Change Is Scary
By Camryn Whipple | IG: @camwhipple
Freshman year of college is comparable to walking blindfolded into a place you’ve never been before. At least, that’s what it felt like for me! I am going to attempt to put my freshman year of college into words.
Ever since I was young, my life always centered around athletics. Growing up, I played multiple sports year-round, which led to playing lacrosse and volleyball in high school. I picked up a lacrosse stick for the first time in 6th grade, not really thinking anything of it, but I quickly discovered the passion that I had for the game. Going into high school, I knew I wanted to play a sport in college, but I wasn’t sure which one. After my freshman year, I was set on playing lacrosse in college. There was something special about the game that I just loved and couldn’t get enough of. My junior year of high school, I committed to play Division 2 lacrosse at Slippery Rock University. This had been my goal, and I finally reached it. I was so excited to attend SRU and to play the sport that I love at the next level and be in a new environment. Flash forward to August 2020.
August 14, 2020. Move in day! My entire life was packed away in boxes and bags ready for a new chapter. I felt so excited and ready to start this new journey. However, what was about to happen next was not what I expected my freshman year to look like. My freshman year of college was such a challenging time for me.
Entering college in 2020, COVID-19 was at the forefront. There are a lot of “what if?” questions that I always think about when it comes to this year. “What if” this year of college was “normal” and not impacted by COVID? I began college amidst a global pandemic. I always thought of college as this exciting, lively place. Doing online school from a dorm room on Zoom in a campus that was a ghost town never crossed my mind. There was very limited social interaction; there weren’t people walking around or in person classes to attend. Fall ball for lacrosse was mostly a no go, as there were so many COVID precautions in place. College life centered around social distancing and minimal human interaction. This semester, my coach was on maternity leave. The school also decided to cut our team’s designated athletic trainer and refused to hire an assistant coach due to the pandemic, leaving my teammates and I to navigate all the unknowns of freshman year during a pandemic pretty much on our own. Your coaches are a huge mentor to you. They are another pair of eyeballs always looking out for you and are people you know that you can turn to through the many ups and downs of being a student athlete. They see you at your best, worst, and everything else in between. I am so grateful to have had amazing coaches at SRU who created a safe space for mental health and were just easy to talk to and personable. I know that not everyone has that type of relationship with their coaches, but I am grateful that I did.
Three weeks into the semester, I was sent home to quarantine with COVID- 19. I would say this is the time where my mental health began to turn downhill. While at home, I felt extremely isolated from my teammates. When I came home, I remember not even wanting to go back to school. I began to feel like I didn’t fit in or belong, and it made me feel so anxious. There also were other school- related factors during quarantine that made me feel so anxious and just like a ball of nerves. All in all, I was struggling to adjust to change. This new life of college felt foreign, strange, uneasy, and unknown to me.
Coming back to college after quarantine, these feelings began to escalate. It was hard feeling like everyone else around me was adjusting and having so much fun while I felt the exact opposite. It also was hard seeing social media and comparing my college experience to that of other people I knew. I felt extremely isolated and alone. I didn’t think anyone else felt the same way as me, and I thought something was wrong with me. I remember thinking to myself, “Is this how college is going to be? Will I ever be happy?” I remember never wanting to tell anyone about these feelings because I am the kind of person that doesn’t like other people worrying about me. I like figuring things out on my own and trying to be tough. In high school, I was always the person that was strong, happy, and had it all together. I wasn’t supposed to need help. Around early October, I remember there were a couple days where I literally couldn’t eat because I felt physically sick to eat from feeling so anxious. I remember despising being at school, and I would cry in my car alone or just dread being in my dorm room. I felt so low and just sad. One day, I woke up so anxious that I was literally throwing up for hours straight. My mom drove over an hour to pick me up from school and take me to the E.R. Turns out, it was just a virus, but I had a gut feeling that the immense amount of anxiety I had been feeling every single day was taking a physical toll on me and wearing me down so much. After having COVID in September and not eating due to anxiety, I lost around 20 pounds. I would say around this time my parents became really worried about me. I am grateful that my parents have always been my strongest support system and that I could turn to them no matter what. Through this tough year, they were always there for me.
After being in the ER, I took a little bit of time for myself at home before coming back to school, and I remember thinking to myself, “How did I let myself get like this?” I honestly felt like a shell of myself. I just wanted to feel like myself again. At this time, I made some needed changes for myself upon my return to school that helped, but I still felt extremely homesick, isolated, and just overall uneasy and anxious. Honestly, all I could think about was when the next time I was going home was. I had a countdown on my phone counting down the days until break. I wasn’t enjoying this new beginning at all, but I tried to put on a happy face. I felt so unhappy at college, but it was hard because I felt like I was surrounded by people who didn’t really know me, so no one could really tell how unhappy I was. At the end of the semester, I went home for a long winter break and was determined to come back into second semester and turn things around for the better.
Late January 2021, I came back for my second semester. It was still very atypical due to COVID protocols: including bi-weekly COVID tests, masks, and Zoom classes. A new stressor was now added: lacrosse. Lacrosse was always a positive outlet for me, but now it felt like the root of all my problems. It was hard adjusting to collegiate lacrosse. The pace was much faster, and everyone was so much more talented. I remember after practices, just feeling so defeated. I would come home in tears and pick apart all the mistakes that I made. I did not feel good enough at all. I also had so much anxiety about practice and lacrosse in general. I dreaded coming to practice because I felt so anxious, and my anxiety with lacrosse just consumed me. This semester, I began to develop some closer relationships with a few teammates, which really helped me. I had a new teammate who transferred from another school, and we became super close. We did everything together, and I think that God put her in my life because he knew I needed a friend like that at the time. I remember one day in March, my athletic trainer asked me how I was doing, as she always did, and I just broke down crying because I was so overwhelmed by how I was feeling, and I couldn’t even put it into words. Also around this time, I finally opened up to my coaches about how I was feeling. I remember just sobbing in their office telling them everything that I was feeling, but feeling so validated and seen by them. I felt like a weight was lifted from my shoulders, and I started to feel better day by day once I let more people in and broke down the tough exterior of myself.
