Dear Morgan’s Message

[TW: mental health, abuse)

Dear Morgan’s Message,

My name is Morgan Gott and over the last few months I have felt moved to reach out to you and your foundation. I have been a student athlete since I was 5 years old. But instead of lacrosse it was always basketball growing up for me. I luckily found lacrosse in high school and got to make a career out of it. I was recruited to play Division I lacrosse by Coastal Carolina University back in 2012. I was a part of the inaugural class that started the program there. This was a whole journey in and of itself. Mostly it was being 16 hours away from home and second, it was 28 freshmen working together to start a Division 1 program.

 I was born and raised in a tiny town in the North Shore of Massachusetts. I went to private Christian schools until high school and attended church every single Sunday (unless I had AAU basketball). I was raised in a Christian household with certain goals and dreams already set out for me by my family. Once I finally got to high school my parents let me and my two younger brothers go into the public-school system. This is when I found lacrosse. I made JV my freshman year, just as you would think. By the end of the season, the varsity team was doing well and were on their way to playoffs. A couple days after our season was done (JV) I got a call from the head coach of the varsity team asking to join them for their playoff run. The defensive aspects of the game just clicked for me and that’s what I was used for. 

My senior year comes around and I make a last-minute decision to play lacrosse in college after a life-long dream to play basketball at the next level. I was so excited to take the next steps, to move 16 hours away to Conway, South Carolina and begin this adventure. The only thing was, I had a huge secret. This secret would follow me for a few years before I could ever say anything about it.

The summer going into my Junior year of high school I had a best friend that would eventually become my first girlfriend. Until this point I had always dated boys, not many but I did have a few “boyfriends” throughout the years. These relationships never lasted more than two to three months and I was always the one ending it. My dad used to joke around and call me a ‘heart breaker’ and I would just smirk and giggle. I definitely never quite felt comfortable around the opposite sex, I wasn’t too into PDA and really avoided being alone with them as to avoid doing any sexual activities with them. Fast forward to the winter of my senior year, I had just committed to play college lacrosse 16 hours away from home and I had also just kissed my best friend for the first time. Little did I know how hard this would make the first two year of college. Keeping this big secret from my high school friends, parents, siblings, and now college friends. I told a lot of lies my first two years of college, to my teammates, friends, and parents.

As junior year of college came along, my secret high school relationship was not a secret anymore to my teammates. I had worked up the courage to tell my four roommates but even then, I only told them because they caught me in a lie. My fear of telling people was always way worse than how it actually went. During my Junior year, that high school relationship ended because I started dating a girl on the team. I was more comfortable with who I was when I was at school, around my friends, and very far away from my family. 

That summer going into my senior year my life changed forever. My girlfriend from college was coming up to visit me during the summer. I had told my parents she was just a good friend and so they had no issue with her coming to stay with us. She was from Maryland and flew up for 3 days. Little did I know that this trip would out me to my parents and begin this long, mentally exhausting journey. My parents finding out was a huge accident. But what I did not know was that my parents had a feeling something was up. They knew that I wasn’t talking to my best friend from high school anymore (but didn’t know why) and that I never talked about dating guys or having a boyfriend. Day 3 of our trip came and went and I drove her to the airport. When I got home, my whole entire world stopped. My mom confronted me about “my friend”. I cannot say that my parents reacted how I wanted or wished. Or how so many parents do react when they find out their daughter or son is gay. Some of the first statements that came out of my mom’s mouth were:

 “I wish you had told us sooner so we could have gotten you some help.”

 “This would be so much easier to take if you told me you were an alcoholic or a drug addict.”

“What you are is an abomination to the world.”

“I still love you but this I will never accept.”

“You were supposed to marry a handsome man and have a wedding.”

“You are too pretty to be with another woman.”

