32 | Dr. Megan Matthews Bunning on Softball, Coaching, and Mental Health (Part 1)

[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to Catching You podcast. As you have noticed, there's a link in the show notes to send us a message. Lacey and I are taking questions to answer for future episodes.

[00:00:12] Send us your questions or simply drop us a message and let us know what you think of our show. Thank you and catch you guys on the other side. Take care. Welcome back everybody to Catching You. We have another two-parter with a guest, Megan Matthews Bunning, and

[00:00:30] this is part one. Enjoy. I was actually looking at UNC because I was thinking academics. I know that sounds weird, but I was and it's all South Carolina play and I don't like games. I really like how they play. Now we went to Columbia and watched them play

[00:00:50] UNC and I really liked how they played and at the time they had the what would turn out to be the player of the year on the award winner, friendly job. I didn't know that because I didn't keep up with this kind of stuff and

[00:01:05] after the game, I remember having some conversations with my coaches and they said yeah, South Carolina's great tune country. And I said oh, I kind of played a lot, you know, and they were so good.

[00:01:17] And so when I found that out, I started thinking I was like they're really good and I really liked their colors. Hello and welcome to Catching You, a dad and daughter softball journey. I'm Russi, a dad who's been in the dugout and on the sidelines.

[00:01:33] And I'm Lacey, the daughter whose journey through softball has been filled with incredible wins, tough losses, and so many lessons both on and off the field.

[00:01:42] For the past 16 years, we've navigated the highs and lows of softball together from the local fields to national tournaments and everything in between. From the challenges of recruitment during COVID to the mental and emotional roller coaster that comes with being a student athlete,

[00:01:56] we'll be sharing the perspectives of both the parent and athlete and first-hand experience of the impact of sports on mental health and the importance of support from the sidelines. Welcome back everybody to Catching You. I'm your co-host Russi Ham with me, my beautiful daughter Lacey. Lacey, say hi.

[00:02:15] Hello. And we have another special guest, Dr. Megan Matthews Bunny. How are you? I'm doing well. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you for joining us. I got to give a shout out to Todd Moore. Hopefully he smiles when he hears his name. Todd, I don't know.

[00:02:31] Megan, Todd was on our booster club when Lacey was in high school and he was one of the better booster clubs because you can eat as you can probably imagine some booster clubs in high schools. It could be pretty brutal. What's that? So that's a different topic, right?

[00:02:49] Yeah. We don't need to get into that rabbit hole, but no, I appreciate you coming on. Again, the father daughter, this is Lacey's journey from five years old until now.

[00:03:00] And we just want to kick your brain on a lot of things from the beginnings, from your early days of softball to what you're doing now, which is, I think, super important, right? Because Lacey, you're going to get into that later.

[00:03:12] I know now you are at Fort Estate University of the College of Education, right? It is a teaching specialist in the interdisciplinary center for athletic coaching, right?

[00:03:25] Yeah, so just if you can explain that a little bit and then we can double back once we get into it more. Sure. So just to be completely accurate, our college just changed names. We are the College of Education, Health and Human Sciences. Oh, OK. Yeah.

[00:03:43] And our program is FSU Coach. The long name is the FSU Coach Interdisciplinary Center. And what I get to do now is I teach coaches. So we have a online master's degree in athletic coaching and then also the option for an athletic coaching certificate.

[00:04:03] And I work every day getting in the dirt, in it with coaches from anyone that is still have some current student athletes that want to get into coaching, trickling over from COVID. That's why they're still in school and playing.

[00:04:19] And then we've had coaches obviously in the high school kind of level through college and then even up into the pro ranks. So I get a nice variety of perspective. Very cool. But let's go back to the beginning, right?

[00:04:35] We talked about Lacey's journey from five years old until now. Where did you grow up? When did you start playing? Was it rec ball or club ball? Or when did you get into travel? Well, kind of explain kind of your journey a little bit. Sure.

[00:04:52] So my journey has been a little weird as we go through it. But in terms of softball, I grew up primarily in the Greer, Greagle, South Carolina area. I call that my hometown Greer. Specifically, I am a product of Riverside High School.

