Holly Rogers navigated her fair share of challenges in her journey to West Virginia University. A lifelong athlete, she devoted over a decade to competitive softball, spending countless hours on fields and in training. A series of injuries ultimately lead her not to one, but four, reconstructive ankle surgeries.
Out of high school, Rogers headed to Montgomery College, a junior college located in her hometown of Rockville, Md. After writing a paper on the psychology of injury recovery, her professor urged her to look into the field of sports psychology and encouraged her to consider it as a potential career.
She investigated it further, and a friend of her mom’s recommended she examine WVU. Rogers headed to her visit with her options open.
“I was really in between going back to Montgomery College or transferring to WVU,” she says. “If I toured WVU and didn’t like it, I could always go back and take some more time and figure things out.”
Fortunately, she loved her tour.
“When I visited WVU, I felt like I was stepping into a family,” she recalls. The visit included a meeting with faculty and staff members who went out of their way to connect with her family and make everyone feel welcome. This strong sense of community was precisely what Rogers was looking for stepping onto a campus with 24,000 students.
“Even though it’s a big school, I felt like I was going to get every single thing I needed,” she adds. “It just felt like a family, and now that I’m here, I absolutely feel that way. It’s been that way from the day I stepped foot on campus.”
As she transitioned to WVU, she immediately immersed herself in campus life. She joined the Sport and Exercise Psychology Club within her first week on campus. Soon she was attending meetings, forming connections with faculty and fellow students, and later traveled with the group to the Midwest Sport and Exercise Psychology Symposium in Holland, Michigan. The symposium further solidified her passion for the industry and enticed her to stay involved with the club. Toward the end of the academic year, she found out that all of the leadership positions for the club would be available, and she figured, why not go for president?
The rest of the club agreed with the sentiment, and she now serves in that position.
Outside of her major, Rogers also serves as a tour leader for WVU, where she brings her unique perspective as a transfer student.
“I’m the only transfer among the tour leaders, so I try to share my story and reassure students who may feel uncertain about moving to a new place. WVU has truly delivered on its promise of a close-knit experience, and I want prospective students to see that.”
In the classroom, she’s become involved in research, a component of her WVU experience that she hadn’t anticipated. She assisted a Ph.D. student by handling coding and transcription tasks, which allowed her to witness the research process up close. This experience piqued her curiosity, and soon she found herself discussing potential projects with Dr. Rice, a faculty mentor. That conversation led to a project exploring the menstrual cycle’s impact on injury recovery—an area Rogers had noticed personally and seen among teammates.
“A mom of one of my teammates actually told me, ‘You know, there’s a really strong correlation between these [menstrual cycle and injury recovery].’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, I’ve kind of noticed that.’ Then I was sitting with Dr. Rice during his office hours, and he said, ‘You know, we could actually research this.’
Since then, she has dedicated “hours of research last semester, hours of research this semester,” working on everything from literature review to preparing for IRB approval. She, along with Dr. Rice and Dr. Garcia, are now preparing to survey female college athletes, focusing on how they self-report the effects of their menstrual cycle on injury recovery.
“We’re hoping that it’s going to go well,” she says, excited to contribute meaningful insights to the field.
Looking ahead, Rogers plans to follow her aunt and uncle and take her skills global by joining the Peace Corps, hoping to work in the Youth and Development of Sports program in Belize. Her goal is to use her degree to make a difference in the lives of youth who may not have access to organized sports. This experience, she believes, will provide the time and insight she needs to make an informed decision about her next steps, whether that’s pursuing a master’s in counseling (she is also pursuing a minor in addiction studies), sports psychology, or a focus on women’s studies.
“The Peace Corps offers an opportunity to apply what I’ve learned here at WVU and see firsthand how sports psychology can positively impact communities,” she says.
Her time at WVU has not only given her a foundation in sports psychology but has also opened doors she hadn’t considered. She feels a deep connection to her professors, classmates, and even strangers who recognize her WVU gear when she’s back home in Maryland.
When she first came to WVU, she thought she’d continue to play softball, albeit at the club level. There, she thought, would be the start of her making friends and finding people who shared that interest. With the ankle injury still keeping her off the diamond, though, she still found people with whom she connected.
“I thought I’d come and play club softball, and I thought I’d find my people there,” she recalls. “But I found my people through the School of Sport Sciences and the Visitor’s Center. It really is a family here at West Virginia University, which I don’t know how many other colleges can say that.”