Temple's women's soccer team has struggled on the pitch over the past four years, but two of its senior leaders have made great strides during that time to help their fellow athletes with struggles that arise on and off the field.
Defenders Natalie DeMasi and Reese Henderson have served as leaders of Temple’s chapter of Morgan’s Message, a nonprofit organization that seeks to eliminate the stigma around college athletes and mental health. The organization is named in honor of late Duke University women’s lacrosse player Morgan Rodgers, who died by suicide in 2019. Rodgers battled anxiety and depression all her life, and it intensified with a career-ending knee injury in 2017.
“For the last three years, both [DeMasi and Henderson] have been extremely involved in our chapter,” said Dr. Stephany Coakley, who leads TU Well, the mental health service provided to all Temple athletes. “Establishing our chapter, serving on the executive board, coordinating events with some of our partner organizations on campus [centered] around mental health in general, but specifically the mental health of student-athletes.”
“When I first started (at Temple), I felt that student-athlete mental health was always stigmatized,” said DeMasi, who helped found the chapter in her sophomore year and has served as its president ever since. “I first started the chapter because I myself was having anxiety attacks and panic attacks as a freshman. I went to the therapy provided to student-athletes and I felt like a lot of people didn’t know about it.”
“I was the first freshman to speak openly about [my mental health struggles], so [DeMasi] knew she could come to me when she was struggling,” said Henderson, who also helped found the chapter and serves as its director of operations. “Obviously as freshmen we couldn’t run a whole club yet, but she mentioned Morgan’s Message and that she wanted something like that at Temple. So just before sophomore year, we met with other student-athletes that were interested."
The chapter has grown quite a bit since then. DeMasi noted that, by her estimates, one in four Temple athletes were part of Morgan’s Message. Their regular meetings at McGonigle Hall, she said, consistently had around 30 regular attendees.
“When I first started the program, it was 20 soccer girls. Shoutout to soccer, thank you for joining my club,” DeMasi said with a chuckle. “From there, we branched out to other teams and [people from] a lot more sports teams started to join.”
Both DeMasi and Henderson pointed to a group chat where executive board members bounce ideas off of each other and show each other general support, and that club members also regularly attend each other’s games.
“I just love that I’m part of a community that is so supportive,” Henderson said. “We create and provide a space for people to feel safe and for student-athletes to join together. There are other clubs for student-athletes, but we’re such a small group of people in such a big school, and I feel like we need another space to come together as athletes and be vulnerable with one another.”
Coakley said Henderson is an avid reader and provides book recommendations on various topics during the chapter’s meetings, and that DeMasi leads the executive board’s discussions on the topics of the meetings. Coakley also made certain to mention a joint meeting discussing homesickness between Morgan’s Message and Global Owls, a group for Temple Athletes born outside the United States, which DeMasi said had been difficult to schedule due to Global Owls president Constança Dimas and the fencing team being out of season while DeMasi and women’s soccer were in-season and vice versa.
Morgan’s Message holds multiple events across the academic year where they set up tables, give out bracelets and spread information about the club and its purpose, encouraging other student-athletes and non-athletes to get involved in mental health conversation.
“Twice a year, once each semester, the American Athletic Conference has a Powerful Minds Week; Powerful Minds is the campaign for mental health and wellbeing for student-athletes in the conference,” Coakley said. “Different sports host a Green Game. In hosting a Green Game, student-athletes do a P.S.A. that is shown on the video boards so everyone in attendance can see. We also set up a table at the game where anybody, not just athletic department-affiliated people, can talk about mental health in general. And we give them promotional items and things to remind them about self-care.”
DeMasi said the chapter puts out a campaign video every year. This year’s slogan is ‘Empathy Empowers Everyone.’ Three Es, for short.
Through these events, the chapter works to spread the word that, as a previous slogan goes, Mental Health IS Health.
“Last spring we had a student-run panel, which was really cool,” DeMasi recalled. “There were six panelists and two moderators. It was our way to get across to professors, faculty, coaches, training staff and basically anyone who’s part of athletics or interacts with athletics to understand our point of view and express our struggles within athletics and maybe get some empathy from people involved in athletics. I think we had over 100 people attend. That was an awesome event and I heard huge [amounts of] feedback. People wanted to do it again.”