[00:05:11] And when I first started playing, my parents actually did a really nice job of letting me taste all kinds of sports. And so I didn't really start playing softball until seriously until I was little what people would consider now. I think I started with baseball.

[00:05:34] Actually, it was Northwood was the middle school I went to and they had a little league that operates in the little league system. And so I started baseball there and was catching.

[00:05:46] And I think I did that for maybe a season or two and then shifted over into the softball little league. And from that point forward, it was we knew softball was going to be my jam.

[00:06:00] Just as I got older and more experienced, I think I was around maybe 11, 9, 10, 11. And I remember there were two twins that had pitched at the high school level. And I think at this time they were in ninth grade.

[00:06:18] And I remember seeing them pitch and thought, wow, that's really cool. Didn't know how to get started in that until one of the little league teams said we need a pitcher.

[00:06:31] And I did. I just submarine pitched and was able to throw a strike and throw it pretty hard. And that's really where I got started. And then I saw the twins pitching and wanted to try that. And that's where that's really where it began.

[00:06:46] I didn't start taking lessons. I think I started taking lessons in sixth grade, so I was around 12 years old. And that's where things picked up. And I think I played official kind of the competitive travel ball outside of the literally around that seventh, eighth grade year.

[00:07:04] Yeah, obviously recruiting is much different these days, right? As they were back then describe your or the travel ball slash recruiting because at freshman years, typically kind of when it really starts ramping up, describe your recruiting and then where did you go to?

[00:07:21] I can tell them where you went to college. Or you can tell me where they were. Where you went to college, but go ahead. Yeah, so recruiting was different and I they couldn't even talk to you. Coaches couldn't talk to you until your junior year.

[00:07:35] And up until then, I started playing with a team that doesn't exist anymore. But it was called they were called the Carolina Dynamite. And that was really where we started hitting the national circuit. And we only played.

[00:07:50] I remember I was always in the state championship game for high school. So I would leave the state championship game that night and go straight to the first tournament for travel ball. And so you're talking early June and then we wrapped up August or started.

[00:08:06] And past that, we didn't play until high school ball again in February. So they couldn't talk to you as your junior year. And I don't I didn't even remember thinking that I could play in college. Until someone said something to me my junior year.

[00:08:24] Mine hadn't been my pitching coach. Oh, wow. Yeah. And she might have been the one that said, yeah, you should really consider have you thought about playing in college? And I'm sure my travel ball coaches said something.

[00:08:36] And at that point, I was like, no, I just played for fun. I had a good time with it. And so I didn't really get serious about it until then. And so then junior year came along and you start getting into at that time.

[00:08:49] We were writing letters and sending VHS tape. We should do and just clips of your pitching. I was also hitting at the time and you're just trying to get your name out there. And then they would come to see you. We didn't really go to camps.

[00:09:06] They would see you out on the circuit. That's how that went. And I had, I was surprised at how many letters I received. But I never again, it was just, oh, this is really neat.

[00:09:20] But it was surreal at the time and it wasn't until really I want to say almost my senior year when I started and it may have been a rule then you can't take official visits and so your senior year.

[00:09:34] I can't remember when it was, but it was late comparatively. And I went on some, some official visits, some unofficial. And I ended up playing at the University of South Carolina under head coach Joyce Compton at the time. That was an in-state kid.

[00:09:54] And that was very unusual because South Carolina is not where you think about getting softball talent, particularly pitchers. And it was funny because I had actually said I didn't want to go in state because everybody that I went to high school with seemed to go to

[00:10:13] Clemson or Carolina and Clemson didn't have a theme at the time. But I went to watch them play versus North Carolina. I was actually looking at UNC because I was thinking academics. I know that sounds weird, but I was.

[00:10:27] And it's all South Carolina play and I was like, man, I really like how they play now we went to Columbia and watched them play UNC. And I really liked how they played.

