Maya Martin, Editor-in-Chief

The alarm rang at 5 a.m., long before the sun rose over McCarthy Field at La Salle University. By 6 a.m., Sam Klein was already on the field, running solely off a GoGo SqueeZ and learning what Division I lacrosse really demanded. Around her were some of the best players she had ever competed alongside. Just months after being a standout in high school, Klein was suddenly starting over on a whole different level.

Although comprised of successful athletes, Klein’s freshman year on the team was filled with unfortunate losses. Game after game, the scoreboard told the same story. Her freshman season ended with a 0-15 record. For many players, each loss turned excitement into frustration. A season like that might have been enough to transfer and start fresh at another school. For Klein, this was not an option.

“There is something to say about losing every single game and still choosing to come back the next year,” she said. “I think that says a lot about all of the seniors that have started at La Salle and are still here because we believed in the talent that this program has and that this program can be something far greater than it was when we first stepped in.”

Klein’s journey started when she was just a tiny second grader running around in oversized goggles for the first time on the lacrosse field. Following in her older sister Sarah’s footsteps, Klein developed a passion for the sport and continued playing throughout high school, eventually making the varsity team and playing on her club team, the Salt City Snipers.

Klein’s recruitment journey was not simple. During the COVID-19 pandemic, game film was hard to come by, and recruitment rules changed altogether. Klein, however, channeled her passion and got creative with the recruitment process. She did everything she could to prove her talent to prospective universities, including sending them basketball film and any other proof of her overall athletic ability.

Ultimately, between the city life and the friendly atmosphere, Klein excitedly committed to La Salle. As for many athletes, however, freshman year was nothing less than a culture shock. Klein battled the physical challenges of lift, practices and games six days a week. Mentally, she had to adjust to returning each day to her St. Basil’s dormitory, expected to complete schoolwork after hours of exertion.

“There’s a constant pressure to perform at your highest, even if you’re physically and mentally not 100%,” said Klein. “That’s a lot of pressure for sure, and in more high-stakes circumstances like in games, the expectation is that you don’t make mistakes.”

Well adjusted now, Klein continues to find balance among the mental and physical demands of being a DI athlete, while also giving her all to school and extracurriculars.

“This year we’ve had a lot of Wednesday games… and so Sam had her grad night class,” explained lacrosse manager Emily Sarkissian. “We were on a three-hour bus ride, and she joins the class on Zoom. Then, as soon as the bus arrives, she runs to actually go to the class in person because she was like, ‘Oh, well, I can’t participate as well online.’ So many other people would have just been like, ‘Oh yeah, I have an excuse. I was at lacrosse.’ That’s not her. She’s gonna put 110% into everything.”

Klein managed to complete her undergraduate degree in communication in three years. She now looks ahead to graduating with her master’s in strategic communication this May of 2026. On top of her studies, Klein is also the managing editor of the La Salle Collegian student-run newspaper.

“Being Managing Editor, she handles the social media and reviews every single article and other specific needs to be handled with the Collegian,” said business editor Claire Herquet. “She handles communication, which is not easy to do, given her schedule… It’s very hard to manage extracurriculars while being a student-athlete, so I admire that she’s able to do that on top of going for her master’s.”

Klein’s grit and dedication do not come as a surprise to many because of her leadership skills on and off the field. On paper, Klein has been a captain of three teams: varsity lacrosse, varsity basketball and DI lacrosse. On a deeper level, Klein makes an impact beyond the stats. She lifts up the players around her, giving them support and guidance.

“That fulfills me,” said Klein. “Even if the stat book doesn’t show that I had a good game, if I could have been the reason that somebody else did just with my feedback, my attitude and the way that I can treat them and connect with them, that means more to me than anything.”

Klein’s selflessness on the field does not go unrecognized to players, coaches and especially managers.

“Sam is a leader on the field,” said Sarkissian. “Every single move that she makes, she’s not just making it for herself… You can tell when she’s on the field, it’s not like she’s trying to get the ball so she can score. She’s trying to get the ball in the best position for the team so that we can do better. She’s a very selfless player.”

Klein’s leadership is visible and respected. Despite the demands of being a student-athlete, she overcame freshman-year challenges with grace, and she continues to thrive. While many student-athletes may crumble under the pressure, Klein channels it into her motivation. 

“I view pressure as a privilege every single day,” Klein expressed. “I think if your team is counting on you to perform, you are in a privileged position. If your coach is counting on you to lead, you are in a privileged position. If you can physically wake up every single day at 5 a.m. to go run miles on end, go lift and then do an entire day of classes like we did my freshman year, that is a privilege.”

After having pushed through this pressure, Klein looks ahead to graduation in May. She hopes to stay in the Philadelphia area and focus on finding a job filled with passion, creativity and helping others. She is looking for a job in communication where she won’t be “working for the weekend” but rather enjoying every day at work.

