THE ANGELS THAT SAVED ME

By Jerry Hill
Baylor Bear Insider

April 8, 2009. That date may mean absolutely nothing to you, but it means everything to Dr. Yarlie Nicolas.

A year after a second suicide attempt, the then-22-year-old senior at Florida Atlantic University went through a 10-day fast to "consecrate myself." And on the 10^th and final day of the fast, she had a dream that has shaped her path over the last 15 years.

"I was in this big stadium, and I saw myself surrounded by athletes, college students from all cultures," she said. "It was like a Super Bowl halftime show with a big screen behind me. I see myself standing next to, I believe it was going to be my husband. But we were both together, he was speaking, I was speaking, and the whole stadium was quiet. And I just remember thinking: 'A football in one hand and the Bible in the other, and athletes listening to me speak.'''

To put the dream in context, Nicolas' favorite football player of all time was Green Bay Packer Hall of Famer Reggie White, "The Minister of Defense," who preached about bringing people to God through football.

"That dream was kind of my prophetic, Joseph in the Bible dream, kind of guiding me on my path," said Dr. Nicolas, who was hired last August as Baylor's Assistant Athletics Director for Mental Health Services. "I always had an interest and desire to help people, I just never thought this would be the advocate."

The narrative fits, though, because she has had guardian angels at every step along the way.

Of Haitian descent, Dr. Nicolas and her siblings are the first generation in their family born in America, but she carries her heritage with pride.

"When people say Haitian American, the automatic image is of the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere," she said. "That's always the stereotype of Haitians. I carry my heritage with pride because of the stories. I'm standing on the shoulders of giants.

"A lot of times in the mental health space, we only go face value. We don't think about the story. Everybody has a story. I think about my grandfather and his journey. I think about my grandmother and her journey. Sometimes, we look at people at face value or their profession or the color of their skin. But we never ask, 'What's your story?'''

While Dr. Nicolas's family story begins in Haiti, her own journey started in Boston and then shifted to the South Florida area, where she went to high school, college and post-grad.

"Being the only black girl in certain spaces" has made her very self-aware, Dr. Nicolas said.

"I've always been the underdog. I've always been the person that no one ever sees, besides my family. Thank God for my mom," she said.

To this day, she calls her mom, Mrs. Yardley Nicolas, "my defensive lineman."

"I remember when I was in fourth grade, I had a teacher that told my mom I'm not going to college . . . in fourth grade, in front of my face," she said. "I internalized that as, I'm stupid. But mother said, 'Excuse me?' My mom was very classy, like Claire Huxtable from the Cosby Show. But she said, 'Excuse me, my daughter is a bright child. She is going to college. So, you will not speak that over my child.'''

That night, Yardley Nicolas called Yarlie and her siblings in and prayed a blessing over them that "the spirit of intelligence come upon you."

The next year, Mr. Robert Butterwick, her fifth-grade teacher – another angel – "changed my life."

"Mr. Butterwick said, 'You're not dumb, you actually learn differently,''' she said. "And I told him, 'No, the teacher last year said I was dumb.' He said, 'No, you're a visual learner.' This was the first time I remember hearing that word. And he taught the class in such a visually stimulating way that I became excited about education. I went from a struggling student to a straight-A student, to graduate top of my class, summa cum laude."

With visions of being a surgeon, Nicolas was a pre-med student at FAU in Boca Raton, majoring in chemistry. But the path changed in August 2008 – a year before her prophetic dream – when Yarlie had her second suicide attempt.

Mrs. Pamela Brown, her mentor and friend, took her by the hand and said, "You're going to counseling."

"I told her, 'I'm not crazy,' because culturally speaking, we don't go to therapy. We go to church. That's where we get fixed,''' she said. "But she said, 'No, you're going to therapy, you need to talk to somebody.' And I still remember her taking my hand and saying, 'God is going to use you. You're going to impact so many people. I just need you to not give up.' I'm getting teary-eyed just thinking about it. 'Who is this lady and why does she see so much light in me?'''
Dr. Yarlie Nicholas

After that first therapy session, Yarlie immediately switched her major from chemistry to psychology, graduating from FAU in 2009. While working on a master's degree in Mental Health Counseling at Nova Southeastern University in Ft. Lauderdale, "the opportunity of a lifetime opened up for me," she said.

