For 2025 Colorado College graduate Adrian Price, challenges with his mental health have led to finding an outlet in writing poetry and expressing himself in healthy ways rather than self-defeating behavior that had become all too familiar to him.
“After COVID, people really forgot how to talk to each other, both platonically and intimately. The level of connection and empathy had been lost. I started writing about that and how I felt like an exotic commodity at Colorado College, being the only person of color in most of my classes,” he expressed. “It is seen as weird to be vulnerable in this society. I am writing a book that is the culmination of my writing from my freshman to senior years, adding in the perspective now. Writing the book is like me taking the red pill from ‘The Matrix’ and seeing how I gaslight myself so that I could navigate my environment and finding parts of myself I lost along the way. I would often just write and not read it again when I first began to write, but I read my words one day as I was putting my book together and hurt my own feelings!”
Early Battles
Price began playing football at age six and though he was one of the bigger kids and he enjoyed it, his mother wanted him to find a different sport after seeing the movie “Concussion.” “My mom said, ‘They are trying to hurt you!’ he laughed. He started playing basketball at the YMCA at age nine and continued playing through college. “I had a lot of coaches who thrived on negative reinforcement. I am a very loyal person, and I stayed in that environment longer than I should have because I started at the YMCA. I found about club basketball in the sixth grade and realized others had been playing club since the fourth grade. It was a whole different world. I didn’t watch sports growing up and just thought the Y was what you did,” he recalled.
He joined the club scene and was faced with the contradiction of being happy to be there but also dealing with increased negativity. “The more competitive the level, the more toxic my coaches were,” stated Price, who finally quit his first AAU team of four years rather than continue to subject himself to that toxicity. “We were playing one of the top teams in the state and the coach sat the starting five the whole first half and we went down by 20 points. The coach was cussing us out and telling us how bad we were. This behavior was consistent for four years. It is one thing to demand greatness with positive reinforcement but another to just spew negative comments and call it coaching. I am a very self-aware person, and I needed to focus on what I could directly do to make an impact. I built my brand on defense, hustle, and attitude. Those things were non-negotiable for me and were what I could control.”
Price dealt with multiple issues off the court in his youth as well. “I was moving through school as almost a hidden figure. I had severe ADHD, and I learned very quickly about social norms and groups. I was always observant as the youngest person in my family. I grew up with all women and my mom talked to me about mental health and the need to talk things out to process them. That made it easier for me to make friends with girls because we had things to talk about. Relationships with guys usually centered around toxic masculinity and I don’t do that,” he explained.
He faced setbacks in his high school basketball career that almost made him stop playing. “I had to deep dig. Freshman year, I thought I should be playing at a higher, but I was okay with working hard. We made the championship, and I was the MVP (Most Valuable Player), so I figured I would be on the JV (junior varsity), but the coach told me that I would be on the sophomore team because a guy who didn’t play the same position as me was better than me. I felt if he was going to lie to me, he could at least make it reasonable,” Price quipped. “I went on with the mentality of keeping my head down and working hard. I was playing big and ended up running the offense at times.”
Price benefited from working 1-on-1 with an assistant coach, who helped him with his footwork. “He wanted to see me on the court. I played well in camp and the head coach, who admitted he intended to cut me, asked my mom when I got so good,” recollected. Price, who ended up leading the league in blocks his junior and senior seasons, while averaging eight points per game on a team with four players who went on to play Division I basketball/football. “I built a mindset of grit and to show myself as a person who can endure and persevere.”
Acknowledging Mental Health Issues and Starting College
As COVID hit before his senior year of high school, Price suffered an injury playing basketball outside. “I went up for a block and landed wrong, rolling my ankle. It was more than just a sprain as I somehow managed to bruise every bone on the inside of my ankle. I couldn’t walk for three weeks. Sitting in my room, I had my first real spell of depression because growing up as an athlete with goals and aspirations, being an athlete becomes your identity. It was my outlet for everything. It seemed like the world had ended,” he said.
This realization led him to reflect on his mental state during high school. “I would not have called it depression at the time, but there was just something wrong when I was 16 or 17. I had been in a long, toxic relationship full of mind manipulation for many years. My mom still talks about it like I was in a marriage at 14,” he acknowledged. “Looking back, I wouldn’t have changed things other than listening more.”
