“You have met high school students, they are hard to keep their attention,” said Anne Zinn, the Norwich Free Academy School Council Department Head. “You could hear a pin drop in that auditorium.”
Athletes dream of that kind of show-stopping performance. Only this time, for student athletes at NFA, captivating an audience had nothing to do with their physical abilities.
“All the time I felt like I wasn’t worth anything because gymnastics wasn’t going well,” NFA senior Trinity Ambruso said to an audience of nearly 750 students last spring. She was one of five student athlete speakers at the high school’s Mental Health Matters athletic conference.
“It’s like, [those are] your peers,” said Ambruso. “I’m saying this and being vulnerable and I might see you tomorrow.”
Though, that’s kind of the whole idea. Zinn spearheaded the first conference in 2022 for the entire Wildcat student athlete population.
“You have to have the students that want to do this and want to share their story. It’s not something you can force on them,” Zinn said.
After that first conference, Zinn found out the student athletes at NFA do want to share their stories. The freshmen and sophomores in the audience in 2022 became the driving force as juniors and seniors two years later.
“I felt weak in the moment, writing it down,” said Ambruso of her decision to be one of the speakers. “But when I did receive these texts that I made an impact or that it made them feel less alone. One, it made me feel less alone.”
And two, it didn’t make her feel weak at all, in fact, it made her feel, “stronger, definitely,” Ambruso said.
Zinn said they hope to hold the conference every other year so they can catch student athletes at different points in their careers. Other schools have reached out to learn more about starting their own conferences and Zinn said they even presented about the idea at a national conference for school councilors.