#MORETHANMYSPORT

Over the past year, more than 50 student athletes have shared their story on Wish Dish from across the country. If you read some of these stories, you will notice that many of these stories share consistencies such as injury, faith, anxiety, depression, isolation, identity, and suicide.

While student-athletes might struggle with similar pressures of college students, we have also learned that student-athletes are some of the most passionate and driven people. Simply, they are not defined just by their sport. The adversities in their sport make them better people … lessons that apply to their everyday life.

From all of our conversations, we decided to launch a campaign focusing on self-identity called #morethanmysport to allow athletes to share who they are beyond their sport. This campaign was well received, connected student-athletes closer together, and started the spark for athletes around the country to realize they are so much more than just their sport.

Mary Terry, University of Georgia, Track & Field

What do cosmic brownies, old people, and Zac Galifinakis all have in common? Mary Terry loves all of them (Even though they have absolutely nothing to do with running. Watch Mary’s video to learn about more of her favorite things.

Connor Messick, University of Virginia, Golf

Connor may one-day hope to be a professional golfer, but in the mean time, he can still travel the world and whip up a batch of delicious chocolate-chip pancakes. What Connor’s video to find out what else he does when he’s not on the golf course.

Keturah Orji, University of Georgia, Track & Field

As much as Keturah loves track and field, she loves Jesus even more, and as fast as she may run, she’s even faster at solving a Rubik’s cube. Watch Keturah’s video to find out just how long it takes her to solve a Rubik’s cube.

Leontia Kellenou, University of Georgia, Track & Field

Leontia probably wishes she could use her high jump skills to propel herself 7,000 miles to her home in Cyprus whenever she wanted. But instead she must wait for summer to go visit her family and friends. Watch Lenotia’s video to find out what she loves (and doesn’t love) about her home.

Meaghan Raab, University of Georgia, Swimming

Two truths and one line: Meaghan has moved seven times. She once had a massive bouncy ball collection. And she can recite every line of Tangled. You can find out which of these facts is true by watching Meaghan’s video.

Tatiana Gusin, University of Georgia, Track & Field

Tatiana plays one sport, but she’s lived in two different cities called Athens and speaks four different languages. You can count on some more fun facts about Tatiana if you watch her video.

Mady Fagan, University of Georgia, Track & Field

Mady might be known for the power in her legs, but did you know that she’s just as skilled with her hands? Check out some of Mady’s drawings and paintings by watching her video.

Bridget Sloan, University of Florida, Gymnast

The clothes that Bridget wears while she is doing gymnastics are just as important to her as the sport itself. And her love for all things fabric doesn’t stop there. Watch Bridget’s video to find out what we mean.

Reed Scott, University of South Carolina, Baseball

Reed is a team player when it comes to baseball, but he is just as much of a team player off the field too. Watch Reed’s video to learn about all of the different ways that he loves to contribute to his community.

Chantal Van, University of Georgia Swimmer

Being an Olympic swimmer doesn’t stop Chantal from indulging in all sorts of junk food, and being a bad dancer and singer doesn’t stop her from shamelessly busting out her moves. Watch Chantal’s video to learn about more things you might not know about her.

If you are student athlete or former student athlete and want to connect to our athletics community, please ask to join from this link. We look forward to empowering student-athletes around the country to express themselves and connect in meaningful ways.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/167710410323239/

“You will never make it,” “You need to play club,” “You’re only a show-off.”

As the engines started to roar and the giant metal bird started to take flight my head spun in a million directions. My time had finally come to leave home and move abroad to embark a new challenge; against all odds. I started to grin, I had proved everyone wrong. I went against the current and decided against what everyone told me and stuck to my own believes.

I knew that my path to D-1 was harder by going my own way, but that is what felt right for me not what others said. I knew I would get to American University and my playing time would be almost non-existent my first year because of my decision but that’s what I wanted to do. However, the offer arrived and I grasped it with both hands and there is no way I’m letting others push me back for not listening to them.

All those negative remarks from back home are what push me every day to push through class and my training, followed by study hall and gym time. I want to be the best I can, to be able to prove everyone wrong and show them I wasn’t a showoff as some labeled me.

I got to DC it hasn’t been any different from what I envisioned, the team has flown to Florida for the first game if the season and I wasn’t named on the roster. Although I half expected I wasn’t going to travel with the team, it was still a hard pill to swallow. It left a bitter taste of agony inside. But the saying goes, it isn’t about how many times you fall but how many times you stand up and keep moving forward. The difference between being considered a player or legend is all the work done behind the scenes no one can see.