The depression rose at a time of uncertainty, including whether he would even have a senior season of basketball. "I felt like I was boiling up on the inside. I can figure out how to push through almost anything, but now I was struggling with girls and basketball, and my best friend, who lived five minutes from him, committed to a prep school, which I found out on social media. That was heartbreaking for me. The combination of all that and COVID was a lot for me to deal with,” Price asserted.
When the Colorado College men’s basketball coach reached out to him, Price admitted he didn’t know the school existed. “I lived in Colorado my whole life and had never heard of the school. I was thinking about going to Texas Tech or Howard. I took a leap of faith to go there without really knowing anything other than it was a beautiful school with good academics,” he recalled. “The microaggressions were very harmful when I first got there. I had been in a PWE (predominantly white environments) most of my life, but CC was different. I had never felt so Black until I got there. It was interesting so I started writing poetry to really process my thoughts and taking creative writing classes. I thought I would major in physics, but it would have been so hard with the basketball schedule and lifting. Although I am good at math at my own pace, I am not an intensive math person who would flourish in three-hour Calculous classes. I had an older teammate who was very important for me finding my own path.”
Sophomore Year and Tough Days
“At the end of my sophomore year, I was not okay. My mental health was declining as I had been fully neglecting it. The summer after my freshman year was a rough time for me as I had a lot of personal things going on while preparing for the next year after being named to the Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference (SCAC) All-Freshman Team,” Price described. “In my sophomore year, I was crying in pre-game warmups and trying to push through. I put all my eggs into one basket to play some of my best basketball while at the same time facing some of my darkest times.
In his sophomore season, he ranked second on the team in minutes, starting all 26 games while averaging 8.7 points and 4.8 rebounds per game while ranking third in the SCAC in field goal percentage, connecting on 55.1 percent of his shots from the field. Combining that with his tenacious defense and collecting 12 double-digit performances, Price hoped to make the all-conference team. “I remember Coach read out the all-conference names in the San Antonio airport before we boarded a plane and there was no mention of my name. My heart hit the ground. I had so much rage, anger and disappointment built up in me that I remember feeling numb other than tears falling throughout the plane ride. That was the last straw for me at that time. I felt like I had taken my last hit,” explained Price. “After we landed, Coach said They forgot to mention to him that I had made honorable mention all-conference. I didn’t feel like it was an honorable mention year with the work I put in, and the summer I had had going into that year, getting up at 5:45 a.m., so I could go to the gym before my mom had work. playing anywhere I could find a gym, and just the emotional stress I had endured that year I felt like I showed up and showed out.”
Price was seemingly working during any free time he stayed active on campus, eventually serving as the sole student member of the Colorado College Board of Trustees, the governing board of the college. “Our (sophomore) season was done right before spring break. Before that, I worked 57 hours for 3½ weeks of on-campus jobs going from one to the next. I wanted to keep myself busy and not be alone or around the team. I knew I had to rebuild my mind in different ways. I always am all in and give everything I must give in whatever I do, but as a young person, I hurt myself by being in places longer than I needed to be,” he admitted.
He entered college at 6’6” and 240 pounds but at the end of the academic year, he was prescribed an incorrect antibiotic for strep throat that didn't work and lost 25 pounds in four days. By the beginning of sophomore year, he was back up to 250 pounds. “That was the most explosive I felt. I was 255 at the end of the season and was performing at a high level. Then I took a break from basketball after the year that I had and was partying hard in the spring and putting on weight, mostly from drinking, and was pushing 270-275 pounds by the summer,” he recognized. “My aunt was diagnosed with cancer and one night when she was on her cancer meds, she brought up my weight. The alcohol had caught up to me, and I was angry and hurt, mostly because what she was saying was true and that checked me back into reality. I started cleaning up my diet and began writing profusely.”
“My sophomore writing focused on self-love, valuing yourself, and what you are thinking about. What you watch, what you listen to, and who you surround yourself will have a great impact on you. What you listen to goes through your mind so if I needed to let something out, I would listen to sad music for example,” he continued.
