Interview with Audrey Ours
Audrey Ours is from Denver Colorado and she played volleyball. She competed until she went to college at Colorado State University. She has her Bachelor of Science in Psychology. She is now about to graduate from Adler University in Chicago, Illinois with two master’s degrees: Clinical Mental Health Counseling and Sport and Human Performance. She worked with athletes at UIC (The University of Illinois at Chicago) as a mental performance coach.
While at Colorado State, Audrey played some intramural volleyball. She has been focused on her career and her goal is to help athletes through counseling and consulting. In her free time, she enjoys watching movies, tv shows, and documentaries.
Q: How long did you play volleyball for? What was your experience like?
A: I played for about eight years, from 4th grade through 12th grade. My experience was mostly recreational, to be honest. I never really played at an elite level. It was more for fun and as an extracurricular in school. Overall, I think I had quite a fun experience and what playing meant to me didn't really hit me until after I stopped. It was more of just something I did until I couldn't anymore.
Q: What was one of your favorite moments while competing?
A: In my senior year of high school, for one of our last home games our coach let us decide what song to play and what kind of entrance to have. I can't remember all the details anymore but I do remember that we played an intense song like 'Eye of the Tiger' while playing leapfrog as our entrance. I think that's one of my favorite moments because it was quite ridiculous but it represented who we were as a team pretty well.
Q: What made you decide to get your 2 master’s degrees?
A: When I was in my first year of college, a former teammate of mine who was a year younger than me died by suicide. As it is for anyone, it was such a shock. I didn't know it at that time, but it really stuck with me especially when it came to my last year of college. I graduated from undergrad in 3 years, and so at the start of my last year I had this realization of "I don't know what to do and I don't even know what I can do". All of my friends still had a year left of school and I was kind of confused about what I should do next. The simplest solution I came up with at the time was just to continue going to school. So I started just googling graduate programs and I discovered this program at Adler that had a counseling program and a sport program. The idea behind this program of combining mental health with athletics reminded me of my teammate, and I felt that if I wasn't able to help her, at least I could do something to help others like her.
Q: How do you use your background in volleyball with your psychology work?
A: It helped me to realize the importance of mental health, especially among athletes. There are a few theories of counseling and consulting that I can use to understand my own experience, which in turn, can be helpful in relating to other athletes and understanding their experiences. It also helped me to realize the interaction between physical health and mental health and how the two can often go hand in hand.
Q: What is it like working with athletes now?
A: Now, most of my work with athletes is at an individual level, working on things like performance anxiety and developing routines so that they can learn to play at their best. The majority of my work with athletes focuses on the mental side of the game. It's not quite mental health or counseling, but the consulting environment can be similar in a lot of ways because I do talk with athletes about things they may be going through and how to find ways to connect skills learned from sport to everyday life.
Q: What was the transition out of playing volleyball into going to school without sports like for you?
A: Definitely weird overall. I had a few friends going on to play in college, but for the most part, most of my friends had also stopped playing. It was kind of nice to be experiencing that transition together, yet because I was still friends with underclassmen it was kind of hard at times to hear about the team and how they were playing after I had left. There were harder moments when I realized I would most likely never play like that again. I did play intramural volleyball in college, but that was two years after my last high school season. I think there were a lot of things I decided I didn't want to deal with about not playing, so I focused on school instead and put more energy into working in research labs instead of signing up for an IM team. It took time to adjust to, and when I felt I wanted to play again, I did. Overall though, I used my experience with sport more to focus on school and lead me to the degrees I'm about to have.
If you have any more questions for Audrey, please leave comments below or contact me. If you or someone you know is struggling, please call the Suicide Hotline. It’s toll free and available 24/7 at 800-273-8255.
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