Morgan Rodgers was a sophomore at Duke University when she tore her ACL, MCL and meniscus, which ended her second season on the women’s lacrosse team before her first game and threatened the rest of her athletic career.
She committed to a year of knee surgeries and intense rehabilitation to return to her sport. At the same time, she silently suffered from depression and anxiety.
Rodgers took her own life in July 2019. But her legacy lives on through Morgan’s Message, a group that focuses on eliminating the stigma surrounding mental health in athletics and encourages student-athletes to have vulnerable conversations with their peers.
The University of Connecticut women’s lacrosse team observing a moment of silence for Morgan Rodgers at the Morgan’s Message dedication game on April 1 at Joseph J. Morrone Stadium in Storrs. (Sydney Haywood)
Today, 6,053 Morgan’s Message ambassadors work at 1,856 high school and college campuses across six countries. The University of Connecticut has an active group, along with several other colleges in the state that include Central and Eastern Connecticut state universities.
The nonprofit began as a podcast and blog series called “The Mental Matchup.” Clare Kehoe Zychowski, co-founder and director of the Morgan’s Message educational program, says the goal was to foster an open and honest conversation about mental health.
“If there is someone struggling in silence, they might feel a little bit less alone, more likely… to let someone in their life,” said Kehoe Zychowski, who was Rodgers’ childhood friend and teammate at Duke.
In a video featured on the Morgan’s Message website, Dona and Kurt Rodgers say their daughter was an energetic person her friends and family could lean on. She didn’t tell anybody about her own mental health struggles. Her mother says Rodgers was never diagnosed with depression, and they didn’t realize she was struggling until it was too late.
“I’d want to scream to the kids, ‘You are not alone. You are not the only one that has felt this way, that is feeling this way. There’s nothing wrong with you,’” Dona Rodgers says. “Morgan thought she was the only one that was feeling this stuff. … She was very convinced that no one would ever understand, and that she could handle this. And that was wrong.”
This is why they started Morgan’s Message.
Kehoe Zychowski says Morgan’s Message gained a lot of early support from teammates following Rodgers’ death.
Anna Callahan, who was a freshman on the lacrosse team at the time, started a group at Duke the week of Rodgers’ death for student-athletes who knew Rodgers or were struggling themselves, so they could connect with one another without judgment.
Starting with that informal group at Duke in 2019, the nonprofit’s student-athlete campus ambassador program has taken on a life of its own, while staying true to Callahan’s peer-to-peer model led by student-athletes. Kehoe Zychowski says the development of the program relies heavily on feedback from students to figure out how Morgan’s Message can best support them.
Clare Kehoe Zychowski, co-founder and director of the Morgan’s Message educational program. (Courtesy Kehoe Zychowski)
The aim of the peer-to-peer model is to enable athletes to be honest about what they’re going through and hear from someone who may be in the same position.
Tori Tomalia, a junior on the UConn women’s lacrosse team, applied to be a Morgan’s Message ambassador after her coach encouraged her during her freshman year. She was then connected with another ambassador at UConn, Maia Dechiario, a senior who plays on the field hockey team. The two are co-presidents of the UConn chapter that started in October 2024 and became more active in the fall 2025.
Eve McGrogan, a junior on the women’s lacrosse team, was introduced to Morgan’s Message in high school, but says she had graduated by the time the group was established.
“When I came to college, I knew it was something I wanted to be interested in,” she says. “Then Tori reached out that they were looking for a treasurer for the club. So I thought that was a perfect way for me to get involved.”
Because they play for nationally recognized programs, student-athletes at UConn may feel extra pressure to perform well. Hollie Chessman, the director and principal program officer at the American Council on Education, says this fear of failure is a main concern for many student-athletes.
Hollie Chessman, the director and principal program officer at the American Council on Education. (Hollie Chessman)
“If they don’t feel like they’re meeting demand, sometimes they might feel like they’re failing,” she said. “If you drop a ball, if you fail, you strike out, or … fall during a gymnastics routine, there’s a lot of pressures that go along with that. And then public scrutiny that goes along with that.”
The ability to speak with other student-athletes who can relate to that pressure is one reason, Chessman says, that the Morgan’s Message’s peer-to-peer model works. It allows athletes to recognize the pressures they’re facing and learn how to prioritize their mental health, which Haley Thomas, educational program coordinator at Morgan’s Message, says is the goal of the program.
