What Made Maddy Run: The Secret Struggles and Tragic Death of an All-American Teen

by Kate Fagan

Overview

The heartbreaking story of college athlete Madison Holleran, whose life and death by suicide reveal the struggle of young people suffering from mental illness today in this #1 New York Times Sports and Fitness bestseller.

If you scrolled through the Instagram feed of 19-year-old Maddy Holleran, you would see a perfect life: a freshman at an Ivy League school, recruited for the track team, who was also beautiful, popular, and fiercely intelligent. This was a girl who succeeded at everything she tried, and who was only getting started. But when Maddy began her long-awaited college career, her parents noticed something changed. Previously indefatigable Maddy became withdrawn, and her thoughts centered on how she could change her life. In spite of thousands of hours of practice and study, she contemplated transferring from the school that had once been her dream.

When Maddy's dad, Jim, dropped her off for the first day of spring semester, she held him a second longer than usual. That would be the last time Jim would see his daughter. What Made Maddy Run began as a piece that Kate Fagan, a columnist for espnW, wrote about Maddy's life. What started as a profile of a successful young athlete whose life ended in suicide became so much larger when Fagan started to hear from other college athletes also struggling with mental illness.

This is the story of Maddy Holleran's life, and her struggle with depression, which also reveals the mounting pressures young people — and college athletes in particular — face to be perfect, especially in an age of relentless connectivity and social media saturation.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780316356527
Publisher:	Little, Brown and Company
Publication date:	07/17/2018
Pages:	320
Sales rank:	70,583
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Kate Fagan is an Emmy award-winning journalist and the #1 New York Times bestselling author of What Made Maddy Run, which was longlisted for the PEN/ESPN Award. She currently works for Meadowlark Media and writes for Sports Illustrated, and previously spent seven years as a columnist and feature writer for espnW, ESPN.com and ESPN The Magazine. She lives in Charleston, South Carolina with her wife, Kathryn Budig, and their two dogs.

Table of Contents

Foreword Alison Overholt ix

Author's Note 3

Chapter 1 Shattered 5

In Real Life 22

Chapter 2 August 23, 2013 39

Chapter 3 The Collapse 63

Mind, Body, Spirit 78

Chapter 4 Vacuum 92

Active Minds 108

Chapter 5 Just Sleep 123

All Alone 137

Chapter 6 Size Nothing 151

Chapter 7 Snow Falling 168

The Quitting Game 189

Chapter 8 The Meeting 204

Dreamscapes 232

Chapter 9 The Picture 235

Anticipation 243

Chapter 10 Spruce and 15th 257

The Rules of Suicide 279

Chapter 11 Shattered II 290

Acknowledgments 301

Resources 303

Editorial Reviews

Praise for What Made Maddy Run

Semi-Finalist for the PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sportswriting

"A poignant study of the converging pressures of mental illness, college athletics and social media."—Carlos Lozada, Washington Post

"Gripping and universal"
—Trevor Noah, The Daily Show

"Fagan does an exceptional job laying out [Maddy's] pain in a narrative style that is both persuasive and honest . . . a comprehensive, essential, and well-written piece about mental health, as well as a small step toward reducing the stigma around anxiety and depression."—Erin McCarthy, Philadelphia Inquirer

"A compassionate and frank look at depression and the social pressure faced by many college students as seen through the eyes of one young woman."—Kirkus

"With immense empathy, [Fagan] shares insights particular to student athletes, but presents them in universally accessible language and connects with the non-athlete through vivid examples"—Shelf-Awareness

"Fagan delivers the sequence of events in such a heartfelt but very real way"—Caitlyn Pilkington, Women's Running

"Holleran seems so alive on the page; her messages and Fagan's prose create someone who seems a real, living thing, so much so that by the end, this reader was rooting for her to talk to someone"

—Flotrack

"The book goes beyond telling a heartbreaking story; it encourages compassion toward young adults struggling with mental health issues and will ultimately help us think about ways to prevent similar tragedies."—National Book Review

"Fagan's book is well-researched and the message is timely and important."—Publishers' Weekly

"It is impossible not to be affected by Holleran's heart-wrenching story. An appropriate (if difficult) read for current and future college athletes, their coaches, and parents."—Library Journal

"the must-read book of 2017 for runners or competitive athletes of all kinds...thoroughly researched, written with sensitivity"—Sinead Mulhern, Canadian Running

"Covering an issue as sensitive as a teen suicide is no easy task and Fagan's compassion and desire to prevent more students from following Holleran's path shows in her writing. I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to be better informed about mental health issues among college students."—Carina Julig, cuindependent.com

"A provocative and thoughtful look at a student-athlete suicide that rocked the nation—but didn't, until now, actually help inform the nation. A labor of love and prevention by Kate Fagan, and Maddy's family and friends."