[00:10:40] And at the time they had the what would turn out to be the player of the year, Hondo, Ward, Wetter, Trinity, John. But I didn't know that because I didn't keep up with this kind of stuff. And after the game, I remember having some conversations with my coaches

[00:10:57] and they said, yeah, South Carolina is great too in the country right now. And I said, oh, I kind of played a lot. You know, they were so good. And so when I found that out, I started thinking I was like, they're really good.

[00:11:10] And I really liked their colors. And then I started thinking too, I found out not many people from in state were actually considered to play for them. And I took that as a challenge and at that point, that's what I wanted to do.

[00:11:23] I wanted to show people that an in-state pitcher could go to South Carolina and cause some damage. Yeah, you did cause some damage. You just got picked for the week a few times, right? And the LCC. So pretty cool stuff.

[00:11:39] And then now, so South Carolina is over described. I know you played for the Brits out there. But just maybe describe that and then when did you stop playing? Yeah, so that's a funny story.

[00:11:55] After I finished my career, I was very tired because I had pitched so much. It was a completely different format than what I had over a thousand innings pitched and pitched the majority of the games per floor.

[00:12:09] And so I was pretty tired and walked off the field saying, I'm never going to play again. I'm never going to coach all the things. I get a random call from a fellow named Bobby Stinson. And Bobby actually lives about two hours away from me now.

[00:12:25] We're still very good friends. He was a former assistant coach at Florida State for baseball. And Bobby had been working in the softball circuit and was coaching the British national team at the time. And it was a really interesting situation because the British

[00:12:45] had not quite developed pitchers at the time. And you had the I graduated playing in 2002. And I still had a fifth year to complete my degree. So I didn't graduate from South Carolina until three, but I couldn't play anymore there.

[00:13:01] So during that kind of off year, the British needed help qualifying for the 2004 Olympic and they were granted permission by the IOC to have guest pitchers, American pitchers to come in and help them so until they could develop their program.

[00:13:19] And I think they had about a year from the time I ended up playing until the 04 Olympics. So that was going to give them time to develop some pitchers. So we went over to Greece.

[00:13:31] We played in a couple of things like the Canada Cup and those sorts of things. But the big one was over in Greece. The men, some people may not know this, but before Olympic events actually happen, the Olympics will conduct a test event

[00:13:45] to make sure things are running smoothly and you just to practice the processes, that kind of thing. And they use some of those test events for qualifiers. So the Olympic test event in Greece was a qualifier. It was an opportunity and it was great Britain.

[00:14:02] And for the life of me, I can't remember the other team, but we beat them all over there for the test event and qualifier to help the British qualify. And so my claim to fame over there is I was the first pitcher

[00:14:15] to ever pitch off of that pitching rubber in the Olympic stadium over there in Athens, which is now a lot. Yeah, that's great. And but we won the event and Great Britain qualified. And after that event, by time with the British, I just bled out.

[00:14:35] I went on to get into coaching and also play a little bit of professional ball because the National Proof Fast Pitch, the MPF was trying to come back. And so I had received a call from Coach Ralph Raymond, who is a legend in the game.

[00:14:51] He has since passed, but he had been around softball for 80 years. He had coached the breakouts at one point and he had called me personally and asked me to come be a pitcher for his team on the riptide that he was going to.

[00:15:03] I did that for a full summer and then went back and did some kind of guest appearances to help them win some of their athletes were on the US team. So that's what it is. Yeah, very cool. Yeah. So Lace, we've talked to several

[00:15:18] ex players and that we get two different stories on their senior year. They know a lot of them were like they've had the time of their life and they don't want it to end. And then there's we've talked to some that are like,

[00:15:30] I just want to get that a lot of your I'm so tired like I'm in Lace. You're coming into your senior year. You're it's starting to creep in that do I want to continue? Do I want to I don't know what she wants to do.

[00:15:41] So Lace, I don't know if you want to touch upon that and then maybe dig in with Megan here. Yeah, going into my senior year, I think by sophomore year, I was like it was like dawn, like it was daunting to me. But then like last year.

[00:15:55] Like reality hit after season ended that my seat, I'm going into my senior year. It's going to be my last year. There's always going to be opportunities for me to go play somewhere if I really wanted to.

