Sophia Smith honored late Stanford teammate Katie Meyer at the World Cup with this gesture

This story discusses suicide. If you or someone you know is in crisis, call or text 988 to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. You can also text HOME to 741741 or visit SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for additional resources.

Two U.S. Women’s National Team members could not forget a late college teammate even as they were swept up in a major victory at the Women’s World Cup on July 21.

Team forward Sophia Smith, 22, scored her second goal in a match at the 2023 Women’s World Cup tournament and immediately honored her Stanford University teammate Katie Meyer— who died by suicide in March 2022 at the age of 22 —with a “zip-your-lip” gesture.

The moment occurred as the United States took on Vietnam for their first tournament match in Auckland, New Zealand. Ultimately, the United States beat out Vietnam 3-0.

According to ESPN, Smith explained the gesture to reporters, sharing that she and fellow teammate Naomi Girma, 23, wanted to honor Meyer’s legacy. Both Girma and Smith played with Meyer at Stanford University.

“That was for Katie,” she remarked about her late Stanford teammate. “Nai and I talked about it before the game. We were like, ‘What can we do for Katie?’ It was pretty iconic what she did in the College Cup, and we just want to honor her in every way.”

“With a lot of players, us included, speaking out on mental health, we see this as an opportunity to shed light on a lot of things that are important to us,” Girma explained. “That’s been something that’s been at the core of this team for so long, and for us to come in now and carry on that legacy is something that’s really important to us.”

Meyer emerged as a breakout star at the 2019 NCAA Division I women’s soccer tournament for her goalkeeping during Stanford’s penalty shootout against the University of North Carolina. After making a title-winning save, Meyer made the zip-lip gesture that went viral online.In the lead-up to the World Cup, Smith spoke to NBC Sports and Telemundo in an episode of the podcast “My New Favorite Futbolista” about the circumstances of Meyer’s death and how mental health played into it.

“I think the hardest part was there weren’t any signs of anything,” she explained. “You wouldn’t know she was hurting.”

“You don’t know what someone’s going through, and you won’t always see signs of struggle,” she added. “That has made me realize just how serious mental health is, especially for student-athletes who feel this pressure to excel in sports.”

This article was originally published on TODAY.com