Sarah Fuller had no concrete plan to die. But that didn’t stop her from thinking about the possibility often.
This spring, amid a spate of Division I college athlete suicides, the former Vanderbilt soccer goalkeeper and football kicker says she very easily could’ve been among them. In particular, the March death of Katie Meyer, a fellow goalkeeper who starred for Stanford, scared her into getting help. O.K., she thought, I need to change something about my mental health.
Back on Lexapro and after roughly half a semester this spring off from soccer, which Fuller is still playing while in grad school at North Texas, she’s feeling better this summer. Much better. She’s no longer wishing that she’d tear her ACL and get to miss practice—or worse.
