The weight of it all seemed to hit Hailey Van Lith as she began to answer the question Sunday. She had just led TCU past Louisville — the school where she spent her first three years of college — to send the Horned Frogs to the NCAA Tournament’s Sweet 16 for the first time in program history.
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The question was about all the people wearing her No. 10 jersey inside TCU’s Schollmaier Arena and her becoming one of the faces of women’s basketball. Van Lith thought about what she has overcome — the struggles, the doubts, the fears. She wanted everyone to know the only way she got to this point was with God.
“I’m really standing on God’s shoulders right now, you guys,” Van Lith said through tears in the postgame press conference. “He’s delivered me from so much, man, and so much pain and suffering and confusion. I just — it’s all glory to God, truly. I would be nothing without Him. In the darkest moments of my life, He never turned His face from me, and I just couldn’t be more grateful to experience His love in this moment.
“So all those people are wearing my jersey out there, but it’s for a greater purpose. It’s God working, man.”
“I’m really standing on God’s shoulders right now.”
Beautiful words from an emotional Hailey Van Lith after helping TCU reach its first-ever women’s Sweet 16. pic.twitter.com/BaXexepNqG
— Sports Spectrum (@Sports_Spectrum) March 24, 2025
Van Lith posted her third double-double of the season in the 85-70 victory, scoring 16 points on 6-of-11 shooting and dishing out 10 assists while playing the entire game. She leads the Horned Frogs in points (17.7), assists (5.5) and steals (1.2) this season.
TCU (33-3) won its first Big 12 Conference regular-season championship and then won the conference tournament to earn a No. 2 seed in the NCAA Tournament. Last week, Van Lith was named a third-team All-American by the Associated Press and U.S. Basketball Writers Association.
Now a 𝙛𝙤𝙪𝙧-𝙩𝙞𝙢𝙚 All-American 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/LFqjbn0ZLc
— TCU Women’s Basketball (@tcuwbb) March 19, 2025
Earlier in her college career, Van Lith was lost. She was playing well at Louisville but experiencing mental health challenges. Speaking to the media in the locker room following Sunday’s win, she detailed just how bad of a place she was in and further explained the “pain and suffering” she referenced in the press conference.
“I felt trapped, and you would never know because I was having a ton of success on the court, but internally and in life in general, I was ready to be done,” she said. “That’s what I mean when I speak on suffering and pain. I didn’t even want to live.”
Hailey Van Lith talks about her mental health struggles throughout her college career, and how this year has been such a blessing for her.
Really powerful message worth watching from the TCU guard pic.twitter.com/AzNU4oLPQw
— Nick Girimonte (@GirimonteNicky) March 24, 2025
Van Lith transferred to LSU before the 2023-24 season, joining the defending national champions. Van Lith was baptized in the summer of 2023 as an outward expression of the inward transformation that had taken place.
The Tigers failed to live up to the lofty expectations placed upon them, and Van Lith had the worst season of her career. She decided to enter the transfer portal again.
Before Van Lith took the court for TCU, though, she was the leading scorer on the U.S. women’s 3×3 team that won bronze at the 2024 Paris Olympics. She thanked God in an Instagram post and often references her faith on social media.
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Van Lith has intentionally been using her resurgence and TCU’s historic season as an opportunity to share the ways God has been at work in her life.
“I’ve been praying all year, like, ‘God, I know You’ve given me this testimony to share it with the world and shed Your light,'” she continued Sunday. “I think that this is the year, and this is the moment that He wants people to know my story, and how He’s taken me literally from the depths of wanting to die, to this moment of loving life. Even if basketball went away today, I truly would want to be here and love these people. So that’s really my story with God and He’s so powerful.”
Up next is a rematch with No. 3-seeded Notre Dame, which TCU beat 76-68 in the Cayman Islands back on Nov. 29. The game will tip off at 1 p.m. ET on Saturday with the winner facing No. 1-seed Texas or No. 5-seed Tennessee.
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