LOUISVILLE — The annual UofL Depression Center Benefit, held Friday, September 11, 2026, at the University Club of Louisville, featured University of Louisville women’s basketball coach Jeff Walz and a message that reached well beyond basketball.
Walz spoke about something coaches increasingly recognize: Preparing athletes to perform is not only about what happens on the court. Today’s student-athletes also have to navigate social media, public criticism, personal setbacks, and the pressures that come with being highly visible at a very young age.
“If you’re going to work on your physical skill, when are you going to work on your mental skill?” Walz asked.
It’s a question that has become more important during his years as a coach. Walz contrasted his own college playing days with the environment today’s athletes face. Years ago, he recalled, if you had a bad game, relatively few people saw it. Unless the game happened to be televised, the audience was largely limited to the people sitting in the stands.
Social media changed that.
Student Athletes Are Public Figures
Today, athletes can go online immediately after a game and see what people are saying about them. And the criticism doesn’t necessarily stop with how they played. Walz described comments directed at athletes’ appearance, weight, and fitness—personal attacks that can be waiting on a player’s phone minutes after the final buzzer.
He tells his players that the same people who tell them they’re wonderful when things are going well may be the ones telling them they’re terrible after a loss. Yet the temptation to look can be difficult to resist. As a result, Walz said, considerably more time is now spent helping student-athletes prepare for the psychological side of being a public figure.
That preparation includes making mental-health support an ordinary part of being an athlete. Walz encourages his players to be open about working with sports-performance coaches and mental-health professionals rather than treating it as something to hide. Sports occupies an unusually visible place in American culture, he noted, and athletes have an opportunity to use that platform to show others that getting help is okay.
Walz illustrated just how important that support can be with the story of a former player whose grandmother—the woman who had essentially raised her—became critically ill while Louisville was making an NCAA Tournament run.
The player had visited her grandmother before the tournament and believed she was undergoing relatively routine surgery. After Louisville won its Sweet 16 game, however, Walz learned that complications had left her grandmother on life support. The young woman suddenly faced circumstances few college students are prepared for while her team prepared for the game that could send Louisville to the Final Four.
Her grandmother died shortly before the game.
Walz became emotional as he recalled telling the player what had happened and watching her go on to play. What he remembered was something much larger than the basketball game itself: a young woman experiencing an enormous loss, with people around her prepared to help her through it.
“I just know she never would have made it if it wasn’t for the support that we have here,” Walz said.
Walz thanked those supporting the Depression Center, acknowledging that people doing this work may not always get to see the difference they make. He has.
His message throughout the evening was simple: Mental-health support has to become normal. Mental strength, like physical strength, is something we can develop—and something we shouldn’t have to develop alone.
