RALEIGH, N.C. _ In the 17 months since the death of his son, Mark Hilinski has visited enough college athletic departments to see the same things over and over, a pattern repeated: the renovated facilities, the expansive weight rooms, the well-accoutered players' lounges. Shiny perks, all, of a major college athletics enterprise that continues to generate ever-increasing revenue.
And yet, Hilinski said not long ago, referencing the athletes at the center of it all, "We can't fund a staff for their mental health?"
It was a May Tuesday at a Durham hotel, and he and his wife, Kym, had delivered the keynote address at the ACC's inaugural mental-health summit. For more than a year, the Hilinskis had been giving these kinds of talks, sharing the story of their son, Tyler, the former Washington State quarterback.
And so they stood on a stage in front of a crowded ballroom and brought Tyler to life again through their stories. He loved movies, they said. And his teammates. And even the trainers who taped him up before practices and games. And then one day in January 2018, he was gone. A self-inflicted gunshot.
On stage, Mark tried to collect himself when he described accessing Tyler's locked phone. Investigators finally found a way in. The password relayed an ominous message, a kind of last word from Tyler: "Sorry."
After a speech that has grown so routine that the Hilinskis have come to call them "Tyler talks," Mark detailed one of the most important parts of their mission: Persuading college athletic departments to provide "the proper resources," as he said, toward mental health.
Compared to other athletic department endeavors that have long taken priority, dedicating resources to mental health of athletes remains in its infancy. In January, one year after Tyler Hilinski died, the college athletics conferences that comprise the Power Five _ the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12 and SEC _ passed legislation mandating that their schools provide "mental health services and resources" to athletes.
The rule, which took effect on Aug. 1, is broad. It does not necessarily define what "proper resources" are, as Mark Hilinski put it. There are, for instance, no official guidelines about how many mental health professionals an athletic department must employ, or what their specific roles should be. And so those decisions are made school by school, with little uniformity from campus to campus.
