District champion Berks Catholic girls shine light on mental health by remembering Grace Hornickle, who took her own life in March
On the surface, Berks Catholic looks to have plenty of reasons to celebrate this season with all its top runners back from last year’s District 3 Class 2A championship team.
Behind the scenes, one of the smiling faces who kept the Saints running is no longer with her teammates.
Team manager Grace Hornickle, who took her own life on March 5, 2021, before her 18th birthday during one of the most difficult years for teenagers, is gone. Her former Saints teammates and friends want to make sure Hornickle isn’t forgotten.
The Berks Catholic team, led by senior Kierra Pickard, has vowed to make sure Hornickle’s death is not in vain. The Saints have decided to dedicate the season to Hornickle and raise awareness about the mental health issues teenagers are facing during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
“I just thought that Grace was a really special person and more people should hear about her and about the impact she had,” Pickard said. “I thought it would mean a lot for Berks Catholic for her story to continue.”
Pickard and Hornickle were childhood friends since they attended kindergarten together at St. Ignatius. They began running together in elementary school and were teammates during their freshman and sophomore seasons at Berks Catholic.
Last year, Hornickle gave up running but wanted to stay with her teammates and friends as a team manager. She was there to share in their victories and defeats and celebrated along with the runners when they won the District 3 title in Hershey last November.
“Our team has a really close bond and Grace was an important member of our team,” said Michaela Burkey, Berks Catholic’s top finisher at last year’s District 3 meet. “We want to continue that she’s still
important to us as a team. This season we want to dedicate to her.”
The Saints plan to do that in plenty of ways, some visible, others behind the scenes but perhaps more important.
Berks Catholic has ordered warm-up shirts in purple, Hornickle’s favorite color, with the motto: Believe, Be Positive, Make Their Day, Be Present, Have Fun!
“She could always put a smile on my face or on anybody’s face if they were having a bad day,” said Jennifer Beaver, a manager for this year’s team. “She was so positive. She could always make your day better.”
The shirts are just the start.
“At the district championship we’re going to wear purple ribbons in our hair and purple butterfly tattoos so it feels like Grace is there with us,” Pickard said.
In addition, Berks Catholic is starting the Grace Hornickle Spirit Award, which Pickard said will go to an athlete who displays determined, kind and selfless qualities.
But perhaps most important of all, Pickard said she is helping to form an Aevidum mental health awareness group.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a report in July showing an increase of 22.3% in emergency room trips for potential suicides by children ages 12 to 17 in the summer of 2020 compared to 2019.
Among girls ages 12-17, the report showed an increase of 50.6% between Feb. 21 and March 20 compared to the previous year..
“I don’t think as a society we talk enough about mental health,” said Marshall Pickard, Kierra’s father and the Berks Catholic head coach. “The anxiety rates are through the roof with teenage kids. The suicide attempts are through the roof and nobody’s talking about it.
“It’s the pandemic within the pandemic that’s not being spoken about.”
But Kierra Pickard and her teammates want to change that. They are trying to prevent another tragedy such as the one the Berks Catholic community experienced last year.
Because her last name begins with a letter in the second half of alphabet and Hornickle’s began with a letter in the first half, Pickard said she didn’t see Grace much between the time the cross country season
ended and Hornickle took her life.
For the first three-quarters of last year, Berks Catholic students went to school twice a week in groups of A and B and learned remotely one day a week. Half of the students never went to school with the other half of their classmates.
“It was definitely difficult during quarantine,” Kierra Pickard said. “After cross country I really didn’t get to see her at all. I think she isolated herself a lot and it made it hard to see any signs.”
Burkey agreed.
“I think that was a really hard time for all teens,” she said. “All our extracurriculars and everything we could do were taken away. I guess it just hit her extremely hard, a little harder than everyone else.”
By forming a group to talk about those and other mental health issues, Kierra Pickard and her teammates hope to prevent losing another friend or classmate way too early.
“It’s for students to have an outlet to speak with peers or teachers if they’re struggling with depression or anxiety,” Kierra Pickard said. “Hopefully that’s going to help prevent this in the future.”