Using educational materials created by the national Morgan’s Message team, athletes are able to connect their experiences with the resources.
Chessman says because the ambassadors aren’t therapists, the peer support can bridge the gap for the student-athletes to feel a “sense of belonging” and identify greater mental health concerns.
Emily Perrin, director of the Medical Advisory Board at Morgan’s Message. (Courtesy of Emily Perrin)
“There is a sort of like, ‘I’m not alone. There are other people who are elite athletes that are having some of the same concerns that I’m having,’” she says.
However, Chessman says this also can be a challenge because the student-athlete ambassador must “recognize the limits of their capabilities and their capacity to manage what a student might be going through.”
Thomas says this is a conversation the Morgan’s Message staff has with ambassadors to clearly define their role and responsibilities.
The Morgan’s Message medical advisory board is responsible for putting together the resources available to the ambassadors and their chapters.
Emily Perrin, director of the Medical Advisory Board at Morgan’s Message, says in choosing board members she prioritized a diversity of medical professionals and disciplines to ensure all of the athletes’ struggles are addressed in the resources.
After the application process is completed, the ambassadors are provided access to an online portal, where presentations and activities created by the medical advisory board are shared. These tools are designed for the ambassadors to first discuss what mental health is and highlight techniques to define and address issues.
The rest of the presentations discuss specific issues athletes may face, including recognizing the importance of sleep and identifying eating disorders. The ambassadors are able to choose which subject to address at each meeting based on what their members most relate to.
Like the rest of the Morgan’s Message staff, many of the medical advisory board members are former athletes and able to connect their experience as athletes with the work they do. Perrin says this allows them to establish a level of trust between the Morgan’s Message team and the athletes they work with because they were once in their shoes.
Even with the student-athletes’ busy schedules, Tomalia says, Morgan’s Message at UConn is not an additional stressor – it’s something they look forward to.
“This isn’t something that’s dragging us down, and it’s like, ‘Oh my gosh, we have to plan this,’” she says. “It’s something we’re definitely all excited about, and we all definitely prioritize it … because we enjoy talking about mental health. And also being able to impact other female athletes in that community is really important to all of us.”
Kehoe Zychowski says her main goal is to ensure ambassadors understand that serving in the position is more than just an entry on a resume. Because Morgan’s Message doesn’t recruit members, all of the ambassadors are volunteers who applied to lead their campus chapters.
Focusing on students bringing Morgan’s Message to their campus and leading these groups has put an emphasis on their voices, rather than the voice of the school’s athletic departments. Kehoe Zychowski says she’s proud to showcase the power students have when they come together.
“Athletic department and administrations have so many things constantly crossing their desks that it’s easy to just say, ‘Oh, we don’t have the time or money to pour into this.’ Whereas when it comes from the student voices, and you have students organizing and making this impact, it kind of will demand a response from the top down,” she says.
Apart from regular meetings, the chapters are encouraged to host events for students to learn what Morgan’s Message is and how to get involved. One of the most popular events is the dedication games.
Campus ambassadors coordinate with their athletic departments to schedule games and Morgan’s Message will send wristbands, stickers and awareness pins with the butterfly logo to be distributed as well as promotional material to be shown at the game.
At UConn, the women’s lacrosse team hosted its dedication game in April, while the women’s ice hockey team hosted one in February. Morgan’s Message chapter members and its executive board were in the stands holding signs and cheering.
With the introduction of Name, Image and Likeness and the growing commercialization of college sports, money has become a priority for athletic departments and athletes. However, Kehoe Zychowski says, the power of community in sports has remained the same.
“We took something that we cared about and have worked really hard to build this, and that’s something that they can do too,” she says. “I think one of the most rewarding parts of my job is getting to meet so many students who are just so motivated and passionate and seeing them thrive by just getting this little structure that will let them really use their voice for positive impact on their campus.”
Sydney Haywood | University of Connecticut. This story is republished via CT Community News, a service of the Connecticut Student Journalism Collaborative, an organization sponsored by journalism departments at college and university campuses across the state. It is supported by a grant from the Solutions Journalism Network. CT Community News is proud be to a member of the Solutions Journalism Network Student Media Challenge cohort for 2025-26.