to perform at the Youth Olympics,” Albright said. “Then I got second at Nationals and I didn’t think that was ever going to happen but that was two weeks after my breakdown and I lost track of my thoughts.”
The amount of sacrifice that the athletes put into this sport can cloud their vision, and knowing the question “Why” can leave them with more questions than answers.
“I’ve always enjoyed racing,” Albright said. “But sometimes it’s tough for me to get through workouts, you know? I have to remind myself why I’m doing this.”
When knowing why they race, athletes can grow and be ready for whatever is thrown at them as long as they have their motivation fixed in their mind.
“Whenever you have a bad race, or you think you have a bad race, the next one is usually better because of your anger...for me at least,” Albright said. “That’s what happened to me in Brazil and Ecuador. My brakes were on and by the time I fixed it I was second to last on the bike and I had my best swim (second out of the water). Then I told myself I can’t mess around and I won Salinas.”
The mentality of the athletes should not just be known by the athletes. If a coach, or parent, or friend knows why they do what they do then they can break the breaking point.
“There’s just so much pressure on everyone,” Albright said. “I get that we’re top athletes but people need to realize that were not in our high twenties. We’re still teenagers. We have regular teenage problems and we don’t not have them just because we’re really good athletes.”
All the athletes in the Youth and Junior Cups face issues. We’re all young and inexperienced in life, so why should it seem like we don’t have to worry about normal problems?
“There’s a lot of stigmatism on mental issues,” Albright said. “Most people go through something but most people just don’t want to talk about it and once one person speaks out, it’s just like a domino effect.”
Talking to elite athletes, someone might not realize that we’re still just kids, just teenagers. We have normal people problems, like relationship drama and friendship troubles, even though we’re elite athletes and many of us hold a certain aura of maturity around us. Even though we train about 20 hours a week, we still have social lives, and school, and movies that we watch. We still text and watch YouTube, and laugh at memes. We, the athletes, are coming out of our shells to let everyone know that we still have normal problems-so hop off. We aren’t super-humans.
Yours truly,
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