That is what is going to get me on that field and prove that I deserve to be there.

I might not play this season at all or maybe I will, I don’t know. But one thing I do know is that it won’t be for lack of effort. Someone can be better than me or more talented but no one can try harder than me.

I have battled against forces pushing me back and negative influences all my life and got to where I am today. So I won’t let one more negative feeling push me down. Instead this will be the drop that turns the glass and makes me become the player I know I can be.

This will be what pushes me to be great.

My name is Lauren Beers Stanton and I am a daughter, sister, graduate student, friend, wife, and a senior on The University of Alabama’s gymnastics team. I wanted to share with you my story and the challenges that have influenced who I am today.

I was born April 1st, 1994 in Sayre, Pennsylvania. My parents, Rick and Trish Beers had no idea what they were getting into when they entered the world of parenthood. Seven children later, I now had five brothers and one, precious, sister. I had a rather unconventional childhood. Not only am I the oldest of seven siblings, but I was homeschooled and grew up on a dairy farm. I know…sounds like the perfect combination for either a total nerd or a tomboy.

Luckily, I am both of those things but I am also so much more. From a young age I was totally in love with animals. My mom tells me stories of how I would put toads in my doll stroller and push them around the yard.

Other than my love for all animals, including the creepy crawlies, I played like a typical little girl.

That is, until my brothers decided that they didn’t want to play dress up and tea parties. It was now my turn to play army, Legos, and Indiana Jones. When my sister was born, I was able to revert back to girl play for a short time before I discovered a new passion that would take me farther than I ever imagined. This passion was gymnastics. After watching the 2000 Olympics, I was mesmerized by the girls flipping around on the TV and told my mom that I wanted to do that. I started classes soon after and the rest is history.

Flash forward to 2006 when I was 12 years old. I had switched club gyms at this point and had been doing gymnastics competitively for about five years. I was now a second year level 10, which is the highest level you can obtain before becoming an elite gymnast, and facing one of the biggest challenges in my young life.

I had been having issues with my elbow for about a year and one day at practice it collapsed and my joint locked. We went to many different doctors, including specialists, who told me there was nothing they could do for me and I would have to quit gymnastics.

Just imagine, a 12 year old girl being told she had to quite doing the sport she loved and there was nothing that was going to make her arm normal again. To say I was devastated was an understatement. I still remember the first doctor we saw when I first was injured. My best friend, Megan, went to the doctors with my mom and I and we both cried hysterically when he told me, “You can’t play gymnastics anymore”. It was at that moment when I decided that I was going to prove this man wrong and not only do gymnastics again, but be successful at it.

I prayed that God would provide a way for me to do both these things and He did. We were able to see an arm specialist in Indianapolis and multiple car rides and surgeries later, God had answered my prayers. We knew from this point on that my elbows were going to be an issue the rest of my life but through the reassurance of my doctor, I could continue doing gymnastics and have relatively few complications.

Fast forward to 2009 and a different part of my life. I had been best friends with a boy name Nicholas Stanton for about two years at this point and I knew he had “liked” me for a while now. I ended up accepting his offer to attend our church’s formal as his date and the rest is, again, history.

People may say you can’t “fall in love” with someone when you’re that young, but I would definitely have to contend.

God has a plan for everything and He can implement it whenever He chooses. For me, that just so happened to be when I was just barely fifteen. We continued to date throughout high school and into our college years before we decided to take the next step. Marriage.

Now, before we get to that, I have to go back to my gymnastics career. In September 2010, I made the decision to accept a full athletic scholarship to the University of Alabama. Soon after, my faith was tested again when I needed another surgery on both of my arms. My future coaches were extremely supportive and I was back on the road to recovery before I knew it. Now, I’d like to take the time to say that God ALWAYS has a plan. Before this episode I was having with my arms, I was considering moving away from home to train at a better gym to give myself a better chance at the 2012 Olympics. Because of my surgeries, I decided not to. I truly believe that because of this, I am where I am today. I finished out my club gymnastics career at home and then moved to Alabama in August of 2012 to start the next step in my journey.

The first two years of college were amazing and terrible at the same time. While I loved school and being a part of such an amazing team, I missed Nick and I struggled with self-esteem issues that I continue to deal with to this day. I pushed myself in both academics and athletes while maintaining a 4.0 and becoming an All-American.

