Content warning: Mention of suicide
Scott Casey-Woolridge (“Scoot” as he’s known by friends) is a fifth-year Otago student who’s planning an utterly insane physical feat for Matariki weekend to raise money for the I Am Hope Foundation. I Am Hope focuses on mental health, providing aid to young people who are struggling. Driven by his own experiences with mental health and generational trauma, he intends to complete a marathon-length ski, row, bike, and run – all back to back, with “maybe half an hour tops” in between. That's 42.1km of each. One after the other. In one day.
Interpreting the Misogi challenge as doing “one challenging thing a year that shapes your other 364 days,” Scott rowed a kilometre for every day of the month in September last year – 1km on the 1st, 2km on the 2nd, and so forth. He told Critic that he has always been physically fit, and was just “spitballing on the piss” with his mates and said, “I think I might do this next. I don't wanna be one of those people that just says shit, so…” The follow through is more than admirable, especially considering the average Dunedin student can’t even manage the drunken commitment of making it to class the next day. He added that his mates have been absolutely instrumental in helping him through this journey, noting Percy, Tiny, Moody, Sio, and Pete in particular.
Scott laid out the logistics: “I’ll finish the ski, have a bit of food, some fluids, and then jump on the rower. The ski will be hard to eat or drink because I'm holding two handles, rowing and biking though I'm sitting down so that'll be a little easier.” A confused Critic asked how he would ski given the lack of mountains in Dunedin, doubting Mt Cargill’s occasional dusting of snow quite counted. “Erg,” he replied. Critic wondered briefly if he was having a stroke. Turns out it’s a gym thing – a skiing version of the fan-driven rowing and biking machines.
Scott is aiming to complete all of this under 14 hours, while adding, entirely calmly, that although it is promoted as a one day thing, he’d been envisioning himself waking up the next day and doing it again if he was still shy of the $51,100 goal. “Until we get there. Whatever it takes,” said Scott. Jesus fuck.
The specific goal of raising $51,100 is because one session of counselling or therapy costs $140 on average, and multiplying that by 365 days in a year gets that figure. Scott wants to raise enough for one individual a day for a year. He added, “That's just what it takes right? That first one, and I know it takes a while to gain a relationship with your counsellor or whoever, but this is to just get the ball rolling, and I think that's what's important.”
Scott’s own mental health journey began with a difficult relationship last year where he discovered that he had an avoidant attachment style (a low tolerance for emotional intimacy and closeness). He then worked through a self-development book. From this, he remembered a traumatic event from his teenage years: intervening when his mum tried to kill herself.
“Talking about the experience I've had is not for pity,” said Scott. “The way I see it, there are a lot of people that have stories like these and might be bottling it up in one way or another. If you think there's something in your life that's negatively affected you, reach out to your mates, talk to someone with a professional opinion. My experience is that people say, ‘Oh it's family stuff, everyone has family stuff. I don't want to be a burden by introducing them to my shit.’ But I’ve had some really cool yarns with people, and it's totally fine. No one's gonna pass judgement.”
In Scott’s opinion, New Zealand has a real problem in terms of mental health. “Society tells us a lot that we shouldn’t talk about it. There's that stigma that people are becoming soft because they are talking about it. It’s just not true. People's realities aren’t fake – your reality is your reality.”
He also began to consider generational trauma and how his mum’s upbringing and losing her own mum at a young age meant that she dealt with that her whole life – which then affected Scott. “I think in two generations' time we might be able to get mental health in NZ in a really good spot. Hope is a massive driving factor – just having that hope that we will suss our shit out.”
While he trains, Scott is trying to prove to himself that he can flip his negative experience into something that drives him to do something positive. Beyond that, he said that when things suck he replaces the thought of “Oh, this is a shit time” with the thought of how many other people he is doing this for, and how much larger it is than being just about him.
Fundraising for ‘I Am Hope’ is also personal for Scott as an aspiring teacher. He appreciates the foundation and all that they do for young people, recognising that their main demographic is teenagers, who are “going through a lot of changes as it is, and dealing with things at the same time. I Am Hope does a sensational job at subsidising these things for the kids going through stuff.”
While Scott is aware that students don’t have a huge amount of disposable income to donate to support the cause, he noted that “it's all exponential – spreading the word, spreading the awareness, promoting people to have difficult conversations, maybe even ones they're putting off with themselves.”
On the first weekend of June, take a break from manic exam prep and go join Scott for a community run and sausage sizzle with a gold coin donation, all of which will go towards the $51,100 goal. “If people want to flick me a message that they wanna come for a run or do some gnarly shit, that would also be well received,” he said. You can reach him via Instagram (@scott.cw).