Believed by some to be the “female Michael Jordan,” Chamique Holdsclaw is a three-time NCAA basketball national champion who also struggled with issues of mental health, race and sexuality.
The Women’s Center will show the documentary “Mind/Game” on Monday as part of their Race, Gender, and Culture Film Series. The film tells the story of Holdsclaw during her run as a basketball player in college and the WNBA. The documentary dives into her life off of the court, including her struggles with mental health.
“As a black queer woman dealing with depression — there’s a lot that can be unpacked with just her,” delfin bautista, the director of the LGBT center, said.
Anna-Kaye Rowe, a graduate assistant at the Women’s Center studying communication and development studies and public administration, said Holdsclaw had an insightful story that showed how much she was able to accomplish in spite of the judgments people had, but she still had psychological problems to overcome.
Some student athletes go through a transition when they leave college where beforehand they lived in a “bubble,” Christina Wright, a visiting assistant professor of sports administration, said. Holdsclaw was a celebrated player at Tennessee, but after she was drafted to the WNBA her new team did not have as much success, which may have affected her self-confidence.
Wright added that Holdsclaw was initially diagnosed with depression in college and later was said to have bipolar disorder after a violent incident with her ex-girlfriend, Wright said.
bautista said including that harmful experience in the documentary debunked the misconception “that women cannot be aggressors.” They added that “(LGBT communities) don’t talk about domestic violence … often times because the national conversation doesn’t include us.”
“When it comes to conversations about ability, we often focus on physical ability … we rarely discuss mental health,” bautista, who uses the lowercase spelling of their name and they/them pronouns, added. Some ethnic groups believe that is a topic dealt with in church, they said.
An athlete should have the attitude of a winner, Wright said, and having mental health problems can make athletes seem weaker to opponents.
A person of color may face more of a stigma when seeking help for a mental illness because of elements that can be affected by race such as “socioeconomic status,” Rowe said.
“You can learn a lot from how (other) people experience things,” Wright said. “‘Mind/Game’ opens up the dialogue on a few controversial and challenging topics.”
The producers of the documentary allow it to be streamed for educational use at no charge to the university or organization.
“(The documentary is) an opportunity to bring these communities together and see how all of us are complicated and messy and hold multiple different stories,” bautista said.