Junior Year
Prior to his junior season, Price was named to the 2023 USA Basketball Men’s 3x3 Nations League Team that competed at the Americas Conference in Rancagua, Chile. His weight had reached 280 pounds in the summer, but he was back down to 270 for the tournament. “I had back issues on the 8½ -hour plane ride in economy class. I stretched for 45 minutes before every game. With a 12-second shot clock playing 3-on-3, you're managing exhaustion, but it was a great experience,” he remarked. “I hit the game-winner against Canada and there were a lot of ‘greatness moments’ on that trip. You must expose yourself to a lot of uncomfortable things to achieve great moments. I have a tattoo that says, ‘greatness is a choice,’”
He used that experience as a strong foundation for his junior year. “Preseason was the hardest conditioning I had. I got into shape and was in and out of the starting rotation, where I had one of my most efficient seasons in the minutes I played for a very talented team. I told my coach I will be the best cheerleader when we are winning, and you don’t need me. If we are losing, I make us better, so I need to be on the court,” stated Price, who earned SCAC all-tournament honors as the Tigers upset 10th-ranked Trinity University in the semifinals to advance to the championship game, eventually falling to Centenary College. “It took me back to my high school days. When we played Centenary, it seemed the whole city of Shreveport (Louisiana) came out. I enjoyed every minute of it.”
As good as things were on the court, he continued to struggle outside of basketball. “Another toxic relationship had me searching for better things off the court. I still hadn’t addressed by mental health although now I am aware of it and how I am neglecting it. I have always tried to create a space for people when they want to talk as I know someone who took their own life. Now that I had those thoughts myself, I actually understood it,” he expressed. “I continued to tell people to create those spaces to talk and to be themselves because I have not always allowed myself to be my authentic self. I also have a tattoo that says, ‘joy is my superpower’ and I think back to how I almost lost my life when I was two years old (from a dog bite). If I wasn’t supposed to be here, I wouldn’t be here. No matter what age you are, it is your first life, and you are learning how to navigate it. Help others and extend more grace to others and yourself.”
Spain and a Tough Senior Year
He studied in Spain for 2½ months at the end of his junior year. “It was transformational. I was able to write a lot more, to dive into writing with this immersive education. Spain had won the most recent World Cup and with it also being Celebration of the Bulls, the country was a very joyful place,” he remembered. “I cut off my relationship so that I could heal after a recurring cycle of a honeymoon phase for a week followed by two weeks of not talking from winter break through May. That was really bad for my mental health, and I compromised a lot because I was lonely, but I wouldn’t change it,” stated Price, who stayed in Chicago, a city he aspires to live in some day, upon his return. “I was radiating with joy when I got back from Spain, but that was dissipating the closer it got to my returning to school. I knew my senior year would take every ounce of energy, passion, and courage to get through.”
Unfortunately, Price’s senior year would be his toughest yet. “It got to the point that I was throwing up two or three times a day at practice. I also had a big eczema flare-up that caused my feet to bleed while I played and was taking a steroid in my stomach. I was having panic attacks and then getting back to the drills to win them,” he recollected. “We got a new assistant coach It was clear I was not the main option as I was once playing nearly 30 minutes a game and was now playing four to 12 minutes at times. I never thought my senior year would look like this. I had multiple conversations with my coach when I decided to put myself first and told him I would do whatever we need to win, knowing that that meant I most likely would see the court less.”
Price called an early season trip to Memphis as his breaking point. “I woke up crying profusely. We started the tournament playing WashU, who was ranked No. 2 and very defense oriented. We focus on defense and rebounding, playing 3½ minutes of ‘Colorado College’ basketball before needing a sub. However, we had five players play 27 minutes or more in that tournament and the way we play basketball it just wasn't productive. I was writing a lot, but at that point then later as the season progressed, I was getting worse, I had to express to my team that I was not okay,” he described. “I was aggressively throwing up and had lost 30 pounds. Previously, I didn’t feel the need to ask anyone for help and that I just had to figure it out myself. I am very competitive and team oriented. I didn’t want to let them down and let them know what was happening because I did feel like I was letting them down every day because I wasn't myself.”
