Since Megan Young’s first internship as a strength coach at Auburn University in 2009, she has played a significant role in supporting athletes on their career journeys.
She worked with football, baseball and basketball players earlier in her career. But, she felt most connected to soccer, the sport in which she would eventually make a living.
“I fell in love with not just the sport, but the people of the sport and the players and just the aspects of the game as well,” said Young.
Fast forward to today, after working her way up the ranks of Auburn Athletics serving as the Strength Coach for the women’s soccer team and transitioning into the professional space as the High-Performance Director for the Chicago Red Stars, she now resides in Seattle, WA where she has been the Sounders Performance Coach for the past three years.
“There's a full circle moment there where I came out to a Seattle Sounders Sports Science conference in 2013, or 14, [when I was] working in the SEC,” said Young. “I was able to take away a lot because the speakers presented more than peer reviewed research and theory alone, it was the practical application of these findings in high performance environments…That always stuck with me.”
At the time, the Sounders were “cutting edge and novel,” according to Young, leveraging sports science concepts that are common practice today. With her love for soccer, and passion for expanding the idea of “performance coaching,” the Sounders fit the mold of what she was looking for in her career. So, when the opportunity presented itself to work at the club, she knew she had to jump on it.
“I want to be somewhere where I know I would be able to implement best practice and build legacy systems and frameworks,” said Young. “And since coming here and building from that, we have something really special.”
Earlier in her career she sought out to find work where she could upskill her craft. Her switch to the Sounders organization in 2021 has allowed her to enter a new chapter of performance innovation.
“My role now is more of that expertise, of what is performance, and currently in this role is everything from helping with mobility, activations, preps, lifting, off-field conditioning components, all those pieces,” said Young. “Now, I get to apply expertise instead of having something [already] in place.”
Long hours of hard work and dedication to her craft has led her to where she is in her career today. But the journey to her present day self came with having to endure the unimaginable.
On Sept. 15, 2015, Young was diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukemia.
“I was very tired all the time, and then I was lucky enough for my local physician to run a blood draw and notice what was going on,” said Young. “Then I was transported to a hospital locally, and a doctor walked in and said, ‘Hey, my name is and you're in a blood emergency, and I think you have leukemia.’”
Her immediate response took the doctor by surprise.
“I said, ‘Great,’” Young remembered. “And he asked, ‘Why is that great?’ And I said, ‘I knew something was wrong, now you've told me, and now we can work towards an end goal.’”
Regardless of the reality of her illness, Young’s mindset never changed. The way she faced cancer was no different to how she approached her career and everything else going on in her life.
“There was one rule: no bad days,” said Young. “For me, there was never a question, ‘Is this it?’ That was never a thought once, it was every step forward, and I'm very lucky to be on the other side of that.”
And while her positivity went a long way in making her cancer treatments manageable, Young’s community at Auburn and beyond is something that she will always be appreciative of when reflecting on her Leukemia journey.
“When I was diagnosed, my coaching community, the soccer community, all these communities let me know they had my back,” said Young.
The Auburn women’s soccer team created the term “Megastrong” to show their support for Young. A sign with the phrase traveled around to 40 different soccer teams, who then proceeded to post about it in their social accounts.
It was examples like that that made her grateful for her experience, despite the difficult moments that came with it.
“I actually say, cancer is the best thing that ever happened to me,” said Young. “I think that when you go through hard things, you have a lot of success on the other side, if you can get through it.”
Young recognizes that while she found herself cancer-free, many people do not have that same outcome. Like the constant support she received during her cancer journey, she has been an advocate for those who are dealt with similar circumstances.
“I think that I have such a privilege to say I'm on the other side, and to try and give back to those communities,” said Young. “In Seattle, specifically, I've met parents that have lost children to specifically my type of cancer, and that was kind of surreal, and to be there to support them because their children aren't there to speak for themselves, that's so tragic. And so, if there is anything I can do to help alleviate and just recognize what people are going through, I don't mind sitting in the hard moments.”
Along with being a phone call away to those with a diagnosed child or anybody who is undergoing treatment themselves, Young encourages people to become bone marrow donors through organizations like Be The Match, participate in blood drives, and engage in fundraising events like Leukemia and Lymphoma Society’s “Light the Night,” dedicated to patients and their loved ones.
At her core, Young is an educator. Whether it involves her experience with cancer, her knowledge in sports performance, or the two intertwined, she goes above and beyond in ensuring she gives back to the spaces that have given her support all these years.
“It's just about bringing communities together that's really important to me,” said Young. “And everyone's in a different journey of what performance is in their life, but giving back to those communities, as well as the coaching community, is probably my core tenet as a human.”
She does exactly that through educational courses and podcasts while also organizing charity events during the months of September and October.
“As a cancer survivor and a member of the queer community, how much can I do to drive high performance living into those communities and also make them realize having performance is part of their life,” said Young. “So in October of every year, I do a charity event leading up to [my cure date] and donate that to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.”
Last year, she participated in a physical challenge during each of the first 20 days of October. On Fridays, she would invite members from the cancer community to join her.
“Basically, I had a backpack on or a rucksack that had 30 pounds in it and you could come meet me and I don't care if you have no weight, you haven't walked a mile, whatever it is, but I'm going to do a 5k and you're free to join me for every piece of that,” said Young. “I needed to do something challenging, because I think that for me, struggle is where I show success, and whether that's struggle through the scars people share through cancer survivorship or mental health, or whatever the burden they're carrying, it's about being able to open a space for that to be accepted and talked about.”
The trajectory of Young’s life was completely altered in 2015. But having to go through what she did was something she continues to view as a positive today.
“Having something stop everything in life, I knew for certain after my cancer experience the values that are most important to me and how I wanted to live my life, and I get to say I've lived that life authentically since then,” said Young.
Her perspective on life coincides with how she approaches her career.
“Your job is a choice, and I don't feel like I have ‘just a job,’ because I get to decide the environment that I want to exist in and the people I want to help,” said Young. “And so, if it didn't meet my personal mission, it wouldn't be my job.”
It is the relationships at the Sounders organization, specifically, that have made her job experience that much more fulfilling.
“Our season is pretty much 12 months long. So we're here more often than not….We work a lot,” said Young. “It’s not just the players, but also the staff, the coaches, the business office, those relationships that have to bring value and be of equitable exchange, that allows for these things to be less than transactional and be relational.”