Coakley said one of the more invested attendees was Dr. Scott Grattson, a professor at Temple’s Klein College of Media and Communication and one of Philadelphia’s leading advocates for LGBTQIA+ community rights and equality.
Coakley and the TU Well team help guide Morgan’s Message in their outreach efforts and the talking points for their meetings.
“They help us figure out fundraising activities, and we get every single PowerPoint [presentation] approved by them,” DeMasi said. “Because, obviously, we’re not trained clinicians and we don’t want to give out advice we just get from Google.”
DeMasi went on to mention her connection with TU Well’s Melissa Graham, with whom DeMasi worked when Graham was an intern before being hired full-time. She also noted the contributions of Alyssa DeNofa, one of the more recent additions to the TU Well staff, and Ed Darrah, who was the main coordinator between Morgan’s Message and TU Well while he was at Temple before leaving to pursue other opportunities.
“Dr. Coakley and Melissa come to all our meetings to overview everything,” Henderson added. “Most incoming freshmen don’t know that we have a therapist just for athletes, so they come in and introduce themselves to incoming freshmen every August.”
And through the guidance of Coakley and her colleagues, the members of Morgan’s Message learn how to notice warning signs in themselves and each other.
“They are what I call our ‘boots on the ground’,” Coakley said. “TU Well has a department of four to eight, depending on the time of year, but that’s not enough people to support and identify the mental health needs of 500 or so student-athletes.”
“Sometimes people truly don’t know what mental health [struggles] can look like,” Henderson said. “Since it looks different for everybody, you’ll never know when someone’s struggling, so we try to give people as much information as possible. So if they do see someone struggling, they’ll feel comfortable reaching out since they’ll have the tools and knowledge to help them.”
“Sometimes, it’s good to hear [advice] from another student-athlete because an [older] adult can tell you something but you don’t know if they’ve actually lived through it,” said DeMasi.
Temple’s chapter also gets support from chapters at other universities, with plenty of networking and collaboration opportunities.
“There’s basically one big GroupMe of all the ambassadors who volunteer for Morgan’s Message,” DeMasi said. “We get ideas from other schools, and if you ever need help about a topic for your meeting you can shoot a text and people will get right back at you with some ideas and even send you PowerPoints and stuff like that.”
“There was also a convention a couple years ago where Natalie met with Morgan Rodgers’ family,” Henderson mentioned.
Both DeMasi and Henderson said they want athletes coming into Temple to feel like they can rely on support from veteran Owls.
“I just think that’s part of team culture,” said Henderson in regards to the women’s soccer team. “We always want to treat the incoming freshmen as equals and as adults, especially because it’s a time of growth and change; we don’t want to add onto their stress by making them feel stupid about their feelings. We want them to feel welcome because their success is our success; the better they are mentally [as individuals], the better we are as a team. I just think treating people as equals and letting them become comfortable with you on their own time in their own ways helps towards them opening up and confiding in you.”
“It’s kind of self-explanatory, when you come into a new school you always look to the older girls,” DeMasi added. “And when I first came in it was such a different time period- and I don’t hold it against the other girls, but mental health wasn’t talked about. I feel like we weren’t walked through the struggles of freshman year; you’re sharing a room with someone, you’re eating food at the dining hall, you’re away from home, you’re making new friends. It’s just a lot of struggles and I didn’t feel like I had someone to walk me through it with. Now with my freshmen, I would hate to see them in a position that I was in during my freshman year, so I try to help freshmen, sophomores, or even transfers. You can be a fifth-year player and still struggle.”
Both DeMasi and Henderson were quick to point out the contributions of the chapter’s vice president, field hockey junior midfielder Peyton Rieger.
Henderson said Rieger served as president of the chapter at South Jersey’s Kingsway Regional High School prior to coming to Temple.
“Peyton and I helped pick out the new Mental Health Director,” DeMasi said. “We interviewed a bunch of people for the role, and I felt it was really awesome that they gave us an opportunity to see who would be in charge of the mental health facilities here.
Morgan’s Message has certainly made a lasting impact on both DeMasi and Henderson.