The summer before my sophomore year Nick and I decided that we didn’t want to have a long distance relationship anymore. After a lot of prayer and thinking, we brought up the idea of marriage to our parents who, although they were shocked to say the least, were supportive. My mom and I planned my wedding over the computer and on May 24, 2014, I got married to the love of my life.

To say he is my soul mate is an understatement and I know that when God created the universe, He planned us for each other.

We faced many different challenges in our dating relationship but through it all, we stayed strong and came out better for it. When people see my ring they are always so surprised to find out I am married and even more surprised to find that I’ve been married for almost two years. I enjoy being able to share my love story with others, especially if I can encourage them to follow what they feel God is telling them and not what the world is trying to conform them into.

Moving on to the last two years, to say they have been a rollercoaster is an understatement. My junior year, my team won our second SEC Championship, I celebrated my one year wedding anniversary, and I graduated with my Bachelor’s degree in just three years of school. Then, I had four surgeries and didn’t do gymnastics for almost six months. During my junior year, my elbows started acting up again and I knew I would need surgery soon.

So once season was over, I had a “clean-up” surgery on each of my arms. This wasn’t so bad, especially since the recovery wasn’t more than a few weeks. However, when I did start training again, I took a nasty fall and suffered a spiral fracture in my hand that required another surgery with external fixations in order to heal properly.

While recovering from this second setback, I also discovered that the previous year I had broken my calcaneus and in order for it to stop hurting, I needed ANOTHER surgery to remove the broken piece.

Coming from someone who had never taken more than about two months off of gymnastics for an injury, this was a new situation for me. I was sidelined from the end of April until October. During this time I struggled a lot. I’ve always been a planner and now my whole plan for my “awesome senior year” was completely thrown off. I didn’t even know if I’d be able to compete at all in the regular season. But being the person I am, I set a goal. To come back as soon as possible, while still being safe. I worked my butt off day after day and soon enough, I was back. I was now done with my first semester of graduate school and about to start the competition season.

Without going into detail, I can say that my season has been a crazy rollercoaster of amazing successes and utter failures. Going from someone who had only three falls in my entire collegiate career, to falling off beam four times in one season was heartbreaking. This was not what my senior year was supposed to be like. I was supposed to be the rock of the team, not the most inconsistent one. Frustration became a daily issue. I knew I needed a change of heart and through the help of prayer, Nick, my coaches and teammates, I was able to let go of the need to be perfect and just enjoy the last few weeks of the sport I love so much.

It’s now a week away from being over forever. I’m enjoying every minute in the gym and with my team.

It’s crazy to think that something that’s been a part of my life for over 15 years is coming to a close, but I know that with the closing of this chapter comes the bringing of the next. I will be graduating with my Masters in Sport Business Management this summer with a 4.0, and starting my MBA in the fall. Looking back, I know my success has not come from myself. It has come because God gave me the opportunity to use the gifts He gave me to glorify Him. I can look forward to the new opportunities that God presets me and be confident in stepping into the next roll he has planned for me.

For anyone out there struggling with something, whether its relationships, your career, just being generally unhappy with your life, I want you to know something. It’s going to be ok! It will pass. If there is anything that I have learned in my short 22 years on this earth, is that this is all temporary. My sport is temporary, my school career is temporary, a bad grade or a bad meet means nothing in the broad scope of the future.

While it’s important to love what you do and have passions and goals in life, just remember, it doesn’t define you. God defines you as a most perfect being worth of unconditional and unfathomable love. So what is my new ultimate goal in life? To serve those around me by loving and giving all I have to give. I’ve been given my talents and current place in life for a reason and I can’t wait to see what’s in store!

Sophomore and junior year of high school I continuously struggled with the decision to play a sport in college. Its around this time high school athletes not only need to start thinking about the schools they want to attend but also whether pursuing their sport is even realistic. The commitment, time, efforts dedicated to a high school sport pails in comparison to playing the same sport in college.

I was a three-sport athlete in high school and had been playing lacrosse since I was five years old. I was originally born in Maryland, a feeding ground for high school lacrosse athletes, but in middle school my family moved to a suburb outside of Charlotte, NC. In this new city, saying I played lacrosse was like I was speaking a foreign language. My mom and I ended up starting a girls lacrosse program for my high school and in our first year we would lose some games by 20 goals or more.

I was the only one on my high school team who had ever played lacrosse before. In order to challenge myself and to try to continue to get better, I joined numerous travel teams throughout the Charlotte area. We went to many tournaments where college scouts would come and watch us play. It was intimidating but all the more exciting to know some of these people could grant you with an amazing opportunity.

