Cailin Bracken is a junior at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, and is an attacker on the school’s Division I women’s lacrosse team. Having grown up in a lacrosse family in northern New Jersey, Cailin grew up surrounded by expectations that she would become an elite athlete. By age 16, Cailin was ranked by Inside Lacrosse as one of the top-20 attack recruits in the country and earned accolades ranging from academic recognition to the Under-Armour All America tournament honors. A longtime mental health advocate on her personal blog on Instagram (@kalewithcail) and her website ownyourstory.community, in the spring of 2022, Cailin penned an inspiring message titled ‘A Letter to College Sports’ in which she discussed her own experience with mental health challenges as a student-athlete, and urged readers to reconsider their perspective on vulnerability, failure, mental toughness, and compassion as it pertains to the student-athlete experience. Cailin’s letter has been shared by numerous national media outlets including a feature on Good Morning America, and the piece was listed as the #3 most read piece in US Lacrosse Magazine in 2022.
