Libby May Is Making A Difference With Pre-Health Terps

As a leader, women’s lacrosse senior Libby May understands the importance of bringing people together and having a connection with others. For the second straight year, May will serve as the president of the Pre-Health Terps board, a group connecting Terrapin student-athletes striving to work in the medical field.

May, who comes to College Park from Sparks, Md., has been a part of the Maryland community since before she came to campus. Her older sister, Catie, was an attacker for the Terrapins and graduated in 2021. 

“As soon as I stepped foot on campus, when I was getting recruited, I absolutely knew that I had to come here,” May said. “My older sister, Catie, was three years older than me and played here at Maryland too. So that was obviously a huge factor in me coming here.”

May is working on her bachelor’s degree in public health science and she will graduate this May. May will stay for her fifth year to earn a second degree in French. This spring, she will apply to physician assistant school and will attend in 2024. 

“When I came into Maryland, I always wanted to double major but being on the pre-health track and also playing lacrosse, I just didn't have the room for it,” May said. “So when COVID happened, and they granted us an extra year of eligibility, I thought it was the perfect opportunity to get a second language and especially since I'm going into the healthcare field. My career goal is to become a physician assistant.

“Medicine provides a lifelong learning opportunity which is very compatible with my strengths and tendencies. It also grants the ability to alleviate patients’ pain and suffering which is extremely honorable.”

May has juggled the academic demands of being a public health major and playing for the top team in the nation extremely well. Last season, she earned Second Team All-Big Ten honors, as she was second on the Terps’ roster in goals (64) and points (78). She helped the Terrapins win the 2022 Big Ten championship and advance to the Final Four. 

Being a student-athlete on one of the most successful teams in the country is hard enough. But being student-athlete on the pre-health track is a new level of challenging. 

The Pre-Health Terps board was started by student-athletes in 2020. After a short hiatus, the May sisters decided to give it a fresh start in the fall of 2020. The younger May, Libby, served as the Director of Internal Operations as a sophomore that year. She was named President at the beginning of the 2021-22 school year and will serve in the same role for this year. 

“The reason I got into Pre-Health Terps in the first place was because I'm on the pre-health track and wanted to learn more about the different types of pre-health tracks and what you can go into and how to just help my peers learn more about,” May said.

Under May’s leadership in the last year, the membership has more than doubled. The group has been actively reaching out to connect to other Terp student-athletes on the pre-health track. 

“When I was a sophomore, we had probably nine consistent members,” May said. “But last year, our cohort number increased to around 25 to 30. So that was probably our biggest achievement from last year, just getting more people involved. I think it's kind of hard, especially when we were online [in 2020] to get as many people involved as possible. But at this point, I think we've reached almost every pre-health student-athlete at Maryland. I mean, there's only so many pre-health students, especially as an athlete. I think that was definitely our biggest achievement.”

The group meets monthly and members use each other as resources to help with advice, sharing ideas and opportunities and they look to bring in guest speakers. 

“We were able to host meetings every single month,” May said. “We cover different topics like prerequisite courses, different coursework that you need, volunteer hours, clinical opportunities, and then we also hosted several guest speakers. That was definitely enticing to our members and also just created a sense of community where we can all get together, talk about medicine and just learn more about it.” 

Together under May’s leadership, these extraordinary Terrapins are sharing experiences and helping each other balance competing at the highest levels, all while putting in the work to make a difference.