As a sports marketing intern for NBA player Dwyane Wade of the Miami Heat, Dr. Nicolas got to learn the "business side of sports." Eventually becoming a senior marketing intern, she recruited other college interns and also worked with the Miami Dolphins' Jason Taylor and other current and retired NBA and NFL players.

Through that, Dr. Nicolas also met a lot of mentors who are now in the NBA and NFL, but she also had her "ah-ha" moment watching Wade go before the ESPN cameras while he was in the middle of a very public divorce.

"I remember being in the background, the door closed, and I see him just sitting there," she said. "And in his gaze, I could see the sadness in his face. I could see him just thinking. And the kids were small at that time. And I'm like, 'That's it.' He had this big entourage with him, and I saw how their interactions impacted a lot of his dynamics in front of the cameras."

In a similar situation, Dr. Nicolas was sitting with Reggie Bush's future wife, Lilit Avagyan, while Reggie and Jason Taylor were doing some press obligations.

"She came back, and we just started to talk," Yarlie said. "She was telling me her story. And she asked me, 'What do you want to be?' I said, 'I want to be a doctor. I really want to be in the mental health space and working with athletes.' I just knew something was calling me into that profession. And she said, 'You're going to be a great doctor. No one has ever talked to me that way.'''

While working on her PhD in Marriage and Family Therapy from Dr. Kiran Patel's College of Osteopathic Medicine at Nova Southeastern, Yarlie was thrown another roadblock. During her first year in the program, one of her professors had asked them to write about what specifically they wanted to do when they became doctors.

On a paper where she wrote about wanting to be a marriage and family therapist working with athletes and their families, the professor wrote: "Marriage and family therapists do not work with athletes. Choose a different profession," and circled it.

"When a male colleague said he wanted to work in sports, the whole class applauded," she said. "But when I said I wanted to work with sports, it was more like, 'Why don't you work with police? That'd be great.'

"I know the impact of that statement and what that did. I always tap into my inner-Serena Williams."

That was when another angel came to her rescue. Dr. Chris Burnett, who became chair of the department, told her, "I believe in you."

His message, though, came with a caution: "I'm going to be honest with you. You are a black female in a very prestigious private school. You're in a profession that is not necessarily tailored to women like you. Don't take this the wrong way, but you're going to have to work twice as hard to even get the recognition. And you have to silence the noise."

Dr. Burnett became her Bill Belichick, and his nickname for Yarlie was Tom Brady.

"Tom Brady, to me, is a symbol of my journey," she said. "He was an underdog, sixth-round draft pick. And every class I took, Dr. Burnett would tell me, 'Three yards and a cloud of dust. Stop thinking about the Super Bowl. I need you to go to practice. Three yards and a cloud of dust.' Whether it was couples therapy or whatever, I looked at research about athletes and their family dynamics. And he was like, 'You're going to do this, aren't you?'''

Following that dream she had 15 years ago, Dr. Nicolas was hired as the Assistant AD for Mental Health & Sports Performance at the University of Memphis in August of 2022. And then, a year later, she found the perfect intersectionality of faith, sports and mental health at Baylor.

"First of all, looking at what she has done in her career thus far working with elite athletes and having a really diverse exposure to what that looks like," said Kenny Boyd, Executive Senior Associate AD for Student-Athlete Services. "She was at the University of Memphis in a similar role, so there was that understanding of the collegiate model and the challenge we have to apply mental health services.

"But I also look for those that have had experience working with elite athletes, because that's our challenge every day of how we deliver care to athletes of a high caliber. And then, as I started having conversations with her, her passion for helping people just screams at you."

Dr. Nicolas said one of the things that attracted her to Baylor was the concept of person over player and Preparing Champions for Life.

"That's pretty much up my alley, vision-wise," she said, "because I want to prepare you not for the field, not for the court. I want to prepare you for outside of that, because God sent the Belichicks to help me prepare that space. . . . My mentor is holding my hand, speaking life into me. My chair, in his very Belichick demeanor, very direct, but his word spoke life into me.

"This is not a career for me, this is a ministry."

THE ANGELS THAT SAVED ME

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