Although Klein’s lacrosse career may be coming to an end, the lessons and determination she has learned along the way will be carried with her.

“Lacrosse has truly made me the person I am today… for so many reasons. I think it’s given me all of the good qualities I have, whether that’s athletics-related, but more so, the soft skills of knowing how to work with a team, knowing how to overcome adversity or knowing how to lead… Playing lacrosse at La Salle has given me a greater sense of purpose and connection.”

Marc Regen, Editor

For La Salle University graduate student, Fiona Davoudi, triathlon isn’t just a sport — it’s a lifestyle. Balancing swimming, cycling and running, she trains up to three times a day while pursuing her MBA and mentoring the young Division I team.

“I was a swimmer through high school and wanted a new challenge when I started college,” she said. “I found a club team at UC Davis and loved getting to balance three different sports.”

Now competing in NCAA draft-legal sprint races — the same format used in the Olympics — she swims five to six days a week, runs five days and bikes three. Her workouts vary in intensity and focus, from long-distance swims to fast-paced bike rides, keeping training fresh and purposeful.

“Triathlon really is a lifestyle,” she said. “You’re always fueling or recovering for your next workout.”

She completed her first triathlon at 18 and now plays a leadership role on La Salle’s team, which is composed mostly of first-year undergraduates. As a graduate student, she’s embraced the role of mentor, sharing racing tips and bike skills she has picked up over the years.

“I feel like an older sister to the team,” she said. “I’ve learned a lot from having multiple coaches and mentors and love helping others grow.”

Triathlon is currently an emerging NCAA sport. With more than 40 schools now participating, the NCAA is expected to vote on elevating it to full championship status in the coming years.

La Salle’s team is already making waves. At the Patriot’s Triathlon, they placed second overall, with Davoudi finishing in second place individually. At the Beaver Country Tri Cup — the team’s first official NCAA draft-legal race — she placed seventh, and the team finished sixth.

Her performance earned her the NovaCare Student-Athlete of the Week award, a recognition she says was especially meaningful for a smaller team in a growing sport.

“It was awesome to receive votes from friends and supporters to represent triathlon,” she said.

Despite a demanding academic schedule — including full-day classes on Mondays and three online courses — she finds creative ways to balance training and schoolwork, even watching lectures while riding her indoor bike trainer.

Looking ahead, she’s excited for the team’s trip to Arizona for the National Championships and some off-season lake swims and bike rides in the spring.

After graduation in August 2026, she plans to continue racing in Elite Continental Cup events, with hopes of progressing to World Championship and Olympic-level competitions. Eventually, she aims to transition to middle-distance races like Ironman 70.3.

Her success, she says, comes from staying open to new training opportunities and learning from others.

“Listening to or observing high-performing athletes is the best way to pick up on things you might be missing,” she said. “Learning never ends in our sport.”

And when it’s time to unwind, the team knows how to have fun — from post-practice dinners to singing in the van on long road trips.“It’s all part of the adventure,” Davoudi said.

Kelsey McGovern, Staff Writer

The Great Tokyo Air Raid occurred on March 10, 1945, when the United States dropped incendiary bombs on Tokyo, killing an estimated 100,000 innocent Japanese civilians. Survivors of the raid were left with the most horrific memories of what happened that night. 

Shizuo Nishio is an 86-year-old survivor who tells her story at the Center for the Tokyo Raids and War Damage. She was six years old when the U.S. B-29 bombers began to bomb her home. 

On March 10, 1945, Shizuo Nishio was excited to go to kindergarten with her classmates. Her father told her family to go to the school nearby the house because it was made of cement and not wood. Shizuo recounts how the shelter was so packed that she and her mother went to find safety someplace else, leaving her 19-year-old cousin and the nurse behind. Shizuo thought they would be fine since they were in the school, but “hours later they were among 200 people discovered dead in a steamed state, cooked alive in the shelter by the raging fires outside”(Center of the Tokyo Raids and War Damage). Shizuo and her mother found safety in another school, and when the bombings were over, Tokyo was barren like the moon. She recounts seeing bodies on top of one another like the picture below.

Yoto Kitamura was 8 years old when the bombings occurred and remembered the sky being an eerie red. She remembers hearing “that the river was filled with bodies” (Center of the Tokyo Raids and War Damage). She recounts the sky looking as if it was daytime when it was at night. She recounts a flame catching on a person in front of her, but she could not ask if the person needed help because she was fleeing for her life. After the air raid, victims were being buried in masses and bodies were unidentifiable. Lots of survivors took their pain and turned it into their career. Kitamura and Nishio became doctors because they wanted to help people. Kitamura discusses wars going on today and says, “When I was watching television of the Ukraine situation, there was a little girl crying at a shelter. . . I thought, this is me!” 

