The Philadelphia Union is hosting a series of soccer-themed mental health clinics to help young athletes

Midway through Saturday’s Philadelphia Union match, a youth soccer team from Upper Darby took the field to play a quick match, a hallmark of halftime at professional soccer games. But once they got off the field, the players — all under 12 years old — received an unusual gift: A bag tag with a QR code, leading to a website full of information on mental health.

It’s part of HeadFirst, a new program that the Union Foundation, the team’s charitable arm, is launching to help combat a growing youth mental health crisis. In addition to hosting the website, the team will host a series of educational workshops aimed at helping youth soccer players in the region navigate common mental health issues like anxiety and depression. The program will also organize a mental health conference next spring.

At the game on Saturday, the young players from the Upper Darby Futbol Club were directed by their coach to read the website and come to the team’s next practice prepared to discuss what they’d learned.

“Already, they were excited about it — talking about anxiety, depression, and bullying. One of the kids on the team mentioned that there were bullies at his school — they related it to their experience immediately,” said Julia Quillen, a club board member.

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That enthusiasm is what foundation staff hope to stoke in dozens of young people over the next six months. Paul Howard, the foundation’s executive director, said he and other Union staff were inspired by professional athletes who publicly spoke about their own mental health struggles during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“There’s a growing mental health crisis, exacerbated by the pandemic,” he said. “Luckily, some prominent athletes have helped to destigmatize the conversation. Piggybacking off those celebrities, we wanted to do more.”

The program is free, funded by Independence Blue Cross, the region’s largest insurer, and developed by researchers at the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine.

The workshops, the centerpiece of the program, are aimed at 13- to 15-year-olds and held in three sessions: two in person at Subaru Park, the Chester stadium where the Union play, with a final session on Zoom.

The program’s website also includes information on mental health topics like anxiety, depression, and grief, with sections specifically tailored to athletes, their parents, and their coaches.

“If we meet kids where they are — on the field, with their coaches, with their parents at home — we can help support the player by giving them [coping] strategies. And we can tell coaches and caregivers red flags that they should be looking for,” said Jessica Glass Kendorski, a PCOM professor and department chair who helped design the website.

Scott Glassman, the director of PCOM’s Master of Applied Positive Psychology program, modified for the youth athletes his Happier You program — a series of workshops designed to help participants increase positive thinking to improve their overall well-being. To make it work for HeadFirst, he tried to frame mental health concepts in language a young soccer player could relate to.

“For instance, the idea of stopping a negative voice, a critic’s voice, in your mind — we call that a block, just like a goalie would block your shot,” he said. “The kids think, ‘Oh, I can block that thought, like knocking the ball away from an opponent.’”

Julia Schumacher, a PCOM graduate who ran a series of pilot sessions for HeadFirst, said young athletes are often operating in high-pressure environments without knowing how to express thoughts of anxiety or depression.

“I played soccer from the time I was 2 all the way through to the college level, and I never had a program like this. I mentally struggled with performance anxiety, and anxiety in general,” she said. Workshops like HeadFirst, she said, can teach athletes to navigate negative thinking — and apply those skills off the field.

Those skills are especially necessary after the isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic, said Brady Gonsalves, UDFC’s president, a nonprofit league with some 450 players. Gonsalves, whose son also plays for the club, has coached teams there for five years. After a year away from friends and school, he said, some of his players returned to the field unsure of how to navigate social situations, or experiencing serious anxiety or sadness about making mistakes during a game.

“There’s a high number of very emotional reactions and responses from kids that I didn’t see pre-pandemic,” he said. “It’s tough.”

The first several workshops will be available only to soccer players from Delaware County, but the foundation hopes to expand the program to the entire Philadelphia region.

Quillen, the board member at UDFC, attended a meeting Howard hosted before last Wednesday’s Union game, pitching HeadFirst to soccer clubs in Delaware County.

She and other coaches said they’re eager to have their students participate and hope the foundation can expand access to more students in the area. At UDFC, Quillen said, a number of athletes speak English as their second language. At Wednesday’s meeting, she asked Howard if the foundation could offer HeadFirst programs in languages besides English.

While the program is only offered in English for now, Howard said the organization is “very keen” to offer the course in Spanish in the future.

“You guys can help us refine what we’ve presented to you, so that when we do roll this out to the five counties, we’ve got an even better version,” he said.