A New Type Of Tough

Heather Bonner was driving from North Carolina to Virginia in early November 2018 when she received the call.

Her son, Sean Bonner Jr., was missing.

After repeated attempts to reach her son by phone, she headed toward his school, Denison University, a private liberal arts college in Ohio with just over 2,000 students. She received the call that Sean had been found dead from an apparent suicide in the woods off campus. 

“His death was a complete and total shock to everybody,” Sean’s father, Sean Bonner Sr., said. “When I spoke to the police officer, I kept saying, ‘It’s not him. That’s not Sean. You got the wrong guy.’” 

Over five years later, the unimaginable loss has brought something positive: the creation of Mission 34, a foundation that spreads mental health awareness.

Peter Pittroff, an All-American lacrosse player at Denison, attended a rival high school and lived in the same Charlotte neighborhood as Sean. When Sean’s father mentioned his son’s ability to bring people together in his eulogy, Pittroff had an idea. He thought an organization that raised awareness about mental health in honor of Sean should be created.

Maryland baseball’s Kenny Lippman was a freshman on Denison’s baseball team when his teammate Sean took his life. After head coach Mike Deegan broke the news of Sean’s death, the foundation became integral to Denison’s baseball program.

According to Heather, the foundation aims to save lives by eliminating the stigma surrounding mental illness through education, awareness and communication. With 18-to-34-year-olds as its target, Mission 34, a nod to Sean’s jersey number, communicates mainly through Instagram. 

Lippman’s batterymate at Maryland, Charlie Glennon, was not yet a student-athlete at Denison when Sean passed away. However, he and his roommate, Charlie Fleming, later worked together to organize events and spread Mission 34’s message during his senior year. Now a graduate transfer with the Terps, Glennon wears jersey number 34 in honor of Sean.  

The student-athletes helped organize an annual volleyball tournament on campus, where participants raised money to assemble a team. Glennon says the event brought in around 1,000 people.

“My role ended up being spreading the message to different groups around campus,” Glennon said. “I had a pretty diverse group of friends. … I was just trying to bring as many people to the cause as possible.”

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than one in five U.S. adults live with a mental illness. That number is significantly higher among college students. 

In the University of Michigan’s annual Healthy Minds Study, during the 2021-22 academic year, nearly half of students reported symptoms of depression, over one-third of respondents said they experienced anxiety and 15% said they have seriously considered suicide - the highest rates in the survey’s 16-year history.

Mental health concerns are also prevalent among student-athletes. According to an NCAA survey, 24% of male and 36% of female athletes “felt so depressed that it was difficult to function.” 

Dr. Elizabeth Brown, a senior lecturer at Maryland for over four decades with expertise in sports psychology and educational psychology, says the potential of being sidelined due to injury is one of the primary reasons college athletes struggle with their mental well-being. 

“Every day they go to practice, and they see athletic trainers working on injured athletes, and it’s a reminder that this could be you,” Brown, who focuses on the pressures children face in youth sports, said. “Will someone come along and replace you at your position?

Sean’s father agreed.

“I think a lot of it has to do with the fear of losing your spot,” he said. “Even at Division III, there's somebody there that if you're not ready to go, somebody else is ready to go.”

Maryland has been a leader in eliminating the stigma surrounding mental health in college athletics. Chris Williams is the school’s designated athletic mental health counselor. He offers mental health support to members of the baseball team. He meets with them every few weeks to discuss various mental health topics, from anxiety to sleep hygiene and mindfulness routines. 

Lippman believes it’s easier for people to talk about their mental well-being within their inner circle, such as family members, friends or team staffers like Williams.   

“I know if I go to any of my teammates and say I’m struggling, at Dension or here [Maryland], I have numerous friends that would be able to help me out,” Lippman said. “I would hope some people would come to me if they were struggling too.” 

Terps second baseman Sam Hojnar, who is at his fourth different college, is impressed with the athletic department's commitment to mental health. When he transferred to Maryland before the 2023-24 academic year, Hojnar said incoming Maryland student-athletes were required to attend presentations educating them on the school’s mental health resources.

“There’s plenty of ways that Maryland has shown it takes it [mental health] seriously, and all student-athletes will be able to get help if they need it,” he said.

Hojnar is also involved in raising mental health awareness among college athletes. He works with the RJ3 Foundation, named after University of Illinois’ commit Ryan Jefferson, who took his life at 16 years old. Like Mission 34, the foundation aims to provide mental health resources and support to athletes. He hopes to help the foundation through his connections with other athletes who have struggled with mental health.

Brown contends that many college coaches nationwide don’t value sports psychology. While both foundations seek to tackle the stigma around mental health, Glennon says it is still noticeable within college athletics. 

“You’re supposed to put on this face of being tough, and you’re a Division I college athlete, what do you have to complain about?” he said. 

From Hojnar’s experiences playing college baseball at four different schools, many male athletes don’t accept the reality of the mental health crisis among students.

“A lot of people are pretty ignorant about it and think that it’s a lot less important and widespread than it really is,” Hojnar said. “A lot of people don’t believe that mental health issues exist.” 

Lippman and Glennon believe student-athletes face different stress than other students.

“A normal student will go to class, prepare for a test,” Lippman said. “That test is their uncertainty, but 95% of the population will pass. Baseball, you play a game, and half the teams lose.”

“Normal students don’t have to deal with losing four games in a row,” the right-hander continued. “They don’t have to deal with going 0-for-16. They don’t have to deal with giving up six runs in an outing. They don’t have to deal with injuries. There’s so much that athletes have to think about that has never crossed a normal student’s mind.”  

Glennon also thinks college athletics is not as glamorous as it might seem. “From an outsider’s perspective, it’s pretty easy to be like, these athletes have it so good,” the catcher said. “They get treated so well, they have these amazing facilities and they travel around the country, play in front of thousands of fans and it's all happy-go-lucky, the coolest thing in the world.” 

“Playing college sports is unbelievable, but there are a lot of expectations, which are super difficult,” he continued. “You’re expected to excel in your classes and represent the team, the program, your teammates, your coaches, your family. Then you’re going to go out on the weekend to Nebraska and play in front of 10,000 people for three days.”

Mission 34 continues to expand. The foundation has an annual Kickball with Sean Tournament in Charlotte and a 3.4-mile Angelversary Walk every November in various cities nationwide to honor Sean’s death. The organization also has a curriculum at multiple colleges, including events and suicide prevention training. 

There are Mission 34 chapters in cities such as Boston and states such as New Jersey. There are college chapters at Denison and Miami University, while Queen's University of Charlotte, Davidson College and Ohio University are set to launch chapters.

Two years ago, Mission 34 saved a life.

One Saturday around midnight, the Bonners received a call from a parent of a student from Charlotte Latin School, where the Bonners talk to the school's student-athletes annually and bring in a speaker on mental health. Heather thought the call was a mistake until the phone rang again.

When she picked it up, the father said their son was having a mental health crisis and asked the Bonners what to do. Heather walked them through what she had learned. Not only did the boy survive, but he has emphasized his mental well-being.  

Sean's legacy lives on in other ways, even years after his death. In addition to Glennon wearing number 34, every time Glennon and Lippman take the field, they wear blue wristbands engraved in red lettering that read “Mission 34 SPB - A New Type of Tough,” the organization's motto. 

The wristbands serve as a constant reminder of the realities of mental health. 

“No matter how good some college athletes might seem to have it, you never really know what's going on with them,” Hojnar said. “It's not a bad thing to ask for help, and it's not a bad thing to need help.”