Speaker 1: 1:12

Welcome back to the Raising Elite Competitors podcast.

Speaker 1: 1:14

I'm Coach Brie, a mental performance coach for girl athletes, and I'm so excited that you are here for today's special episode with Rob Thorson.

Speaker 1: 1:24

Now, if you are just getting going on the sports journey with your daughter, or maybe you have a lot of seasons under your belt, either way, this podcast and this episode is for you to help you know how to raise a mentally strong girl athlete, and that's today's episode is special because we are honored to have Rob with us, who is the executive director and co-founder of the HT40 foundation.

Speaker 1: 1:48

Rob and his team are creating impactful change through their initiatives, starting with one called the shoulder check. This movement reminds us to reach out, check in and make contact, whether that's as simple as a hand on our shoulder or a conversation to let someone know that you're there for them. Their mission is to make kindness a contact sport, and in this episode, we dive into the inspiration behind the foundation, the importance of the small actions that lead to big impacts, and the steps we can all take to show up for each other. This is a conversation that does discuss sensitive topics, including suicide, so please listen with care. I do hope that you get as much out of this conversation with Rob as I did when I interviewed him, and I know you will so enjoy the episode and I'll see you in the next one. Welcome, rob, to the Raising Elite Competitors podcast.

Speaker 2: 2:40

Thank you very much. Glad to be here. Appreciate the chance to talk with you.

Speaker 1: 2:43

Yeah, I'm looking forward to our conversation. I think you have a lot to share with our community, but also just speaking as a mom myself and as a head high school volleyball coach, I'm really curious and interested in what you're doing. So can you first tell our listeners who you are and what you do?

Speaker 2: 3:04

Yep, absolutely. Like I said, I'm Rob Thorson and I am the founder and executive director of a 501c3 nonprofit called the HT40 Foundation. And our first program which is what I hope to have a chance to talk a little more about with you here today it's called the Shoulder Check, and the Shoulder Check is basically an initiative to help young men and women everywhere support one another, and we like to say we're making kindness a contact sport by encouraging people to reach out, check in and make contact with one another, so ultimately just creating kind of more kindness and empathy in the world for young men and women, so that when they need a hand, they know that there's someone there to offer one.

Speaker 1: 3:44

Yeah, okay, which is what we need more of, for sure, and I love that mission.

Speaker 1: 3:50

It really aligns to what we do as well. We were talking offline about the elite competitor, and being an elite competitor means maybe a lot of different things to people who hear it, but for us, being an elite athlete isn't just about getting college scholarships or playing at a super high level. It is that athletes are enjoying their sport, they have the tools to navigate the normal part of being an athlete because it is normal to be disappointed and have a variety of emotions and have setbacks and all the things and they have tools and that they're playing to their potential. And I really want you to key in on the toolkits that we provide athletes when it comes to the mental game around sports. Psychology, shifting, self-talk, visualization, like all of those things are very valuable tools, but you brought up a very specific tool that I think is essential for athletes and their toolkit as well, so can you talk about that? And then I do want to hear a little bit of your story as well.

Speaker 2: 4:43

Absolutely yeah. So you know, I thought about it and I had the chance to reflect on our program in the context of your message, which I think is so important and so valuable and right where you start with it. Right Like the ultimate skill of the whole package. Some of its parts is like this notion of resilience, right, and, like you say, like disappointment, performance, all those things, expectations are all part of it. Being resilient in the face of whether it's competition, success, failure, all that kind of good stuff, and I think the kind of tool that we hope that we can add to everybody's toolkit elite performers, athletes or otherwise it's just this notion of vulnerability, everybody's toolkit elite performers, athletes or otherwise it's just this notion of vulnerability, which is to say it's okay to admit that you need a hand. And I think where our program comes from, and I guess I could kind of go into it here.

Speaker 2: 5:26

You know, the idea is like in many areas of our lives, right, and you can relate to this like when we struggle, we ask for help, right, and in critical situations, if the house is on fire, we run out the door, we call the fire department, we yell help. If we fall down and hurt ourselves, we yell help If we're in math class, we don't understand how to do the proof and we have a test coming up that if we don't learn it, we're going to fail. You ask the teacher for help, but when we struggle emotionally and mentally, it's the one place where we don't ask for help. We go inside right and the pressure builds and builds, and I think one thing we know, broadly speaking, is the more we push anything in, the harder it's going to come back out and in any way, we never know which way it's going to come out.