My dad’s brother overdosed when I was in high school, so for me to hear her say those words; it was incredibly confusing. We got into a few verbal fights that summer. It got to the point where we didn’t talk during the days or at dinner. If we did talk I could sense the intense anger and depression pouring out of my mom. It made me so uncomfortable to even be in the house. Growing up I always had thought my dad was more religious and would have been more verbal about me being gay. The night that my world ended he surprised me. I had gone outside and was sitting on a chair just thinking of driving anywhere and never coming back. As I was outside trying to piece together how this all had just happened my dad had walked out the door. I started muttering words to tell him to go away and he just silently walked closer. He looked at me, put his hand on my shoulder, and said “I still love you no matter what” and he walked back inside. In that moment that is all I needed. And to this day I will never forget it. 

I went back to school that fall completely changed. My friends would tell me “just give them time they will come around” and “just give your mom like a year to work on it.”  I used to get so upset when they told me these things because they were not immediate fixes. I didn’t want to wait a whole year for my mom to come around. That summer before I went back to college my mom would describe Coastal Carolina to me as a bubble, that someday will pop, and I will no longer feel safe. She meant about me being gay, having support, and being loved for who I am. It’s safe to say that my mental health took a toll for the worst right after I graduated college. It took almost four years for my mom and me to “agree to disagree” on me being gay.

I graduated college and got right into college coaching. It wasn’t something I ever thought I would do but my college coach my senior year told me I’d make a good coach, so I went with it. I really didn’t want to go back home to Massachusetts and begin my career after sports. At this time, I was still dating a girl on the team back at Coastal. She was two years younger than me so she had two more years to go. This was hard on me, knowing she was back in my bubble where I felt safe and I was out in the real world. The idea of self-harm began around now. In September of 2016, I started my coaching career at Division III Roanoke College in Salem, Virginia. This is when I truly fell in love with coaching. I just also was falling apart mentally. I didn’t have my bubble anymore. The head coach was very religious, so right away I felt like I had to hide who I really was. Every weekend that I had off, I was driving 5 hours to Coastal to see my girlfriend. 

I get to Roanoke and I hate it. I hate the area, I hate driving up the hills, and I am not really trying to make new friends.  A few months in and I am really feeling depressed and of course, the only person I feel like I can tell is my girlfriend hundreds of miles away. At first, she was supportive but as time goes on, as she finds out I am cutting just to not feel numb, it becomes too much for her. At the time, I didn’t see how all of this could just be too much for someone still in college. As that relationship ended, I truly thought my life was over, but I bounced back, took my first tries at therapy, and really dove into lacrosse. That summer, I worked five different camps up and down the east coast to fill up all my free time. And I truly credit lacrosse and the coaches I met that summer to save my life. 

July of 2017, I find myself at a new college, in a different part of Virginia. The University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg was also Division III but more elite, they had appearances in the NCAA Tournament and were ranked nationally. I spent a year here, made a sweet sixteen appearance, and had to play Gettysburg College in the tournament. They were the powerhouse and outplayed us that day. I also found myself in a new relationship. This one would bring more hardships, from which I would learn more lessons than I did from the last. This relationship ended in physical and mental abuse. I again had started cutting and decided to make the leap to Division I coaching.

Just before this new adventure began I got a text from my aunt that summer. It was about my youngest brother, Danny. In seconds I called her back, just for her to tell me that he had spent four days in the ER in the psych ward. He was blue-papered (court-ordered). My other brother had committed him. I felt so helpless. I felt like the worst big sister. I had no idea my youngest brother even had any mental health issues, I was so wrapped up in my own problems. We had a broken family that summer. My youngest brother no longer wanted to live, was in and out of inpatient care, and my parents blamed my other brother for putting him in the hospital. My parents didn’t believe in it. They were in denial. Their youngest son had dropped out of college and completely isolated himself. And their oldest daughter was gay and also struggling with depression. I was so upset that the text I had gotten was from my aunt, not even my own parents. This was just one more thing I could be angry at and hate my parents for. 