[00:16:06] But my mindset kind of right now is to like just live in the moment and definitely think more about the future and my career and what I want to do. So yeah, I explained it to you a little bit over email.

[00:16:21] But I want to be like a sports psychologist and we have one at Cano's State who has inspired me to go in that direction. And that's more of kind of the path that I'm thinking I'm going at going down. I've been told that I should go into coaching

[00:16:37] and I do coach like little little girls for pitching lessons and stuff like that. And I do enjoy that, but I don't know as a career if I'm already iffy about it right now,

[00:16:47] then I don't know how I would feel if I even got the chance to be a coach. So yeah, and then that's yeah, that's the route that I want to go down and it's settling within me that my softball journey is like coming

[00:17:01] to a close and like a new ones opening. So it's like definitely a more smooth transition than I thought it would be because my high school, I thought my life was like it wasn't over, but like high school while when it ended,

[00:17:14] I was like, oh no, like it's a new reality basically. I wanted to go into like your college experience and like how how you felt as a South Carolina player, like coaching for them and getting all these accolades like picture of the week for the SEC.

[00:17:30] I always like to ask what was like your highest high and your lowest low and what were those like? Like how did you feel going through those? Yeah, so first off, being able to represent my whole state and to go in and for four years,

[00:17:47] I really felt like I gave everything I had. And I'll answer your question, but I do want to tell you that if you're thinking about what to do with your senior year, I would really encourage you to go through it.

[00:17:59] There is that I understand you may have other opportunities to play, but there is nothing like playing for a college and going for that national championship pro ball was a complete letdown. It was awful. I hated it.

[00:18:14] If I could go back and do that over, I would play pro. When I think about college, it was definitely very hard work. It was a part of my life and being a student athlete and a pitcher and having as much responsibility as I did at the time

[00:18:32] was the part of my life, I think shaped me the most. Yeah, and I learned so much about myself and good things and bad things I wanted to change. And I think the lowest part for me was probably my freshman year

[00:18:46] because you're going in and you're at this college level now and you have seniors and at the time they had just come off being at the World Theories and second in the country and all this stuff. And so there's a lot of expectations.

[00:19:01] And then I was given the ball a lot as a freshman, true freshman and had to go in and show it, which that part of it I loved. But it was not always easy with personality. So that was a little rough.

[00:19:15] And to be honest with you, there are people that were on that team my freshman year that I don't talk to as an alum. And that's just the way it is. And going through, I think the high point my senior year, I'll say was the high point

[00:19:32] because we went the furthest it was before they had the Super Regional format. So you had a conference tournament, regionals and then World Series. And we, my senior year, had the opportunity to host regional and we ended up hosting UCLA and we made it to championship day.

[00:19:55] But we had dropped the game and had to beat UCLA twice. And UCLA, that was their down year, but it was also the team that had Natasha Wattley and Creed, all these Olympians. That was my class, the Jenny Finch. We were on the same class, thanks Newman.

[00:20:11] And right before that regional, we had some rumblings within the team. And this is why it was a high point. We could have been seated higher if we had come together as a team and put all this mess, all the drama behind us.

[00:20:30] And there were only two seniors, me and the girl that was catching for me. And we went through it with these other athletes. They were younger, trying to still figure it out, didn't understand why the seniors, we took it for seriously, that kind of thing.

[00:20:47] Right before that regional, we got it figured out. And we started playing together. We came to an understanding, took the mentality of playing like guys. You don't have to like each other, but we got to find a way to win.

[00:21:01] And when I look back, we ended up beating UCLA, the first game, think one nothing. And then we lost second game that would have advanced us to the series two to one and the outfielder, we would have won it. But the outfielder had a snow cone diving catch.

[00:21:22] They still have that picture up in their locker room from what I understand, because it just was a reminder of how hard they had to fight that year. We almost knocked them off.

[00:21:32] And that ended my college career, but it was a high because we had figured it out. We had come together, we had played our best ball, and it was a glimpse of what we could have done.

