By Mike Pearson

FightingIllini.com

With about one-third of the approximately 500 athletes on the University of Illinois' varsity athletic teams being comprised by young men and women of color, it was a priority for that group of student-athletes to have a mental wellness staff that had similar representation.

For the Fighting Illini Mental Health and Sports Performance staff, James Warren, Jr. is the person who looks like the minority clientele he is serving.

Warren, whose credentials include both bachelor's (psychology, '03) and master's (social work, '05) degrees from the U of I, has been on Program Manager Jim Maurer's staff since 2020. A native of Aurora and a product of Aurora Christian High School, Warren's face is a familiar one around campus and the Champaign-Urbana community. Since his undergraduate days at Illinois, he's served as a counselor for at-risk youth at Champaign County's Juvenile Detention Center for more than two decades. Warren also has been employed as a licensed clinical social worker by the county's mental health center and other local treatment organizations.

When the Big Ten Conference announced its Mental Health and Wellness Cabinet in May of 2020, Warren quickly dispatched an email to the two U of I representatives on that board. Shortly afterwards, a Zoom meeting that included him, Mauer and Randy Ballard (Associate Director of Athletics for Sports Medicine) was arranged and, as Warren puts it, "the rest is history."

Partnering with the Carle Mental Health Providers, Warren is a valuable member of an Illini mental health team that includes a psychologist, two psychiatrists and three counselors/social workers. This team of professionals is available for free counseling to any Illini athlete, though Warren estimates that only about one-third of them actually take advantage of these services.

During a portion of his undergraduate days from 1999 through 2003, Warren lived in UI's Scott Hall with several student-athletes of color. He says he recognized "the unique struggles that they had making the adjustment to not only being a student but also being a student-athlete."

He was asked to characterize the relationship between the University and its students of color.

"From my own personal experience, the U of I has provided an opportunity for success to anyone who's willing to take advantage of the resources that are there," Warren said. "Whether it be counselors, deans, or academic advisors, there are enough people here in professional roles to serve any of our students, and specifically students of color."

"In regard to understanding diversity," he said, "I'm a firm believer that at the core of counseling is that any counselor can work with any client as long as the counselor is willing to listen and be compassionate. We have to look at things from the client's perspective in terms of race, gender, sex, socioeconomic status and life experience. All of those things matter to the client, so for that reason it's important to recognize some of those diverse issues and some of those cultural issues."

Warren said that Illinois' student-athletes often feel like they have to speak for their fellow students of color.

"I think that's part of being a student-athlete," he said. "Their media exposure is significant, especially the more popular sports like football, and men's and women's basketball. You literally drive around town and their faces are plastered on billboards. Whenever they go to class or to the grocery store or even just going out to socialize, most people know who they are."

"One of the things that I deal with concerning our students of color who may come from areas where there isn't as much diversity is that people may have pre-conceived notions about them," Warren said. "One of the other things that is unique for student-athletes of color is the history of how sports and entertainment has played with individuals of color. It's almost like society says you have to be an entertainer … an athlete or a musician or something like that. Part of what we dig into with our conversions is the issue of whether others care about them as a person or just because of their ability to perform. It's not that the student-athletes don't want to perform—they do—but they don't want the performance to be seen as their only value. They want to be cared about as people."

Other issues that Warren's student-athlete clientele encounter are much more commonplace.

"In reality," he said, "there are some student-athletes with whom I work that we never discuss anything about their sport. We have services for some of the unique issues that they're dealing with within their sport, but with about 95 percent of the student-athletes that I counsel we spend the vast majority of our time talking about life or talking about relationships. Some of our discussions are simply about family or social relationship or romantic relationship stuff."

"If you look at the age range," Warren continued, "some of these individuals are literally getting away from home for the first time. Some are young people who for the first 17 or 18 years of their life may have been involved in environments with trauma or abuse. Some actually ask me, 'Now, wait a minute … so it's not normal to be abused or neglected?'"

"For some of them it's the first time that they're connecting with people from all parts of the world and getting exposed to different cultures and different life experiences. Now, as students at the University of Illinois, they're fortunate to be in a space where they can get information to recognize what's going on and actually start working through some of that stuff."

"One of the other unique things that student-athletes deal with is that their sport has provided stability for them for 10-15-20 years of their life," he said. "So, we deal with student-athletes who are either having issues with injuries or that their competition in high school is different than when they get to the Big Ten. Or perhaps it's dealing with the issue that they've maxed out their athletic ability and there isn't a way for them to turn their sport into a career. 'When me being an athlete ends, how do I figure out what my identity is?'"

At the end of the day, Warren says, "We're human beings."

"I always look at Martin Luther King's I Have a Dream speech, he said. "I don't know that we as a society really take the time to think about what he was really saying. We've made progress, but I still don't think we're really to the point where we live in a world where people can actually be judged by the content of their character and not by the color of their skin. And so, until we get to that world, I think it's important for us to recognize the role that race and culture plays. It's our character that defines us as people."