Speaker 2: 6:09

And you know, in my situation, the reason why I'm doing this is my son, 16-year-old athlete died by suicide in May of 2022, hayden Thorson. He was number 40. He was a hockey goalie a really good one at that and he was on his path, his personal path taking a prep school, starting to look at college, all that good stuff and hockey was a huge part of his life. It didn't completely define him, but he was an athlete and he was a competitor. And the striking thing about Hayden's story was he never asked for help.

Speaker 2: 6:36

No, one knew he was struggling. If you made a list of a thousand people, his name would have been 1000 on the list, because he was actually the guy that made the effort to bring people together. And I say this a lot about him. The reason why Hayden caught your attention wasn't the reason why you remembered him. So he was like I said he was a big athlete. He was a big guy. He was six foot two. He was 200 pounds. He was a presence. Right, he had this super sharp sense of humor that adults and little kids alike appreciated. Right, he knew how to turn up in a room. I think he was aware of his presence, but he didn't use that presence with any sort of malice. Right, like he wasn't the guy to tell a mean joke. He was the guy who noticed the kid who was in a locker room sitting off to the side and didn't feel part of the team, and he would go to them and he would put his hand on their shoulder and say, hey, you had a great game today. Or he would ride the bus home from school and he would see the kid who usually got off the same stop with him. This is a story that this kid wrote us in a letter. It was on Hayden's last day and the boy just wasn't feeling himself and he sat in the front of the bus and Hayden got on. He noticed him and he said what's wrong? He said I'm just not feeling it today. And Hayden said come back with me, let's sit down, let's talk. And he told him a joke and he made him feel better. So that's who Hayden was in the world. And when Hayden passed, we got all these letters from his friends, from parents, or conversations that happen around dinner tables were relayed to us where people said now that Hayden's gone, who's going to do what Hayden did for us?

Speaker 2: 8:03

And this program, the Shoulder Check, answers that by saying we all can Like, we can all look after one another, we can all put hands on each other's shoulders and check in with one another, because you just never know who might be struggling, when or why. But we can all help and I think that's the key right. The more we do that, the more likely we are to create space when someone is struggling, for them to say, hey, I could use a hand. It's a cliche, you see it, but like the three hardest words to say in any language are I need help. So everything we do as a shoulder check and as the HT40 Foundation are to help people say those words right.

Speaker 2: 8:40

So we do it. We say it by creating small actions that have big impact, and that's what a hand on a shoulder is. Right. I think people intuitively understand, or have felt it in their own lives right In a moment of celebration, in a moment of consolation, in a moment of encouragement that simple gesture of a hand on a shoulder is meaningful and it's something everybody can do right. And so that's what we're out to encourage people to do. And that's where it comes from not necessarily to reflect on how Hayden left us, but rather the impact he had on all of our lives while he was here with us.

Speaker 1: 9:13

Wow, thank you for sharing that. I mean that takes a huge amount of courage and vulnerability as well. Just to share I know that's a parent's worst nightmare, you know, and just putting it, I mean just to see what you've done out of that is pretty awesome, and how you're continuing to allow other people to benefit from his legacy.

Speaker 2: 9:33

So Thank you.

Speaker 1: 9:34

I mean amazing, but tell us a little more about what like. What is the shoulder check? What are the tenets of it? What does it include?

Speaker 2: 9:42

Yeah. So what we thought about it as I said where it came from was just this idea. I remember somebody drew a sketch and it was just two silhouettes. One person said over the top and said I could use a hand, I have a hand to give. And it was the picture of someone putting a hand on a shoulder and at first that was like a figurative idea, but then we realized, like, that is the idea. So we launched the program last July. So I'm in Connecticut. We had a charity hockey game in Stanford, connecticut, and we had our second annual. It was called the Shoulder Check Showcase. Second annual was just this past July, where we have 30 NHLers and PWHLers come out. It's been amazing the support that we've had from the hockey community, but then also from our local community. The idea has been covered.

Speaker 2: 10:25

We were on Good Morning America not too long ago with the idea because, again, I think the idea is that simple and the goal is literally to get people to put hands on each other's shoulders. We used the event our first event and I think the power in it came from. I don't think people necessarily knew what to expect or they didn't realize that they would walk away with as much an emotional connection to the idea as they did. You know, the event was really. Of course it was to launch the idea, to share the message, but what we did before the game started was we had everybody in the building, 2,500 people, and every player on the ice. All these professionals and also youth players literally put hands on each other's shoulders and then this kind of call and repeat to say I promise to reach out, check in and make contact, and that's the goal, right, that's the behavior that we're trying to create. We're trying to create awareness for each other. You know, I see this a lot like our. Of course we're a non-profit right. We need to raise money to be successful. We just need to raise enough to cover our operating costs. But I say all the time like we're not out to raise money so much as we're out to raise awareness for one another. That's the goal and a good idea. We'll find its support and, of course, we'll take care of that in time as it comes. But that's the whole goal. So we've built this out now and we have stuff, have stick tape. It's the signature kind of light blue color that people can tape their sticks with, and the idea is to get teams to make this commitment together.