[00:21:43] And we ended as high as we were going to end while I was there. But yeah, so to answer your question, those are the things that I remember and a lot of my memories, almost all of my memories from sophomore or from my college day.

[00:21:58] They're not so much for pro. I'll just leave that there. So to piggyback off on that, the low right, your fresh veneer, because we've laid, she's gone through some highs and lows as far as and back then mental health was not necessarily talked about a whole lot. Right.

[00:22:16] What types of things did you do during those low times? To work through those issues? Yeah. So we had access to a sports psychologist on staff for South Carolina Athletic Department. And to be honest with you, I didn't go to them.

[00:22:32] There was back then, especially there was a stigma around seeking or going to whether it was a sports psychologist, a health worker, a psychologist, it doesn't matter. And that's something that even in the field I'm working now, we still battle. I did have to go speak with him.

[00:22:48] My sophomore year, I broke my ankle. It had to have surgery. So I was made to go speak with him, but you can't do that anymore now. There's a lot I did that you would not have to go through.

[00:22:59] So in terms of working through that, it was really one of the things that was just during the fire figured out. And I always, I think that's something we'll talk more about this and why I do what I do.

[00:23:13] But I had always been told I had a strong mental approach, strong mental game. I was tough. And I think what it was is that I was good at projecting that and competing. And so, mullets like that, even though they were very difficult for me personally

[00:23:33] because there were some things that my teammate said that really hurt my feeling. It was one of those things you just learned how to, you have a choice always to a client that you have a choice. How are you going to respond?

[00:23:47] But I will say that freshman year when things were low and we still had a really good year. And I remember there was a fella that used to throw batting practice for South Carolina Gamecocks baseball, and they were one of the top in the country at the time.

[00:24:04] And we all his nickname was Fox. And for the life of me, I cannot remember his actual name, but he had a condition and I want to say it was it was either MS or something.

[00:24:17] But he still went out there every day and he threw batting practice for those guys. And we sat down at lunch one day and I was just explaining to him some of the stuff I was going through.

[00:24:28] And he just sat there and listened to he said, Megan, he's what did he got to lose? And I said, what do you mean? He said, if you go out there and you just let it go and you just pitched out what do you have to lose?

[00:24:40] And I couldn't answer him. I said, nothing. I got I have nothing to lose if I go out there because he said, coach, isn't going to bench you. She's got to have you in the game. You're on the only pitchers, right? So you have literally nothing to lose.

[00:24:56] So go out there and let it fly. And I'll never forget that because I did. And it was because he had brought me to this realization of what I could do. And I think really when I think back on things, that really was where

[00:25:10] I started to realize the power of your mental approach. I didn't know it at the time. But when I look back at how my path has gone, that probably was the time that one moment I can identify and where it was like, you know what? He's right.

[00:25:26] I can help people experience this, do this without them having to go through as much struggle as I did. And that's what I want to do. So would you would say that was a moment that led you down the road of sports psychology, experiencing that freedom?

[00:25:44] I would. Would you say it's a really great way to put it. And like I said, if you were to ask me that several years ago, I don't know that I can pinpoint that was the moment.

[00:25:52] But as I think more on it, I would definitely say that was the moment where it became clear, not clear, but the freedom, as you say, the realization of all of these things really got me thinking and being more intentional about how I approached my game.

[00:26:12] And then as I went through, especially struggling as a coach, a young coach, I got to the point where I was like, why are we doing this? We don't have to struggle like this. There are people and resources in place that can help us.

[00:26:28] So I want to be one of those and help people because I don't want young, up-and-coming athlete or coaches or whatever to quit because they feel like they can't do it when in reality, they can't. They'll look for how to use some tools.

[00:26:43] And then you talked about the stigma before I've been working through with my college these past three years, trying to like part of an organization that talks out the athlete mental health stigma and trying to get people to use those resources more.

[00:26:59] And a turning point for me was definitely Katie Meyer on the Stanford soccer team and a few athletes followed after that during my sophomore year. And I thought it was just like, it hurt me to know that what

[00:27:15] I do as a college athlete was causing other people so much pain. So that kind of like I want to be that person that they could go to or many other athletes can go to for help because in those instances, they thought there was no other answer.

