The world of American ladies’s soccer has been saddened with the loss of life this week of Stanford goalkeeper Katie Meyer.
In a single day, the worst worry of nearly everybody near her was realized when the health worker dominated that Meyer’s loss of life was by her personal hand.
I’ve observed, particularly on Twitter, that the deaths of younger faculty student-athletes, particularly ladies, are topic to an enhanced (and, I daresay, uncomfortable) degree of scrutiny and prurient curiosity. Hours after Meyer’s loss of life made the information, bots and tabloid websites had been asking the query: “Was it suicide?”
Yesterday afternoon, the Santa Clara County coroner got here down with the reply, “Sure.”
It’s a horrible tragedy, particularly given the extent of play Meyer exhibited throughout her collegiate profession. As a redshirt sophomore, she backstopped the Cardinal to a nationwide championship. Since then, the Cardinal went 19-12-3 and didn’t win an NCAA Event sport.
It’s lower than me to find out whether or not the downturn in Stanford’s fortunes on the pitch led to Meyer’s emotions off the sector.
However I’ve identified faculty athletes to have taken their very own lives after their careers are over — women and men. In fact, for me, I all the time consider Sarah Devens, who took her life after her final ladies’s lacrosse sport of 1995.
Factor is, whereas many have opined that Devens noticed no alternatives to proceed her athletic profession after faculty, there would have been ample alternatives for Meyer. You not solely have the dozen professional groups within the NWSL, however dozens of groups within the U.S. pyramid such because the USL W-League and the WPSL, and abroad ladies’s sides in each hemispheres.
On this level of the event of girls’s sports activities in America, we’ve had numerous discourse over the psychological well being of feminine athletes, particularly throughout and after the worldwide pandemic. The loss of life of Katie Meyer make this a way more pressing speaking level from right here going ahead.