My first season of collegiate lacrosse was hard for me. It was difficult coming into a completely new team and trying to find my place. I felt like I was not performing like I knew how, and it was very defeating not living up to expectations I had set for myself. It was also hard not getting the playing time I was used to. In retrospect, I wouldn’t be where I am now without this adversity, and it only motivated me and made me work that much harder to have gotten to where I am now. This setback made me the driven and hardworking person that I am today. After my freshman year ended, I thought about transferring, but decided that I would give Slippery Rock one more shot. It had truly been an atypical year with COVID. This was the best decision of my life.
Each year after my freshman year got better and better. Sophomore year I really found my place. My relationships with teammates began to strengthen, and I truly found my people and my close inner circle. Lacrosse wise, I also began to feel more at ease and gained a lot of confidence. I no longer had anxiety about coming to practice and was enjoying lacrosse again. Fast forward another 2 years to my senior year. It was the exact opposite of my freshman year: the best year of my life! I got to be a part of a historic team that set program records and won a PSAC playoff game for the first time in school history. I felt like I had 30 best friends who all loved and cared for each other. Personally, I was a first-team all-conference selection, set a school record in single season assists, led my team in points and assists, scored two game winners, and had some of the best performances of my life. Those were all accomplishments my freshman year that I never thought would have been possible: having thought that I wasn’t even good enough to be on the team. Off the field, I had the best times ever with my teammates and best friends. I never wanted the pages of this chapter of life to stop turning. Getting to spend 2 hours every day at practice playing the sport I love while having fun with my best friends was the best part of every day. There was no such thing as a countdown on my phone indicating when I’d get to go home again. Slippery Rock was my home. It saddens me thinking of how unhappy I was my freshman year and all the emotions I felt. College isn’t supposed to be like that. A sport isn’t supposed to make you feel like that. But I am here to tell you that I promise it gets better. You will find your place on your team. You will find your best friends. You will be successful. Good things take time. Everyone’s journey is so different, and you shouldn’t compare your journey to anyone else’s.
Looking back, I wish I knew what I know now, that there are always people willing to help you, but you just have to let them in. There are so many resources, whether it’s talking to a therapist or just letting your feelings go from within you to someone you trust. I wish I was more open with my teammates and coaches early on about how I was feeling. Your teammates understand the stressors you face and being able to check in and support each other is crucial. I promise you that checking in with your teammates can make all the difference. My freshman year, even if I put on a tough/ok face on the outside, on the inside I was crumbling. Now, some of my best friends and I often talk about our freshman year, describing some of the same feelings. At the time, I felt like I was the only one who felt any of that. Had we been more open with each other, it would have been so comforting to know that I was not alone. Sometimes you just need a little bit of extra love and support and for someone to make you feel validated and seen. I am grateful for my support system who has gotten me to where I am now. It was my support system who pulled me through.
My goal in sharing my story is to help anyone navigating their freshman year of college or struggling with their mental health while playing a sport to feel less alone. I never thought sharing my story on a platform like Morgan’s Message is something I would ever do. I wasn’t sure my story was even really considered a story. To be honest, I still feel nervous to share my story as not many people know these details, let alone the whole world. But there is so much power in vulnerability. I hope my vulnerability can help at least one person to feel less alone, and I hope that I can help to end the stigma surrounding mental health. My freshman year, I felt so ashamed and embarrassed to have felt the way that I did. It wasn’t until my recent re-read of the story “What Made Maddy Run,” that I felt compelled to share what I went through. What if Madison Holleran knew there was someone else in the world that struggled with their freshman year of college and that she wasn’t alone in her struggles? Freshman year is like walking blindfolded into a new life away from everything you’ve ever known! You are coming to a place where no one knows you, you don’t really know anybody, and you are trying to find your place. As a collegiate athlete, there is so much pressure that you place upon yourself. It is also important to give yourself grace, and don’t be too hard on yourself! Your best is always enough. Working as hard as you can is always enough. No one can ever take your work ethic away from you!
To anyone reading this, you are never alone. If there is one thing you take from my story, I hope you know that you are stronger and more resilient than you believe, and there are so many people who love and care about you. It is also important to remember that one day you will lace up your cleats and take your uniform off for the last time, and your playing days will be over. You will someday not be an athlete anymore, but you will always be a human being! You are a human being before you are an athlete. A performance on the field does not define you. Whether you’re scoring all the goals, saving all the goals, winning all the draws, on the bench, or dealing with an injury, you aren’t defined by any of those factors. Your struggles don’t define you. A lot of the struggles that you face as a student-athlete, although they may seem like the end of the world at the time, one day you will come to realize that your struggles were a pivotal moment that shaped who you are. In retrospect, my struggles have made me who I am, but they don’t define me. I wouldn’t change any of the struggles that I went through my freshman year of college. Without the struggles, everything I accomplished and where I am now wouldn’t have meant as much without the trials and tribulations on my journey. My struggles also made me a better teammate and a more compassionate person: always looking out for the struggles of my teammates to offer a helping hand.
One thing is for certain: change is scary! But every new chapter of life comes with its own mountains to climb and obstacles to figure out. But you will figure it out and persevere, just like you always have! I believe in you.
