By Cam Eberly
You are more than an athlete.
One may think that this is an easy thing for collegiate athletes to remember. But when you are spending hours and hours trying to perfect your game and never meet your expectations, it is tough mentally. It is not easy to fail, and athletes constantly face failure.
Failure leads to many mental health problems within athletics, especially at the college level. Students must balance their studies as well. There is a stigma that sharing your mental health struggles as an athlete is frowned upon and weak. Because of that, there are many unfortunate stories about athletes losing their battle to mental health without anyone ever expecting them to struggle in the slightest.
In 2019, a member of Duke University’s women’s lacrosse team committed suicide after dealing with injuries. These injuries led to mental health struggles. Her name was Morgan Rodgers. After this became public, a group of people took it upon themselves to make a change and fight against the stigma surrounding mental health for athletes. They created a club called “Morgan’s Message” to create awareness and help athletes feel comfortable talking to people about their feelings. This club was spread across many campuses all over the United States.
In 2021, Olivia Owen started the club here at Susquehanna as a first-year. She heard about this club in high school and felt inclined to spread the message
wherever she went. There was one problem: Covid-19 existed and was prevalent around the time that she found out. She was unable to do anything with it at her high school. This leads us to her first-year in fall 2021.
“I found that we didn’t have a chapter here, so I decided I wanted to bring it to this campus. It aims to end the stigma around mental health and make the conversations around mental health, specifically athletes, more prevalent around the sports,” said Owen when asked about how she made the decision to start this club.
When deciding to start this club, Owen had many hurdles that she had to overcome to make it official. First off, she was a first-year in college. This has its own difficulties as it is a big transition for everyone. “I was trying to find ground here as a freshman in the first place. Tacking on trying to get SGA on board was very overwhelming, so I decided to spread the word and get others on board first.” Along with this, she wanted to spread the word by apparel, but she was not allocated any funds since it was not an official chapter yet at Susquehanna. This was very overwhelming and frustrating for her as she had all these ideas mapped out but struggled to get it started.
Due to all these trials and hurdles, the club was not officially initiated by SGA until the fall of 2022. Since then, it has a committee of athletes that represent almost every sport here on campus. It is also not only for athletes as anyone can join this club and fight the battle against mental health. If you are interested, reach out to Olivia or contact the Instagram account to find more information @morgansmessagesusky
In closing, Olivia put it best, “You are so important and so much more than an athlete. You are not alone in your struggles.”