[00:27:35] Yeah. So I wanted to ask what do you what you think the biggest issues are right now surrounding like athlete mental health, coaches, mental health anything on that line? Yeah, I really appreciate you bringing that up before I answer out. Say that.

[00:27:54] One of the things that happened with covid with so much that the one if you could say positive or good light was that it exposed a lot of things and one of those things was mental health and the importance of it.

[00:28:13] And I think after or during covid, you started to see individuals that previously would have blown off any type of mental health assistants like coaches. They started to think twice about that. So with that being said, there is still a stigma.

[00:28:32] And I think I'm going to talk about you asked me with athletes what it is. I think it's the same. I think athletes that there is use and problem athletes and coaches. Those haven't changed. It's the stress, it's the pressure.

[00:28:46] It's a lot of times I see athletes and their perfectionist coaches, a lot of them, especially at the higher level, they're coaching and if they don't win, they lose their job and with that their livelihood and your banking, your success on athletes that are 18 to 22 years old.

[00:29:03] A lot of times as hard. So that hasn't changed. The issues that I see on the other side in terms of the people that are helping is there still is a disconnect. So the stigma comes from a lot of things like people think if you go see

[00:29:22] a psychologist or you're just a little education here, you're in terms of who you're dealing with. Lifes professionals are your psychiatrists who are MDs. They have a doctorate degree. You have your psychologist who are not MDs, but they have their

[00:29:41] PhD or a STI D in psychology and they've gone through graduate school and then three or four years of supervised training when heavy in research. OK, so you're looking at about seven years of postgraduate work. And then they sit for a licensure.

[00:30:02] Then you have your licensed clinical mental health counselors or your licensed social workers. And those individuals hold a master's degree and then they also have about a thousand up to about a thousand hours of supervised work before they can sit for a licensure exam.

[00:30:19] All of those individuals can bill for insurance. And those individuals are primarily taught how to work within the DSM thought. So the diet, no civil concerns. They can do obviously they can do performance work. But what happens is, especially if they get hired by an athletic department,

[00:30:39] they are so overwhelmed with the clinical mental health that they very rarely have time to work on the other side of the mental health spectrum, which deals in just performance issues. So I'm functioning. I'm doing all the things. I don't have a dinosaur whole concern.

[00:30:55] I just want help with my performance. And that's where people like me come in. The certification that you saw on my bio, the CNPC, that certified mental performance consultant is the only nationally recognized credential for that work.

[00:31:11] And so it allows me to operate in that phase with some backing. OK, so back to the disconnect with your licensed professionals. And even in my case, when I had to go to that sport psychologist, even though a psychologist may put sport in front of their name,

[00:31:31] that doesn't mean that they've had training in actual sport, specific situation. They just want to work in sports, and that's what they took a class in or did the mall or something, right? So what happened is athletes are being told they need to go see

[00:31:46] this licensed professional and that licensed professional has not played a sport, has not coached sport or has done so in a very limited capacity. And there's a disconnect to what the athlete needs, because the helper

[00:32:04] doesn't understand what the sport means to the athlete and what that looks like. And so the athlete, like probably what you might would do be like, bye, I don't know, we are not talking the same language. Now, you don't get it. You don't get it on that.

[00:32:20] And so I have a very difficult time sitting here and still in my gut and talking to you and trying to ask you for help when I feel like you don't understand in the first place what I'm talking about.

[00:32:31] Even though those professionals are trained to have tools to help, there's just that disconnect and the inability to create those relationships. So that's the biggest thing that I see. And when you said that you might want to go down that path,

[00:32:45] another reason I would encourage you to finish out and play and maybe do a little bit of coaching is because you're going to set your felt part and you're going to have that experience that a lot of these licensed professionals don't have.

[00:33:01] And so you're going to be able to connect athletes in ways that somebody's been working in the field for 20 years can't do if they haven't played your coach. And thank you, everyone, for listening to part one. We will have part two next week. Take care. Love you, Lacey.

[00:33:20] Catch you guys on the other side.