Speaker 2: 11:57

Right To pledge to reach out, check in and make contact with one another, and not just say it once but then see it through. So what if every practice started with that refrain where people, whether it's on the volleyball court or if it's on the ice rink, circle up and they put their hands on each other's shoulders and they say this? Or what if everybody's on a group text thread and we have make contact Mondays and everybody has to make contact with one another on that thread every Monday? Right To kind of create these behaviors so that checking in with one another is second nature. That's the behavior that we're trying to create and that's what creates the permission of the space for that vulnerability, because that checking in is so normalized.

Speaker 2: 12:37

Right, if everybody's doing it, then one day, if I am struggling and I know my whole team, my whole class, my whole peer group is there for me I might say you know what I need a hand. And then that could be anything right, like it could be about a relationship, it could be about a school issue, it could be about a sports performance issue or, of course, it could be far deeper. And, as we see with my son. We'll never know what he was actually carrying and what led him to take the decision that he made, but clearly the fact that he's out there putting this out into the world means he needed more of it in his own world. That's kind of hard to get your head around in times like now, but I do think we see again and again, because this idea is so simple, it spreads really quickly or easily or it's easy to buy into right, because it's that simple, but it makes a big difference. Little things can make a big difference.

Speaker 1: 13:29

Yeah, yeah, I agree and I understand that. You know, and I think a lot of people can be like, yeah, little gestures, but how? How have you seen little gestures like just making contact, make a difference.

Speaker 2: 13:40

Yeah, I could give you a few examples of that too, and I have this other kind of talk track that goes with this. Depending on, I've had the chance to share this in different places, different audiences little kids, adults, business communities, that kind of stuff and I think one thing we know that is a truism is that, like, the biggest problems are solved with the smallest incremental steps, right. So in this case, like last April, the Surgeon General published a report that we're suffering, our youth are suffering this crisis of loneliness and isolation, and I think about that, right, like, we're more connected than ever. We're digitally connected, we're socially connected, we're Instagram, facebook, blah, blah, blah, on and on. Like, we're more digitally connected than ever, but we're more isolated than ever. People are feeling more isolated than ever. Based off of that, one of the pillars that they proposed in that study was the sixth pillar. There were six of them was rebuilding community, and that's what we're trying to do. So when I go out and I have a chance to share the message and I'm sure, honestly, I hope this will happen here Either you'll get an email after this runs or I will and say I heard this.

Speaker 2: 14:44

So I've had the chance to speak on a few panels, like I said, and podcasts, and invariably get an email the next day that says I heard your message about the shoulder check. I've been worried about my husband, my son, my daughter, my friend. I didn't know how to start a conversation with them. I heard about the shoulder check. It gave me an ability to start it and they told me they needed help. And now we're getting that help. It happens every single time I talk to somebody. It happens when I speak to a class, whether it's a high school or a college class. It happens when I get teams together, we get rival teams together and we've held banquets, whether it's across different sports, and a kid will come up to me afterwards and say like, here's what's going on with me. It creates this little gesture, gives people permission to be vulnerable, and that's just me specifically. So the other thing that's happened which is great, which is what we hope will happen with this idea is people will hear it and think, hey, I have an idea how I'm going to bring it to life, right?

Speaker 2: 15:40

So a lot of my son's teammates and friends big kind of prep school network in and around the Northeast. Like I said, I'm in Connecticut. Obviously, hockey is a pretty big prep school sport. Those kids bill it and move away, whether they're playing in junior leagues across the country or in British Columbia, so on and so forth. They all brought the program to their schools and teams and every time probably five times it happened here in Connecticut at the prep school level, where a young man would bring, or a young woman would bring, the program to their coach Coach brings the athletic director who would take it to the head of school and that kid would then present the program to their entire student body and they would experience that same dynamic where people would come to them their peers, and say, hey, that was amazing.

Speaker 2: 17:55

You know, I've been struggling, like it's right below the surface and all we need to do is give permission and give folks permission to say I'm right here, you know. So it's like that binary. Honestly it has been, and that's. I say that not as in no way that's not meant to be like a brag or anything like that. If anything, it's like the validation that keeps us going down this path. We're an all volunteer group that's doing this. Everything that we've done, everybody's opted in. I'm not sure if I've had to ask anyone to join.

