“There is stress to be perfect”: Friends, family struggle to understand suicide of Stanford soccer star Katie Meyer
For many on campus, Katie Meyer was “the face of Stanford athletics.” Strong, outgoing, brash — a confidence that made her a role model and makes her suicide this week all the more difficult to comprehend.
Her parents, Gina and Steven Meyer from Ventura County, are equally bewildered. They had spoken to their 22-year-old daughter hours before she was found dead Tuesday in her dorm room.
“There is anxiety and there is stress to be perfect, to be the best, to be number one,” her mother, Gina Meyer, told The Today Show on Friday.
“She had a lot on her plate, she had a lot going on, but she was happy. She was in great spirits.”
Now, she said, “We are just struggling to know what happened and why it happened.”
Meyer’s death marks the fourth known suicide of a Stanford student in the past 13 months, leading to calls for more readily available mental health services and campus-wide reflection on the cultural pressures at one of the nation’s leading universities.
Her parents said Friday they wonder if an impending university disciplinary hearing was a catalyst for their daughter’s death.
“Katie being Katie was defending a teammate on campus over an incident and the repercussions of her defending that teammate,” her father said during the televised interview, without elaborating.
“She had been getting letters for a couple months,” her mother added. “This letter was kind of the final letter that there was going to be a trial or some kind of something.”
The university also declined to explain what that might have been. “We are not able to share information about confidential student disciplinary matters,” said Stanford Assistant Vice President Dee Mostofi. “We as a university community continue to grieve with Katie’s family and cherish our memories of her.”
News of her death was so shocking that a number of students are asking professors to give them a break — for their own mental health.
“They’re going through a lot. It’s almost finals week here,” teachers’ assistant Peter Boennighausen said on campus Friday. “They’re asking for dispensation from the administration and the teachers about assignment deadlines and things like that.”
The university staffs a 24-hour crisis hotline, but wait times to see a counselor can be four weeks long, said 19-year-old sophomore Diana Palacios.
“Everyone is hurting now,” Palacios said.
Katie was soccer team captain for two years and named twice to the Pac-12’s academic honor roll. She became a campus phenom her freshman year after she blocked a goal to help win the 2019 national championship. Her reaction — marching up to an ESPN film crew on the sidelines and pantomiming zipping her mouth and throwing away the key — went viral.
That seeming self-confidence made her a bit of a legend on campus, said Stanford volleyball player Kendall Kipp.
“Female athletes a lot of times feel like they need to fit this certain mold and, kind of like, behave,” Kipp, a 21-year-old junior, said. “And she was so confident and OK being herself and showing that it’s OK to show your competitive side and be different.”
In the days before her death, Katie posted upbeat videos on TikTok, showing her putting on makeup, explaining her schedule that day, describing the friends she would meet and the Mardi Gras party she planned to attend. In one video she showed off a red vintage sweatshirt and denim skirt.
“I feel like I look cool,” she said. “And Happy Friday, baby. We’re, like, halfway done with the day, and it only goes up from here!”
A couple of weeks earlier, she had launched a podcast — recording her first one with her father as a guest — called “Be The Mentality.”
As the Campanile bell chimed at noon Friday, Kipp and teammate Natalie Bertie walked across campus, holding bunches of sunflowers they bought in Katie’s honor and trying to make sense of the tragedy.
University athletes face a lot of pressure to succeed on and off the field, Kipp said. And when it gets to them, they don’t always know how to seek the support they need.
“It’s hard to accept to yourself that you’re struggling and need help,” she said. “Once you’re in that place, feeling helpless and lost, someone has to want to go reach out for help.”
Kipp’s volleyball teammates attended a crowded vigil on the soccer field Wednesday night, where students held candles and soaked in a message from Katie’s parents.
“They said everyone here has these huge accomplishments and they’re great athletes and smart, it’s just like, world class people here,” Kipp recounted, “but at the end of the day, who you are as a person is what matters, and it’s not worth getting yourself into that dark place, because everyone has people that care about them and love them.”
If you or someone you know is experiencing suicidal thoughts, call the toll-free National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-TALK (8255). The lifeline is manned 24 hours a day, seven days a week.