—Stephen Fried, best-selling author of Thing of Beauty and with Patrick Kennedy, A Common Struggle

From the Publisher

06/19/2017
ESPN columnist Fagan (The Reappearing Act) delves into the haunting story of Maddy Holleran, a track runner at the University of Pennsylvania whose struggles with depression and the pressures of sports culture ended in suicide. The narrative flips back and forth between chapters that recreate Maddy’s life and essays on how athletics—especially at the collegiate level—negatively impact the mental health of millions of people. Having struggled with similar issues herself, Fagan is well suited to tackle the underlying problem: student athletes, she argues, are so frequently fed platitudes such as “pain is weakness leaving the body” and face such unrealistic demands that those with mental-health issues become discouraged from seeking help, certain that they’re alone. Those bits of analysis, in which Fagan ties together a host of problems facing modern college-bound youth, are the book’s strongest points; less helpful are Fagan’s frequent attempts to recreate Maddy’s thought processes. Nevertheless, Fagan’s book is well researched and the message is timely and important. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

06/15/2017
Colleges and universities have put greater focus on student mental health in recent years than ever before; however, there continue to be many students who don't get the help they need and end up taking their own lives. ESPN writer Fagan's (The Reappearing Act) book is the story of one of those students. Maddy Holleran was a talented scholar-athlete recruited by multiple universities for soccer and track. She attended the University of Pennsylvania and, to any casual observer, had the perfect life: beautiful, popular, Ivy League student, and playing varsity sports. In reality, Holleran was crumbling under the pressure of maintaining the high standards she had always set for herself, causing her to dread the things she worked so hard to achieve and to contemplate giving up. Fagan writes with personal insight into Holleran's struggles, as she was also a college athlete who found herself hating the life she had dreamed for herself. VERDICT Though the writing is a bit over the top at times, it is impossible not to be affected by Holleran's heart-wrenching story. An appropriate (if difficult) read for current and future college athletes, their coaches, and parents. [See Prepub Alert, 2/27/17.]—Sara Holder, Univ. of Illinois Libs., Champaign

Library Journal

2017-05-01
What led to one teen athlete's suicide.When Maddy Holleran began attending college at the University of Pennsylvania and continued her athletic career as a member of the track team, she and everyone who knew her could only imagine the best for this outgoing and popular 19-year-old. But as her freshman year progressed, Maddy slipped into depression, falling deeper and deeper into a black pit that surprised and confused her. She attempted to maintain appearances, writing cheery text messages and Facebook posts, but inside, she felt increasingly numb and unhappy. Friends, relatives, and counselors told her it was normal, the type of homesickness and transitional unhappiness almost every first-year student experienced, and that she would get through it. But they were all wrong. Using Maddy's text messages, emails, letters, and information compiled from family and friends, ESPN columnist Fagan (The Reappearing Act: Coming Out as Gay on a College Basketball Team Led by Born-Again Christians, 2014, etc.) expertly re-creates the last months of Maddy's life. Interspersed with Maddy's story is an analysis of the type of commitment that is required to be a college athlete and the building pressure that many college students feel to appear happy, healthy, and successful in their given paths, despite any underlying doubt or despair. The author pays particular attention to the increasingly prominent role of social media and the disparity when one compares the online persona of someone like Maddy, who gave no definite indication that something was seriously wrong, with the actual issues at hand. Echoing the feelings Maddy must have felt, Fagan includes personal reflections on her own college athletic career, her desire to quit playing basketball, and the difficulty she had in figuring out what to do. A compassionate and frank look at depression and the social pressure faced by many college students as seen through the eyes of one young woman.

Kirkus Reviews