The “New York Times” article “Survivor of Tokyo firebombing chronicled its horrors” by Phil Davison outlines the experiences of survivor Katsumoto Saotome. She was 12 years old during the firebomb living with his parents and sisters. Mr. Saotome was at home when “334 low-flying American B-29 ‘Flying Fortress’ warplanes firebombed the city, leveling much of it.” He explains that the flames made the world look like there was a red filter over it. He describes that the fire was living due to how fast it spread. He emphasizes how the Great Tokyo Air Raid has been forgotten over the decades due to the atomic bomb being dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 

The Saotome family fled to the river to escape fires, but the napalm bombs were so strong the jelly made it hard for residents to reach water. In the article, Davison mentions how one of the U.S. Air Force pilots said, “At 5,000 feet you could smell the flesh burning. . . . I couldn’t eat anything for two or three days. You know it was nauseating, really. We just said ‘What is that I smell?’ And it’s a kind of a sweet smell, and somebody said, ‘Well that’s flesh burning, had to be.’” These pilots described the burning flesh odor to be so nauseating that they felt relief when steering the plane toward the Pacific ocean exiting the smoke.

Mr. Saotome notes that although the atomic bomb on Hiroshima had a larger death toll, the Great Tokyo Air Raid resulted in more casualties than the bomb on Nagasaki. Mr. Saotome dedicated his life to writing, and reached out to the “New York Times” decades after the air raid questioning why none of their lectures included the air raids. The “New York Times” expressed that they did not have many sources to write about, and Mr. Saotome recognized what his new purpose was.

Jack Wagner, Editor

PHILADELPHIA – A gavel gives a loud whack! on a raised podium, the judge glaring down at the lawyer who stands before him. The opposing lawyer starts to stand, an objection already forming on his lips while a witness shifts nervously on the stand. But this is no normal courtroom; the witness, the lawyers and even the defendants are all students, and are all acting.This isn’t a real trial, it’s a mock trial. And to some students at La Salle University, it is a passion.

The members of La Salle University’s Mock Trial Association didn’t all plan to get involved, or even necessarily know what Mock Trial was when they first came to the school.

“I remember Pat and I, we were walking around the Involvement Fair,” said the president of Mock Trial, Cole Welsh. “We have a bunch of Father Judge guys from high school. And, you know, Pat and I wanted to argue about something, right? We love to argue politics, whatever it might be. And we saw Mock Trial, you get to argue. So we did it. We signed up, and we love it.”

Each year, the team is given a fictional case where they have to come up with theories and arguments for defending or prosecuting the characters involved. They get assigned roles where they have to play one of the characters in the case, such as a witness, and go to tournaments where they are graded on acting, how well researched their theories are, and how effective their arguments are. The cases are all unique and present new challenges, and the team is already thinking about next year.

“We just finished our last case, which was based off of Murder on the Orient Express. It was some guy who was a billionaire in their little fictional town called Midlands,” said Pat Malloy, vice president of Mock Trial. “His daughter was suing her brother for being responsible for their father’s death. That was a civil case, because nobody was actually going to jail in that case, it was just based off of money, and next year is going to be criminal. We know that because every year it goes civil, criminal, back and forth.”

Though the organization seems very law-focused, several members are not interested in a career as a lawyer. Instead, they see it more as a way to develop the wide variety of skills required to be successful in Mock Trial, such as acting or researching, or even looking at avenues for their current focuses that they hadn’t thought of before.

“I think that it really gives you a lot of expertise,” said Eddie Slegel, vice president of Personnel. “I think it can help in all fields. I’m personally an accountant, and I think that it’s really interesting to learn about some expert testimony, because technically that’s a career field someone like me could enter.”

The team attends and hosts a series of tournaments throughout the year. Last year, they attended invitationals at William and Mary College in Virginia, as well as one at Temple. La Salle also has its own invitational tournament which happens in the fall.

Even with all the excitement from the cases and the tournaments, what really keeps students in the organization is the community that they form while working on the cases together.

“What you find in Mock Trial is that you all work really hard on this case for months and months and months, and then you go and finally put it together,” said tournament director Isabella Teti. “And when everything comes together, I feel like all the hard work is finally paying off. And I would say that it’s one of the best feelings you’ll ever feel, especially when you’re dealing with people you really care about.”

“We’re with each other 20 hours a week, and we spend entire weekends with each other,” said Malloy. “It’s less of just an organization where we come to do simulation trials, and more like a long lost family who comes together for a family reunion every once in a while.”

If you are interested in joining the La Salle University Mock Trial Association or want to learn more about the organization, you can follow them on Instagram @lasalle_mocktrial.

