DENVER — San Francisco State Athletics recently sent four student-athletes and a pair of administrators to the 2025 NCAA Division II APPLE Training Institute, the nation's leading substance misuse prevention and health promotion program for student-athletes and athletics administrators.

SFSU student-athletes Brayden Concepcion (wrestling), Parsa Hadjighasemi (men's basketball), Shaunessy Cardwell (softball), and Marissa Jordan (softball) were accompanied by Interim Director of Athletics Brandon Davis and Assistant Director of Athletics for Sports Medicine Bryce Schussel.

APPLE is an acronym for Athletic Prevention Programming and Leadership Education. Developed and coordinated by the University of Virginia's Gordie Center and funded by the NCAA since 1991, the APPLE Training Institute offers teams of student-athletes, coaches, athletic trainers, administrators, and substance misuse prevention specialists an opportunity to evaluate the environment within their athletics departments and develop specific actions plan to enhance prevention efforts. Since 1992, over 60 percent of all NCAA member institutions have attended one of the annual conferences. 

"The APPLE Training Institute was an amazing opportunity to learn about topics that aren't always talked about. Not just learning about prevention, but receiving a variety of resources to make our campus safer," said Concepcion. "Having zero to no knowledge about substance misuse, I found it really interesting to see how negative outcomes are easily preventable. We're excited to bring what we learned back to our campus community." 

The eight learning outcomes for the APPLE Training Institutes are for participants to:

• improve relationships between administrators and student-athletes
• increase understanding of the APPLE Model
• increase ability to impact substance misuse problems
• increase student ability to confront teammates
• increase student leadership skills
• increase knowledge of alcohol, tobacco, and other drug (ATOD) issues for student-athletes
• increase knowledge of effective ATOD prevention programs
• create a clearly defined, measurable action plan