By Mike Pearson
FightingIllini.com

Open Doors | Green Bandana Project

Every student-athlete faces a myriad of demanding challenges during his or her collegiate experience.

All attempt to achieve peak physical condition. Most strive to be a member of the starting lineup. Many endeavor to excel in the classroom. Tackling all three issues is an exhausting and stressful undertaking.

For Eva Rubin, who joined the University of Illinois's women's basketball squad this past January after transferring from Arizona State University, she deals on a daily basis with an even more demanding challenge: type one diabetes.

It's a condition that only five-to-ten percent of people have to endure. America's Center for Disease Control and Prevention says type one diabetes manifests itself when an individual's pancreas makes an insufficient amount of insulin. Insulin is a hormone that helps blood sugar enter the cells in one's body where it can be used for energy. Without insulin, blood sugar can't get into cells and build up in the bloodstream. High blood sugar is damaging to the body and causes many of the complications of diabetes.

Rubin, a 6-foot-5-inch All-State center from Homewood-Flossmoor High School, has been dealing with her somewhat rare and misunderstood condition since she was in the seventh grade.

"It takes a while to get used to it and to get a grasp on what it takes to manage it," she said. "You have to figure out what a good day looks like and what a bad day looks like."

Rubin said that it was a sometimes overwhelming task for her as an ASU freshman to adjust to the pace of college athletics from what it was in high school. It took a toll on her mental health.

"It was a challenge in getting the people around me to understand what I was dealing with," Rubin said.

Most athletes are conditioned to fight through anything, but Rubin's struggle was doubly difficult.

"Until someone tells you that you cannot practice, you're told to tough it out," she said. "However, diabetes is not something that you can tough out if your blood sugar is too low or too high. You have to honor that and wait for it to go back into range. Having it be something that behaves erratically, I'm not always sure what I'm going to get on a daily basis. That was hard on me because I have this pressure of never wanting to miss anything."

A lack of understanding Rubin's condition resulted in an unusually strained environment.

"I was often asked 'Are you taking care of yourself?'," she said. "There was always this questioning of whether I was doing what I was supposed to do."

After a hard day or workouts and then trying to sleep at night, Rubin's body was so pent up that her blood sugar would go very low and crash in the middle of the night. Occasionally, the stress would have an opposite effect and cause it to rise abnormally high.

"So I would set an alarm for 3 a.m. and 5 a.m., to wake up quickly, check my blood sugar to make sure that it's fine, then go back to sleep," Rubin said.

Being more than 1,700 miles from home and not having anyone near her to truly understand the disease like her parents did caused additional grief.

"It's very challenging to be a fulltime student and a fulltime athlete," she said. "Physically, you want to pour everything you have into your sport, but you're at a university for a purpose, to take advantage of an education. Balancing your mental health is another huge thing. Then for me, I had a fourth thing going on, so there was a lot of learning how to keep everything in line."

When Rubin decided to transfer, one of her objectives was to be able to go somewhere where she could pursue a community health degree and play at the same time.

"I realize that's a very ambitious idea on my part," she said. "I've seen it happen at the Division 1 level, but I haven't seen anyone in basketball do it. It's two very time-consuming things."

When Illinois contacted Rubin, she was hesitant because of the campus's lack of an actual nursing school. But since the University was only an hour and forty-five minutes from home, she decided to take a visit last December.

"When I came, I just loved the openness of the coaching staff," Rubin said. "I could tell that they wanted to hear what I had to say. I loved the desire here to rebuild our program and build our culture. It just seemed like a place where I could serve others and help build us back up."

As a redshirt senior with two seasons of eligibility remaining at Illinois, part of Rubin's focus is on her future career as a nurse. It's a field she was drawn to because of her experiences as a young diabetic.

"When I was 12, I was very, very, very afraid of needles, and I was thinking that I wouldn't ever be able to eat any 'fun' food ever again," she said. "All of my concerns—whether they were medically related or psychologically related—the nurses were all super understanding and patient. I could just feel like they were doing their job because they loved doing it. Nursing is a very under-paid, over-worked, under-staffed, under-appreciated field, so you really have to have that desire to help people. Because of the way they helped me, I really want to do that for other people. There's a bit of a crisis with women of color and, in particular, their health care needs. Me being a black woman, that's a space that needs people like me."

Rubin also is grateful for the Division of Intercollegiate Athletics' focus on the mental well-being of their student-athletes. She says the DIA's "Open Doors" website is "an incredible resource."

"Open Doors is catered specifically towards us," she said. "The fact that the resource exists at all is great in calling attention to our issues. Sometimes there are needs that don't really get addressed until one person speaks up about something, then a resource is created to address that need. All of a sudden, you discover that 10-20-30 other people also needed a resource like that."

Rubin also is one of 10-to-12 Illini student-athletes who are involved with the Green Bandana project.

"When COVID is over and we're once again walking around campus, an actual green bandana will be tied to certain student-athlete's backpacks," she said. "The bandana will represent to our fellow student-athletes that this is a person who you can talk to if you're struggling with anxiety or depression or any sort of mental health issue. It says 'I can be a great starting point for you.' If you need to speak with a more thoroughly trained professional, that individual can help you set that up. It lets them know that they're not alone in the process."

Rubin is eager to get back to a regular routine as a Fighting Illini student-athlete.

"Even though (the pandemic) disrupted everything, my teammates have continued to embrace me," she said. "I'm really excited to be part of Coach (Nancy) Fahey's team."