In the fall of 2018, I joined the staff at George Mason University. This was my first Division I job and I was so excited. Quickly that excitement turned to anxiety and depression. I had come from Division III schools so there was definitely doubt that I did not belong. I started getting quieter at practice and seemed “zoned out” by my boss. Little did I know what was happening in my relationship at home was affecting the way I was coaching. That winter, at the annual IWLCA Coaching Convention in Florida, my boss asked me a simple question. 

“Do I need to call the police right now and have them come commit you.”

I of course said no, but was completely freaking out. I had let my personal issues completely take over at work and now my coworker and boss were tangled in my mess. Jessy Morgan was my boss. And she went above and beyond for me. Jessy could have just gotten rid of me right then and there, but instead, she did something else. She called my mom. Jessy knew the issues I was having with my parents accepting me as gay, and she also knew I was cutting again. 

That next day, Jessy spent every hour convincing me that I was going to go home to Massachusetts and get help. It was the absolute last thing I wanted to do. It didn’t feel like home and I hated the fact that it wasn’t my choice anymore. But she gave me the ultimatum, “Go home and get help or I will fire you, right here on the spot”. I of course went home. I flew back to VA the next day where my mom met me at the airport. I didn’t really know how to react when I saw her…naturally, she just hugged me and I let her. The next day the both of us flew back to Massachusetts and I took myself to the hospital to get a psych evaluation. 

Walking into the ER and asking for a psych evaluation is scary. You are walking in there to tell them “hey I am not okay and I think I might do something bad if I don’t get help” and you have no idea what comes next. After I spoke to the intake nurse the doctor put me in the psych pod to wait for an evaluation. I spent 6 hours in this pod. I spent 6 hours listening to the screams around me and just tried to put my headphones in and drown them out. I finally got my evaluation and it was decided that I was going to start an outpatient program the next morning at a hospital in the city. I spent two months away from George Mason. Two months away from the sport that helped me cope. I didn’t get to tell the girls where I was going, I was just gone one day. Upon completing the program, I started to feel a little better, more in control of my actions. This was just the first step to getting back to coaching. I also had to get a therapist back down by school who I would meet with a few times a week for a few months. 

When I finally got back down to George Mason and it was time for the season to start, my jobs looked a little different. I was given less responsibility, only focused on the goalies, and did all the travel plans instead of the recruiting like I thought it was going to be doing. At the time I didn’t realize George Mason was just trying to help, it felt more like a punishment for having this mental health crisis. Fast forward through this season and the next, Jessy and George Mason had saved my life. 

November of 2019, I met Morgan Spencer Schauss for the first time. She is from Warrenton Virginia and played varsity field hockey and lacrosse at Kettle Run High School where she held the record for most goals in a season until Morgan Rodgers came and shattered it. I found out about Morgan’s Message a few months after we started dating. But the craziest part was Morgan knew Morgan. Derek Schauss, Morgan’s younger brother, was in the same grade as Morgan Rodgers. They were best friends growing up and even stayed great friends when they went off to separate colleges. The day I found this out I knew at some point I would want to reach out. Fast forward to today, Morgan Schauss and I have been dating for a year and two months. 

I know that Morgan’s Message focuses on eliminating the stigma surrounding mental health within student-athletes in college and in high school, but I wanted to reach out and see how we could make it something to be talked about in coaching. For me, my real depression started just after college and has been something I have been fighting with for five years now. I am now 26, still struggling but finding my way, and have a passion for being a mental health advocate. I want to talk about it with everyone; parents, players, and other coaches. It is not talked about enough when we are young. Getting help is looked down on, and taking a few week’s hiatus from your job to get that help really doesn’t always look good to those on the outside looking in. 

Maybe nothing can come from this, but I just wanted to let you all know at the foundation how much Morgan’s Message has impacted me as a coach and the way I work with my athletes. I want to get the conversation started amongst coaches and I was hoping this could be a start.