Katie Meyer, born on January 20, 2000, was the goalie and captain for the Stanford University Women's soccer team. Katie was raised in Newbury Park, California by Steven and Gina Meyer, and was the middle child to sisters Samantha and Siena. Katie played for club teams Eagles Soccer Club and Real So Cal in addition to her high school team, and received a call to play for the U16 women's national team.
Meyer committed to Stanford University on October 10, 2015 and began at the university in 2018. She played a key role in winning the Women’s College Cup in 2019 against the University of North Carolina, saving 2 penalties in a 5-4 penalty shootout victory. As a result, Meyer was recognized as the MVP of the match and was made team captain for the 2020 and 2021 seasons.
Meyer passed away in her dorm room in Crothers Hall, one of Stanford’s residential housing buildings, on March 1, 2022. Family members, teammates, and her community were blindsided and devastated by Katie’s death, which was deemed a suicide. To this day, her teammates on the United States Women’s National Team (USWNT), currently competing in the 2023 Women’s World Cup, are grappling with the loss and finding ways to honor Katie’s memory.
When speaking to reporters on July 19, 2023, former Stanford teammate and close friend Sophia Smith stated that Katie’s death is still something she endures to this day. “Anytime I talk about Katie, it's obviously emotional, and then just with everything coming out today, it kind of brings all those feelings back to the surface," Smith said. "But I feel like I'm in a place where I can talk about it and talk about Katie in a really positive light, and it brings me more happiness.”
Another former Stanford teammate and dear friend Naomi Girma described her relationship to Katie and how she is coping with Katie's passing in an article she wrote in The Players’ Tribune on July 18, 2023: “Grief doesn’t work like you think it will. It’s not a straight line. It’s not a formula. It’s a mess. Some days, it feels like it just happened. Some days, you have a random memory, and you feel it all again so hard.”
Now both on USWNT, Sophia Smith and Naomi Girma stated that all of their actions at World Cup 2023 will be to honor the legacy of Katie. In an interview with SportsCenter, Girma explained that she wears wrist tape with “KM” written on it. Since Meyer's passing, Stanford Cardinal players have wearing butterfly patches on their uniforms in honor of Katie's butterfly tattoo. On the World Cup stage, after scoring her second goal in the US 3-0 victory against Vietnam on July 21, 2023, Sophia Smith did a “zip your lips” celebration, which was Katie’s iconic celebration after crucial goal saves.
"We said if one of us scored -- probably her [Smith] -- then we'd do that," Girma said. "It's just another way of honoring her."
Girma and Smith, along with other USWNT players, are dedicated to using their platform to raise awareness about mental health challenges and to destigmatize the conversation about mental health. Multiple USWNT players, including Girma and Smith, alongside Alex Morgan and Megan Rapinoe, were featured in a video prior to their first World Cup match to advocate for the importance of mental health programs. They’ve teamed up with Common Goal, a charity using soccer as a platform for social transformation, to launch a mental health initiative during the World Cup. Common Goal and the players are producing multiple service announcements aired throughout the tournament with the goal of changing the conversation surrounding mental health. FOX sports, the company broadcasting the World Cup, agreed to dedicate 1% of its broadcast coverage to the importance of mental health.
"With a lot of players, us included, speaking out on mental health, we see this as an opportunity to shed light on a lot of things that are important to us," Girma said. "That's been something that's been at the core of this team for so long and for us to come in now and carry on that legacy is something that's really important to us."
Girma stated, “we know first-hand how many people, especially student athletes, are struggling in silence, and we want to use our platform in this huge moment for something bigger than soccer.” Girma and her teammates are planning to go beyond raising awareness. They have high goals, including getting young people the tools to cope with mental health challenges. When they are finished with World Cup 2023, they hope to send mental health professionals to youth sports organizations in communities and ensure that coaches and players have the tools to recognize when someone may be struggling and how to get them the help they need.
It was unfathomable to her teammates that Katie, someone who smiled a lot, struggled. Katie’s passing brought about the realization that even people “who are smiling the most, and laughing the loudest, and loving people the hardest, and shining the brightest … sometimes, they’re going through things that you could never imagine.” - Girma
It is up to all of us to do better to care for ourselves and our friends.
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