Speaker 1: 18:21

Yeah, oh, that's amazing. I have a few questions that I want to make sure that I hit. One of the first ones is so a parent that's listening, maybe, is feeling like, oh my gosh, I'm feeling like the nudge to what if my athlete, what if my daughter or my son is going through something that I don't know anything about? And, as I mentioned, this is one of the things that comes up often in our community. We hear about athletes and from the outside they seem like, like you said, like nothing's going wrong from the outside perspective. So what would you tell parents in this situation who are like, okay, I need to check in. Is it as simple as what you're suggesting, like hand on the shoulder, checking in? Like, how would you advise parents to go about that?

Speaker 2: 19:02

Yeah, I would say so. This is my kind of I don't want to say disclaimer, but I suppose it is. I'll only ever answer a question like that from my own personal experience, part of the path that we're on here. I'm not a mental health practitioner, not an interventionalist, and I say this a lot like I couldn't identify a crisis when it was in my own home. It's hard to come to terms with.

Speaker 2: 19:22

But I think some of the things that I realized in retrospect is I do think just creating that space for real conversation matters. And of course it relates to sports context. Right, like every parent has the cliches about the car ride home and that kind of stuff. Right, like those things they are real. I see, for all the years we were on the hockey circuit, see cars pulling out and you could see red face parents in cars with kids after losses and that kind of thing. And I know everybody knows that's not the right thing to do, but how many folks are guilty of having done it? Like the exact wrong response in that moment. And I think we know as parents that our kids need support and they need the space for it, and I think it is that simple as just creating it and making sure that they know we're there for them and then being there in earnest for those answers. Of course, in a crisis, if one were to be revealed to one of us, we all intuitively know there are phone numbers that should be called immediately. There are counselors that should be consulted with. There are resources in schools, right, and that's true for peers as well, right. Should someone stumble into a moment of genuine crisis, there are resources all around us that everybody should know to go to. We've got to educate on that kind of stuff.

Speaker 2: 20:38

But, yeah, like I think, on the day-to-day level especially back again to the context of your message, which is like that whole self right, and building in that resilience, just recognizing that space is just as critical as anything else, right, and just being there for those moments and letting those moments come out and happen. Like you said, being disappointed, being upset, like those that's a normal part of it, and we got to create the space to let that out, cause I think and again I'm just speaking my own personal opinion on it it's just another example of the kind of thing that If it doesn't have an outlet, it's being pushed in, and things get pushed in and come out in all sorts of odd ways, right, and we might not even know. I see this too sometimes, now that I'm a little bit more involved in some of these conversations. Sometimes you have to track back a behavior that's over here and recognize the root is all the way over here, right, if it is somebody who's shouldering a lot of competitive pressure or they're meant to. We were talking before.

Speaker 2: 21:35

Like the whole youth sports world seems to be aimed at, like everybody thinking there's division one, scholarship at the end of their kid's sports career, which is obviously lunacy. You know what I mean. What are the numbers? One in a thousand, right, like it's not everybody's path, but I think more and more every kid feels like that's the burden that they're shouldering. I think, on the one hand, just like you educate and advocate, we've got to not put that pressure on people, but then also we've got to recognize that they are, even if that's not there, our kids are putting pressure on themselves based on social pressures or what they think they should be doing. So yeah, just these little touches as often as possible to hopefully allow that person to say, if they're in a moment, to feel comfortable, saying I need a hand, I need a break, whatever it's all part of it.

Speaker 1: 22:21

Yeah, that's super helpful. I appreciate you sharing your personal perspective. I mean, that's what we want to hear. And so, yeah, what's your vision for shoulder check? What are you hoping to accomplish in the future?

Speaker 2: 22:34

Yeah, when we started with this, like I said, it started a little small sketch in a notebook but pretty quickly they just said I don't know like, why not? You know what I mean. That's where we started with it. The NHL has partnered with us now and the PWHL has partnered with us now and we can continue to grow across sports leagues and verticals and we have clubs and teams and programs that have made the commitment from Stanford to Seattle at this point. So I think two things that go with that One is I hope that people Susan G Komen, for example, is a great model for the way they turn up in the world now, right, and of course it's been decades and they've immeasurable good and how much money they've raised, donated, obviously to cancer research, and I think Movember obviously took that playbook and said, okay, let's do that for men's health initiatives. But the world turns pink in October and everybody knows and understands that they can take that and manifest it in any way they see fit to help the cause and athletes do it, whether they're doing pink shoelaces or pink stick tape in hockey or whatever else, or local businesses do it, or the local gym will do it and say we're raising money, right. Everything turns pink and everybody knows that's something they could do. Same thing with November.

