How senior Cat Hechter’s path changed from sport’s injury and uncertainty to mental health advocacy and leadership. After battling with injury and injury-induced struggles herself, Hechter is now the one helping others as a leader of the Morgan’s Message mental health club at Potomac Falls.
Going into high school there are so many unknowns, but senior Cat Hechter had one constant she could always rely on: her love for and ability to play softball. Since the age of seven, Hechter had always been a part of a softball team, where multiple, if not most, of her hours outside of school were spent at practice or playing in games. Hechter played third base, first base, and most often, starting pitcher on her travel team Leesburg Revolution.
Hechter was able to create a consistent routine with school, softball, and life. Weekdays were spent going to school, doing homework, and then going to practice, and weekends were usually taken up by tournaments. This was Hechter’s norm for almost nine years—until the pain began.
In July before her sophomore year, Hechter began to experience increased pain in her pitching arm. By August, this pain had become unbearable. “I shook it [the pain] off thinking my arm was just sore. I wanted to power through for my team, but it eventually became so painful that it felt like my arm was on fire,” said Hechter.
To prevent any further injury from occurring, Hechter immediately saw a specialist and was advised to take a four week break from pitching. After not feeling much improvement during this break, Hechter continued to visit many doctors, specifically neurologists and orthopedists. “They [the doctors] eventually identified that my ulnar nerve, which runs from the top of my neck to the tip of my pinky finger, was impinged somewhere,” said Hechter.
Over the course of the next six months, Hechter underwent several kinds of treatments, including medications, ultrasounds of the arteries in her forearm, saline injections into her elbow, and even electric needling on her elbow and forearm. “It [treatment] was kind of working, and my arm started to feel a little better. I was really focused on trying to become healthy for high school softball in the spring,” said Hechter. Due to her on-going injury, Hechter missed most of her fall travel season and winter practices during her sophomore year, so feeling better by high school season was her main goal.
When high school season came around, things were looking up for Hechter, as she was making slow but steady progress to where she wanted to be. Tryouts and the first few practices of her high school season went well “I started out really strong during tryouts,” but during the team’s first scrimmage at Heritage High School, things once again went south. “During our scrimmage, I was only able to make it through three innings at third base before my arm gave out again. From there, I was injured the rest of my sophomore season,” said Hechter.
This outcome was devastating for Hechter. “My arm wasn’t getting any better this time as I kept pushing my limits too far, forcing myself to try to toughen up so I could play with the high school team. It was so hard having to sit on the bench every practice doing my stretches while everyone else got to play and have fun,” said Hechter.
After enduring a whole season of having to sit out and watch, Hechter reached a breaking point, and her feelings towards softball began to change. “Playing softball ended up not feeling like it was worth it anymore, and I felt useless to my teammates. I felt like I had lost the one thing that made me myself. After the high school season I was barely able to play during the summer of 2024, and at the end of the summer, I decided to quit softball,” said Hechter.
Giving up softball was not an easy decision for Hechter, and it left a major hole in her life. Not only did she lose her sport, but she was also still having to endure extreme pain in her arm. Over the course of almost two years, she received four different diagnoses which forced her to continually restart the healing process every few months. “It was hard to explain what exactly was going on since I couldn’t get a set diagnosis, which made me feel like I was letting my coaches down,” said Hechter.
Junior year is a challenging year for most high school students, with loaded classes, college prep, and business. In addition to all of that, Hechter was having to deal with the loss of her sport and severe pain. This caused a severe decrease in Hechter’s mental health. “When my pain first started, I immediately felt defeated, but I had hope that it would all be solved within a few weeks,” said Hechter. When that wasn’t the case, and her injury continued all throughout junior year, it was hard for her to keep her head up. “I felt like I wasn’t myself anymore. I was losing my greatest passion. It was really hard for me to navigate.”
In the midst of all this, Hechter began attending club meetings for Morgan’s Message, a club that “strives to eliminate the stigma surrounding mental health within the student-athlete community and equalize the treatment of physical and mental health in athletics” according to their website. “It [the club] helped me a lot with understanding that it was okay for me to take a step back from softball as an athlete and continue being there as a human for my teammates. In a time where I felt really empty and defeated, Morgan’s Message was there to encourage me that there could be more ways that I could contribute to softball and to other communities with athletes,” said Hechter.
The club had a fallout during the middle of Hechter’s sophomore year, so she and a few friends made a plan to revive the club in their junior year. They successfully did that, and now Hechter is in her second year of being an officer for the club. The club became a place where Hechter not only received support, but also gave it to others. “Mental health education is something that I wasn’t exposed to before my injury happened, and as I became more involved in Morgan’s Message, my battles with my own mental health due to my injury became less intense. I was able to find a place where I could not only seek understanding, but be a light for other people who may have been going through the same things that I was,” said Hechter.
While injury is never wanted, Hechter now realizes that, “It taught me that I’m capable of so much more than I could’ve discovered had I not faced a hardship that pushed me to explore new things.” Progress takes lots of time and patience, and Hechter’s case is no exception. “I honestly wasn’t really completely myself again until the summer of 2025 after I had built a new set of passions and goals for myself outside of the lifestyle of softball that I’d known my entire life,” said Hechter.
Healing isn’t linear, and while Hechter is in a much better place now, she still misses what she once had at times. “I’ll always love softball and all the memories I made, but I do have a lot of sadness as well when I think about it. It’s really hard thinking about the last time I was pitching in the cage or running drills with my old teammates and knowing I can never get that exact feeling or experience back,” said Hechter.
The struggles she faced is the very reason Hechter is so passionate about supporting, advocating, and speaking out about mental health, especially in sports. “Give yourself grace in all of the things you do to try to balance your mental health with being an athlete. While great athletes are defined by their skill and physical abilities, they are just as importantly defined by their good sportsmanship, hard work, and empathy for themselves and their teammates,” said Hechter.