Sometime next May, Kaya Mahy's collegiate softball career will end. Whether it's in the regular season, the Centennial Conference playoffs (preferably) or the NCAA Tournament (even more preferably), ideally it will end with the last out of the last game of Muhlenberg's season.

But what if it ends prematurely, due to injury or for mental health reasons? How would that impact Mahy's transition to ex-athlete and her perception of her athletic experience?

That is what the psychology major and public health minor sought to examine in her summer independent study/research project, The Impact of Normative vs. Non-normative Athletic Career Retirement on Student-athlete Well-being and Transition.

The project was an outgrowth of Mahy's spring research on the mental well-being of Division III athletes, a mentorship under Associate Professor of Psychology Erika Bagley through the Dana Scholars Program. Mahy applied for and received the Rosenberg Research Award, which provides a stipend to a psychology student who is engaged in research that is developmental in nature.

Mahy, a first-team All-Centennial Conference selection at second base last spring, interviewed 12 former Muhlenberg athletes from a variety of sports who graduated between 2015 and 2024. She also interviewed four coaches and an athletic trainer to get their perspectives on how "normative" endings to athletic careers — graduation or end of eligibility — compared to "non-normative" endings, such as injury, the onset of the pandemic or mental health struggles.

"My hypothesis was that those who retired [non-normatively] would've had a harder time transitioning and would've had a more negative view on their athletic experience," says Mahy. "I would say for the most part, that's what I got from the interviews. 

"I asked the question to all of those who did retire normatively: Can you imagine if you did need to retire non-normatively? How would you have felt? And a hundred percent were like, it would've been so much harder. I thought it was hard now, but I can't even imagine going through something like that."

One of Mahy's non-normative participants, a former track and field athlete, offered some strong advice on how to cope with the identity loss that comes with the end of an athletic career, particularly one that ends non-normatively and without closure. 

"He mentioned that he had groups of friends outside of his sport and really made it a point to have other interests at Muhlenberg, and that he found the transition to be easier," she says. "Even though he had the injury, he was able to fall into those other things and distract himself from the fact that he was losing his sport. So that was interesting, that identity loss can be almost avoided if your sole identity is not all athletics or athletic based."

That, of course, is one of the hallmarks of the Division III philosophy, which treats athletics as an integral part of a well-rounded college experience through a journey designed to complement time spent in the classroom and pursuing other activities — some related to coursework, others extracurricular. 

And it's a lesson Mahy learned a few years ago from listening to older Mule athletes at meetings of Head in the Game, Muhlenberg's student-athlete mental health club.

"It opened my eyes that there is more to my life than just my sport," says Mahy, who now serves on the e-board of Head in the Game. "That heightened any interests I had in mental health and specifically in athletics, because I realized how important it is and even realized that some of the behaviors I had were unhealthy. I've been able to work on it a lot and feel like I am a much better all-around person and teammate." 

Mahy's responses did reveal a potential area for improvement. Whereas the coaches offered an open-door policy for their student-athletes to discuss anything, including the impending ends of their careers, some athletes said they didn't always feel comfortable taking the offer, for a variety of reasons.

"It might be unclear that that support is being offered and it could be in a more direct way … just to make sure that everyone's on the same page. Here's what coaches are saying, here's what athletes are saying. And that could be used to help both sides," she says.

Mahy, who says that she's always liked the idea of helping people be their best selves, has pivoted somewhat from her original goal of becoming a counselor. Although she's still keeping her options open, she currently is looking into a potential career as a college admissions counselor. 

"I really enjoy talking about the college experience because I have enjoyed mine so much," she says.