Peyton Harris, Editor

(Trigger warning: this article has mentions of mental health struggles, suicide and death)

Across the country, student-athletes gear up to take the field, court, track or pool to represent their respective schools. From junior varsity high school teams to NCAA collegiate-level squads, students go out to participate in a sport that they love, to grow their skills and to foster a sense of camaraderie. 

As student-athletes, these individuals often have demanding schedules, multiple responsibilities and countless reasons for stress. If overlooked, however, mental health can develop further issues.

Morgan Rodgers was recruited to play Division I lacrosse for Duke University in 2014. She had struggled with anxiety in high school, which she sought treatment for. During her sophomore season at Duke, she suffered an injury to her knee which caused her to withdraw from the season and enter a year-long recovery period. As Rodgers seemingly presented a positive attitude while trying to return to the field, her struggles with anxiety and depression worsened.

Morgan Rodgers died by suicide on July 11, 2019, at the age of 22. The exact reasons she took her own life we may never know, but her personal struggles with self-worth and isolation, not to mention the loss of what she’d known for years – her sport – certainly were factors in that tragic decision. Morgan’s family and friends were devastated at the loss. From their loss, however, they were able to form a foundation that aims to tackle the issues that Rodgers faced.

Morgan’s Message was founded on Duke’s campus by Rodgers’s teammates in 2021. Directed toward student-athletes, the organization’s goal is to start the conversation among athletes about the personal mental health struggles they face. Within months, clubs had begun sprouting up on schools and campuses across the country. La Salle University’s Morgan’s Message club began that same year. 

Katie Johnson is a La Salle senior majoring in dietetics. She is also a member of the women’s lacrosse team and one of the student leaders involved in coordinating La Salle’s Morgan’s Message chapter. 

“My freshman year, [the chapter] started with a field hockey girl who also lost a friend to suicide,” said Johnson. “I grew up in a home that was very focused on mental health, so it’s always just kind of been something that I want to make sure everyone is doing their best, and whatever I can do to help.”

As the La Salle chapter enters its fourth year, it has grown to encompass athletes from all areas across campus. The goal is to foster open peer-to-peer communication on the tough topics surrounding mental health challenges, learn what these student-athletes can do to support one another and connect those in need with the proper resources. 

“La Salle lacrosse, we had a personal situation happen six years ago… and so it’s always been a very significant topic on our team, to sort of carry on that message,” said Johnson. 

On Dec. 8, 2019, the La Salle community was rocked by the sudden passing of women’s lacrosse player Brittany Stevens. “This is a devastating loss for our lacrosse family. We will miss her enormously,” said head coach Katie Rhodes Abbott.

“It shifted my perspective to how important it is and how much of an impact it can have on an environment,” said Johnson. “I want to carry that on to all of the student body and La Salle Athletics in general.”

Johnson highlighted the partnership between Morgan’s Message and the Athletics Department, while saying she appreciates the work they already do and would like to see more. 

“I think [Morgan’s Message] is an important presence because an athletic department can only do so much, and I think there is a difference in the impact when it comes from students versus when it comes from administration,” Johnson said. 

“We have various events, speeches and presentations from various people that are hosted by athletics. But it can be sort of more of a business in that regard, and to have that sort of smaller community where if you did need help, you had a peer that was there to help, or even just to listen.”

Johnson acknowledged the hesitancy that is common among students when it comes to opening up about sensitive topics. “I’m not the type of person to admit everything to my advisor or athletics advisor, but I would feel comfortable, or a sense of comfort, just attending a meeting for Morgan’s Message and know that there are other people that are experiencing the same thing, because it [the chapter] is just students,” she said

As Johnson prepares to graduate this spring, she hopes that Morgan’s Message will continue to foster discussion among student-athletes and within campus culture surrounding mental health awareness, including further partnership with the university and athletics.

“There are so many speakers and other organizations that specialize in universities’ and colleges’ student-athletes. Our strength coaches and athletic trainers have an open-door policy. But I think that coaches and administration, if it’s a full Athletics Department effort, it creates an environment where everyone’s on the same page.”

To take part in a meeting with La Salle’s Morgan’s Message chapter, follow their Instagram account @morgansmessage_lasallefor updates on events around campus and Morgan’s Message-dedicated games throughout the athletic calendar. As students, student-athletes and human beings, we have a responsibility to be kind and considerate to one another. As the foundation says, “Recovery is possible – let’s take a shot.”

If you or someone you know is struggling, the first step is to reach out for support. You can contact the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline by calling or texting 988, or by chatting online at 988lifeline.org. These services are available 24/7 and can provide free, confidential, and judgment-free support. The La Salle Student Counseling Center can be reached at (215) 951-1355, and Public Safety Office at (215) 951-2111. If you or a loved one are in immediate danger, call 911.