During my junior year, I would receive many letters from scouts and colleges.

Most were smaller D3 and D2 schools offering some financial aid but every once in awhile a D1 school would reach out. Those letters were the most exciting to receive. It was also during this time I started to get burnt out of the sport I had been playing for almost 13 years. It was time to have a serious conversation about what I wanted for my future and whether lacrosse was going to be in it or not.

While continually talking to coaches and scouts of these schools, I was also applying to schools not for lacrosse. I applied to four big, out of state schools I would want to attend. I came to the decision that if lacrosse paid for my college I would play but if I could go to one of these bigger schools for the same amount, I would choose that.

I ended up getting almost a full ride to UGA based on my academic achievements in high school. UGA was also my favorite school I visited so you can only imagine my happiness. I thought I would rather go to a huge university, get involved with many organizations, a sorority, and have some free time rather than dedicate my college career to being an athlete.

After all, as of now there isn’t much opportunity for women to pursue even if you’re an above average athlete.

There is even better news to my story. UGA doesn’t have a D1 collegiate lacrosse program but they have a WCLA team. It is essentially club lacrosse but highly competitive. I found everything I was looking for in a lacrosse collegiate team and would have time to participate in everything else I wanted to do. The commitment is less than if I were going to a school to play lacrosse but we still practice almost every day.

My lacrosse team here has become a second family for me and we even get to go to amazing tournaments in places like Colorado and California. And to my disbelief of how a club team would be, the team here at UGA is surprisingly really good. Right now we are currently ranked very high in the nation and have high hopes for winning a national championship this year.

I could not be more enthused with my decision to play a club sport versus going to school for lacrosse. I do, however, completely support those who use sports as a means of going to college. I also think that looking into the possibilities of playing at a less competitive level should be considered so you can get as much as possible out of your college experience.

I still get to play the sport I love, with people I love, while also not having to wake up at 5am for workouts.

The key word to focus on in this statement alone is ‘grit.’ We will not be able to win on talent alone. He did not say we are never going to win a game.

If this were the case we may as well all toss in the towel and never look back. The conversation was started with the obvious intention to figure out what we need to do to take games from teams who physically outmatch us, because it is possible.

The trick is to accept that it is not possible to win if we continue on the same path, while keeping faith that if we commit to making change, we can and will win.

The brutal truth is that we are outmatched on paper.

B1G ten volleyball teams are built to be larger than life girls who are great jumpers, with powerful swings, and heavy serves. Winning teams in the B1G ten get the top physical recruits in the nation. We don’t happen to be that team. We’re not going to magically jump touch a foot higher than we do now to match the teams we are playing against.

None of us are going to grow five inches either. These are all things we know to be true. But we went neck and neck with a lot of these teams, falling short time and time again by tiny margins. So what tips the scale in our favor? Every uphill battle to ever exist has been won at the fighting fists of people who not only possess but understand and live their lives through one principle; grit.

Grit calls for a steel backbone and an unwavering and unafraid resolve driven by passion and purpose.

For the uphill battle winners, the saying, “Success comes to those who wait.” is a load of crap. They live their lives knowing that the hill is conquered by those who outwork yesterday’s best today. They continue to strive for this day after day. Yet through this grueling and time consuming process they still possess a level of passion to warrant patience while climbing. Patience is essential for the climb; waiting is not. The reality of the situation is we can no longer wait and stare up in awe from the bottom of the hill at teams who have reached the top. We need a direction to go, preferably up.

In the book Good to Great, by Jim Collins, to become a great team, the right people have to be “on the bus.” I believe the right people are. We’ve done the grueling practices, and long days in the gym, exhausting traveling weekends, staying up until the early hours of the morning in the hotel lobby finishing schoolwork.

However, so have the teams we compete against. Beyond this I am confident the right people are on our bus because above all else, those of us who remain have chosen to stay on board. Our past competition season was the ultimate test. The players struggled, the coaches struggled, some people left the bus, and others were kicked off.

What we are left with is a bus at a stand still, full of people that have chosen not to get off despite these struggles.

For that reason alone the remaining members of this team possess the grit and faith that we need to win. The piece of the puzzle we were missing is now staring us in the face. We will not win on talent alone. Confronted with this truth, we keep the faith that we will win, go back to the drawing board, and figure out how to begin the climb. The only direction left to go is up.