**Trigger warning: mentions of self-harm and suicidal thoughts are included below. If you or a loved one are suffering through a mental health battle, please see the resources attached. **

HONOLULU – The darkness can consume any of us.

Over the past decade, suicide has become the second-most common cause of death among NCAA student-athletes, according to a study released in 2024 from the British Journal of Sports Medicine. The proportion of deaths via suicide in college student-athletes has also more than doubled since the study began in 2002.

With constant pressure from social media rolling in and overexposure to comparisons of young athletes, it’s not hard to see why doom and gloom are the norm. With increased focus on negatives, there has been a push as discussions advanced over the past half-decade to invest in mental health resources for student-athletes from high school to the professional ranks.

For Kanda Korver, founder of Kore Vibration, conversation wasn’t enough.

Action was the way to help.

Korver experienced all sorts of pressures and politics in youth sports as she toiled through gymnastics. The youngest of three kids, Korver began her journey as a gymnast at age 3 with hopes of following in her older sister’s footsteps.

With practices spanning five hours or more and taking place on six days of the week, time management and prioritization of activities were just a couple of the skills being taught to Korver at a young age. While it was a big commitment that forced her to skip out on other experiences, gymnastics provided valuable lessons that shaped the person she would become.

“Gymnastics taught me what it means to work hard,” she recalled of her journey on the mats, beams and bars. “The thing that I really enjoyed about gymnastics was that all of your hard work did pay off at some point.”

Some of that hard work included conditioning until athletes cried. Some was doing “oversplits” to test out mental toughness while working on flexibility training.

And then there were politics from toxic coaches.

“I think gymnastics and a lot of other sports are super, super political,” Korver said. “When you’re in that space, learning politics firsthand and how sometimes things just aren’t fair really helped me realize the realities of the world at the same time.”

Her gymnastics journey came to an end by the age of 13 after she broke both of her wrists doing a drill. Broken bones weren’t a new thing for Korver, but the injury to her wrists gave her an inflection point to sit on.

“The pain hit, I looked up and then my coach was there and I kind of was just like, what am I doing? Like I love this sport, but at that point all of my friends had quit … I just wanted to take a break,” she remembered. “So, I ended up taking a break and I just never went back.”

 Korver had another sport calling to her. A team sport.

Volleyball.

At school with her friends, Korver was convinced to try out for the volleyball team and quickly fell in love with the cheers and camaraderie that came as an added perk of the sport. Instead of silently hoping to be slightly better than your own teammates in gymnastics, it was a genuine uplifting environment that pushed the same hard work, fitting her personality better.

“It’s this very competitive swap that went from competitive [with gymnastics] to collaboration with volleyball and that just really suited my character a lot better,”  Korver said of the sport switch.

It was a big change for another reason. With love for the sport, she worked tirelessly to find a spot to continue playing in college. Without much knowledge of the innerworkings of recruiting, Korver spent many days and nights with her mom trying to research what to do and how to get an opportunity at the next level.

“Sports moms make it all possible,” Korver said smiling.

Eventually, she found a home.

A 5-foot-2 libero recruit, Korver went on to play four years of collegiate volleyball at Occidental College in California, racking up 114 service aces and 852 digs across 93 career matches.

Not too bad for someone who didn’t think they would be recruited by anyone.

“To any athlete out there that is doubting that they can make it to the next level, just keep going and keep trusting yourself,” Korver insisted.

After graduation, she went on to work for Facebook and saw many of the challenges that new-age athletes would continue to face on social media. Korver persisted for years with the tech giant but made sure to get back into sports through coaching on the side.

Stuck in the doldrums of the COVID-19 pandemic and trying to make the most of a nasty situation for her high school girls’ varsity volleyball team in California, Korver also was quietly battling the same struggles she knew others faced.

“I went through some severe mental health episodes myself,” she shared during an appearance on Wake Up in the Den with Ku’ulei Agbayani. “That includes self-harm. That includes severe depression, anxiety.”

After battles with her own mind, Korver worked to the other side with a new outlook on life and a new goal in mind.

She was going to start coaching mental health for athletes and work against the negative forces she’d watch grow stronger in that battle for kids. Too many kids were dying too young from battles against mental health and not enough resources were being made available to help.

With the chance to go remote at her job with Facebook, Korver made the move to Hawai’i and poured time and effort into building her brainchild, Kore Vibration. In the islands, she could also live closer to her family and connect with the roots of her lineage.

Her mom was born on O’ahu and met her dad at UH’s medical school. Korver’s grandmother was from Plantation Camp 4 in Waiakea-Uka and her grandfather was from Lāna’i. Every place she turned in life, it was the islands calling her home.

Next came the creation of resources for players, parents and coaches to all use for protecting and preserving the mental health. Korver was hellbent on reminding people that athletics are a medium for “connection, purpose, community and growth.”

Some of the tools available to athletes are as simple as a free 20 affirmations for athletes to help train for a more positive mindset, goals-setting worksheet or post-training reflections. For parents and coaches, there are reminders and tips on how to creative positive environments and reduce the trend of burning kids out from sports before age 14.

Then came face-to-face work and Korver getting involved with teams and athletes. What started as a passion project has become an integral part of training for more than 1,000 student-athletes, parents and coaches in less than five years and only continues to grow.

Most recently, Korver and Kore Vibration produced the “Team Talk” card game for programs and athletes to use as a tool to grow closer and have meaningful conversations. Split into three categories titled Game Time, POV and Something Fun, “Team Talk” promotes athletes having conversations about a variety of topics in a safe environment for experiences and feelings.

“It basically is a way to ‘gamify’ mental health [training], but really what it is, is to hold space and conversation,” Korver said of her card game. “You can play by yourself … you can play with your parents; you can play with as many people as you want on your team. You can play with your coach or not play with your coach … but yeah, it’s just a way to build trust and just talk about [things].”

Korver closed out her appearance on Hawaii Sports Radio Network’s morning show playing a quick round of “Team Talk” as she was asked if she would change the sports she played if she could go back.

“I would not change it,” Korver quickly responded. “Like I said, gymnastics really was my first love, and it taught me so much … I do think about, if I didn’t quit gymnastics, where would I be? Because I did go the volleyball route … But I would never change it for the world.”

University of Hawai’i women’s soccer standout Nalani Damacion is one of many athletes that Korver has come to work with. The sophomore midfielder has even started to give back to the local community of youth soccer players herself, providing young girls with a female athletic role model to see and get to know.

Changing the stigmas and current style of youth sports takes a full team effort that begins with one person at a time. Together, Korver hopes, we can make sports a positive, encouraging environment that will cultivate a healthier athletic ecosystem going forward.

“We’ve got to do it together,” Korver said. “All of us.”

Suicide Prevention Hotline: Call or text 988, or chat at 988lifeline.org

More mental health resources – CDC