Taking Writing to the Next Level
Price made the decision to turn the poetry and his other writings into a book. “The point of the book is to show that we are all human. I have been through a lot and don’t have the answers, but what I have learned is to live in the truth of the book’s title, ‘I Don’t Know but Be You,’” he explained. “I care about people in general. I want people to feel included because I know what it is like to be excluded, for people to count you out, to tell you the things that you can’t do. I want to provide a space where people can succeed. I still remember my sixth-grade teacher Miss Lyons teaching us about the difference between a fixed mindset and a growth mindset. Low and behold, what she taught is true. Our abilities and intelligence can be developed.”
He hopes that people see themselves somewhere in his writing and won’t be afraid of achieving great things. “Show the light that you can see in others. Everyone great has been called crazy at some point. At the end of the day, you have to believe in yourself and surround yourself with people who believe in you,” Price elucidated. “I choose to be kind. It takes courage and humility to think about how your words will affect people. I am a simple man. I remember the things you told me and what you said matters to me. Show up and being a person of your word are non-negotiables.”
Having navigated through numerous challenges already, Price uses his writing as a form of healing for himself and hopefully for those who read it. “Senior year was one of the hardest years of my life, but I have emerged better from it. Acknowledge when things are rough so that you can tackle it. I have run away from my problems before or looked for healing through basketball or women. My book is, in essence, all my deepest and darkest thoughts in the past four years and becoming the man little Adrian needed,” he divulged.
When he first put the book together, it was 300 pages, but he cut it down to fewer than 125 pages. “I took a lot of things out after reading them for the first time since I wrote them. I read it with a view of Pike’s Peak from the fourth floor of the campus library. There were times I was profusely crying while I was editing and I needed to go outside, put on a fun song, and reset,” he stated. “It did not end up the way I originally thought I would write it. I am still healing and have been going to therapy frequently this year. I hope my vulnerability will encourage people to show up and be themselves. We can all do our part for people to be able to be authentic. It doesn’t matter whether you are in athletics, band, theatre, or whatever your interest is. Inspire people to see the potential in themselves. We can do the things we think we can’t do. Greatness is in all of us and the keys to being great are hidden behind the walls we have built to survive. You just must look inside yourself. Let my vulnerability be a small hand that lets you know you’re not alone we all experience many different things that hurt us to our core but through those things is where we find who we are meant to be.”
Price is currently applying to grad school with the intent to earn his Master of Fine Arts and Master of Arts degrees in prose and poetry.
Adrian Price Poetry
I wish that when people read my writing, they would tell me how it makes them feel. Like, how does your body react after seeing something that I’ve wrote? What comes to mind when the words play through your head? How do you connect to the words that you see that I’ve written? Because when I write, you can see the thoughts processing, you can see my emotions being painted as I’m typing, and then when I finish, you can see the sense of release that is expressed throughout my body.
Because even though I love to write, I tend to write from a place of pain simply because I feel like my emotions are at their most vulnerable point when I am either sad, angry, and/or just in awe — and what I mean by awe is: if I have a crush on someone, then if I am writing a piece about that, I find myself writing from a place of wanting — a place of childlike joy. And I will say that I really do enjoy writing from a place of joy, especially if it's involving a girl, because I picture myself as a grown man just chilling in a kid’s body, but I just wanna be a kid and feel the raw emotions that come with that.
So, you could say that my writing — or my alter ego when it comes to writing — is 10-year-old Adrian, who is full of imagination and spontaneous ideas and feelings. In saying that, I definitely have layers to my alter ego. While yes, I am a kid, I still have the tools I have learned from traumatic experiences, either from relationships with friends or girlfriends, that have helped me mature faster than you would think.
So, a 10-year-old kid with a mature foundation but very raw talent and emotions. I would say that my writing is therapeutic, but also it’s interesting, because I will write one of my poems and then just leave it alone. I will read it once and then send it to someone for thoughts, but when I eventually go back and read it, I am genuinely shocked at the words that I’m reading, and all I can think to myself is: damn.
Did I really write this? And I say this to say that I think I surprise myself with my own raw emotions.
Credits:
Photos courtesy of Adrian Price Non-USA photos by Daryl Batt USA photos by Danny Suriel/DC Sports Media