“I feel like a lot of the time, as student-athletes we only focus on ourselves within the sport and our performance within the sport,” DeMasi said. “At the time I was struggling with my confidence a lot and I wasn’t performing on the field or at practice, and this was my escape.”
“Dr. Coakley always says I’m a helper, and I love to help other people, so [the chapter] gave me purpose outside of my sport,” DeMasi continued. “I know at the end of the day I’m a friend, a family member, a daughter, [et cetera]; but I also just love to help people, and I feel like this has helped me find new connections and new friends, and it gave me a purpose and made me feel important, so it’s been a real compliment to me in a huge way.”
“It definitely helps me feel better, even if it’s just about my own mental health journey,” said Henderson. “It’s been nice to know that, even if I don’t speak about it, there’s someone there to support me because they’ve gone through a similar thing. I think that’s the point of Morgan’s Message: to know that you don’t always have to share your story, but that somebody else has gone through something similar and will be there when you need them.”
“In their time here, [DeMasi and Henderson] have made a significant difference,” Coakley said. “As advocates they have brought people to TU Well, they have helped to further the mission of normalizing [mental health discussions], saying ‘I don’t feel great today, I’m going to go talk to my therapist’ or noticing that someone else hasn’t been feeling great for a while and [referring] them to TU Well.That’s part of the mission of Morgan’s Message. Morgan Rodgers felt alone, and we don’t want people to feel alone.”
While the chapter is going strong so far, DeMasi and Henderson know there’s still plenty of work to be done.
“In general, mental health is such a stigmatized thing in sports, and that won’t go away,” said Henderson. “We need to keep fighting the stigma, it’s a very real thing; and Morgan’s Message has changed [the mindset] for a lot of people.”
DeMasi and Henderson would both like more male athletes to join, though Henderson mentioned that Temple’s Crew team has made prominent efforts.
“We have good members of our executive board from Crew that have stepped up, and broadening that to other sports like football and basketball will also help us,” Henderson pointed out. “Guys from Crew have been amazing and have had no problem sharing their own personal stories, and it’s helped bring more people in.”
Considering the long-storied tradition of Temple’s basketball and football programs, Henderson’s remarks have merit.
With DeMasi and Henderson set to graduate this May, they know the club will be in good hands with Rieger set to take over as president next year. Dr. Coakley agrees, saying she sees the chapter’s trajectory continuing to rise with Rieger at the helm.
But what are their hopes for the future of the chapter?
“This is something I’m so stressed about,” DeMasi said. “This is like my baby; I’ve grown with it for the last four years and I would never want to hear that it’s not doing as well as it was because it’s such a big thing now and it’s like people ask ‘are you going to the basketball game tonight?’, people now ask ‘are you going to the Morgan’s Message meeting tonight?’ too, and I never want it to not be an exciting meeting. We’ve gotten to a spot where we’ve been so successful, it’s hard to keep being so successful; it’s like we peaked [my] sophomore and junior year and now there’s not much more we can do since we’ve done so much. We’ve done ESPN interviews and we’ve done Temple News stuff. We do it every year, but how much more can we do? We have over 150 members, how many more can you ask for?”
“I want our chapter to keep growing and thriving,” Henderson said. “I think we’ve done a really good job of bringing new people into the program and letting them see what it takes to run a club and how amazing it is to see that the stuff you’re telling people is received and used to help them feel better. It just feels nice to have a community. Having it and keeping it growing is what I want for Morgan’s Message.”
And what does Coakley see in DeMasi and Henderson’s futures?
“Natalie wants to go to law school,” Coakley said. “I know she’ll be a staunch advocate for whoever she works to support. Whatever she does next she’s going to attack it; when [DeMasi] first got to Temple… we already had a student-athlete mental health advocate group, but they wanted more and so they took over which was great. I want these groups to be led by students because then they take more responsibility, and that’s what happened here.”
“One of the things Reese has in buckets is empathy,” Coakley added. “And she’s a psychology major, so I see her probably doing something in this field to help others who are experiencing challenges with their wellbeing.”
No matter where DeMasi and Henderson’s paths take them, one has to think the Rodgers family is proud of the efforts that they, and all of the Temple University chapter, have made to spread Morgan’s Message.
Photos courtesy of Natalie DeMasi