Speaker 2: 23:43

On the one hand, I hope shoulder check works like that. We have this signature color. We're working on ways where it can turn up in the world. We've created this emoji that we just submitted into the emoji database. We hope they'll accept. We've got yeah, like you know, like there is no way for me to send them. I could cobble together some hands and a heart and a few other things that might say I'm thinking of you, but let's create an emoji that's about I'm checking in on you and you send that. As simple as a text, right. So we're trying to create ways where a shoulder check can turn up in the world in different spots. But ultimately, I hope people will see the things we're doing and be inspired to think about how they might then take the shoulder check and manifest it in a way that works for them, for their club, for their situation, for their team, for their school, whatever, right.

Speaker 2: 24:27

So, like, an idea has a beginning, or a story, rather, has a beginning, a middle and an end. Right, there's an arc to it, there's a hero, there's a bit of a bit of that kind of stuff. But an idea has a beginning and then it evolves and it will evolve based on who gets involved in the idea. And that's what the shoulder check is. It's not a story, it's an idea and hopefully it's something that people could see like, hey, that's valuable. I could use that here Again, like we were saying before a coach who might say you know what?

Speaker 2: 24:54

We're going to start every practice doing this, or at our biggest rivalry game and we've done this quite a bit we're going to circle both teams up right in the middle of the field or the court or whatever, and we're going to intermix and say I promise to reach out, check in and make contact, like just again, teaching this like all athletes and competitors ultimately respect one another. Sometimes we get distracted. Ultimately respect one another. Sometimes we get distracted. Rivalries become something that they're not that kind of thing. Sportsmanship, of course, is huge. That's one of the greatest things anybody gets out of. Competition is recognizing both sides of winning and losing and respecting competitors and that kind of stuff.

Speaker 2: 25:28

So, anyway, bringing this back into those moments. So that's what we hope. That's what we hope is that people see value in it and they'll take and bring it forward and use it any way they can, and we're here to help support that. If somebody has an idea, wants to reach out to us and say, hey, here's what we're thinking about doing with it, I can help give input, that kind of stuff, or just as much. We're happy with people to hit up our website, download our materials and just run with it. So that's really our goal and ultimately, I hope we'll write a case study at some point. Or if somebody wants to write an article about us or something whatever, make it up. And I said what did the shoulder check accomplish? And I have to say we made each other more aware of one another and that created more space for people to ask for the help that they need.

Speaker 1: 26:09

Yeah, I love it. Okay, where can we find more resources? And we have mostly sports parents that are listening, but we also have coaches and some athletes themselves. So what are your resources designed Like, who are they mostly designed for and how can we find more information?

Speaker 2: 26:24

Yeah, definitely so it's. The shouldercheckorg is the website and our foundation that tells a little bit more of our story is the HT40.org, but shouldercheckorg is where you'd want to go to check this out, and then we get a lot of content on there. There's a lot of video that explains things. We've been lucky We've had some folks make kind of short form content six minute pieces that really explain it where it came from. And I think between that and then our Instagram handle, which is at the shoulder check, there's where you'll see the message coming to life in different environments and see how other people are using it. So that's what we hope that the site can kind of educate folks on what this is and give them ideas how to do it. The Instagram page shows it out in the world and how it's coming to life in different places, and those two things taken together are equally as relevant to a coach, as a parent, as a player.

Speaker 2: 27:12

It's for everyone by design and the idea is meant to be as simple as possible by design, and sometimes people stumble in the beginning because folks especially close to home, when it first started to roll out, everybody in our circle wanted to participate, but they're all very worried about doing it wrong. And we had to, which makes sense, right, because it was all so close to us. Our kind of thing was like, look, there's no way to do it wrong. If we're out there just encouraging people to reach out, check in and make contact with one another, then we're giving them the means to do it, making it a habit. Then that's the right way to do it.

Speaker 2: 27:44

So, yeah, those would be the two places. And then there's contact us buttons and all the emails come straight to me. So obviously, write everybody back as soon as we possibly can. And sometimes we have follow-up calls, zooms, whatever. We're in a lot of schools now more and more. We have a pilot program running in an elementary school this year that's really involved. But then we also have a lot of light touch stuff going on across different high schools from New Jersey, connecticut and Massachusetts. That did a session not too long ago. So you know, bit by bit.

Speaker 1: 28:12

Yeah, awesome. Thank you so much for sharing, rob, and your story and what you're doing. I know that this is going to really resonate with moms and parents athletes, so I'm super happy to be able to share your mission and spread what you're doing even further.

Speaker 2: 28:28

Thank you so much for giving me the chance to share it with you and, yeah, I'm grateful for it, thank you.