Former Johns Hopkins swimmer making a splash out of the pool

Former Johns Hopkins swimmer Matt McGough is used to charging through the water, but now the five-time All-American is focused on making a splash outside the pool.

At Johns Hopkins, McGough is halfway through a prestigious two-year public health master’s program that focuses on population and health. 

The 2021 Division III LGTBQ+ Student-Athlete of the Year’s upbringing in Marlton, New Jersey, 15 miles from Philadelphia, sparked his curiosity at a young age and fueled a desire to help others. 

Fifteen minutes north of Marlton is Moorestown, New Jersey, which was named one of the best places to live in the United States by Money magazine. About the same distance to the west is Camden, New Jersey, which frequently has been named one of the most dangerous cities in America and at one point had the highest per-capita homicide rate in the country. This juxtaposition was not lost on McGough.

“It made me realize, ‘Why is our country situated like this? Why does our ZIP code, some being 30 minutes away from each other, affect your life expectancy by 20 years?’” he said. “I was a curious kid, and a lot of questions I had growing up were sort of answered by studying public health.”

With his swimming eligibility exhausted, the East Coast lifer is about to make a cross-country move to San Francisco as he begins a full-time position with the Kaiser Family Foundation. He did an internship with the health policy think tank last summer and as part of his master’s program is now working on a team that focuses on two areas:

• Comparing the strength of the U.S. health system in four areas: quality, cost, affordability and access against comparable countries.
• Analyzing the continued impact of the Affordable Care Act.

His role with the Kaiser Family Foundation comes after a jampacked college career where he swam for the Blue Jays for five seasons and graduated in May 2021 with undergraduate degrees in public health and economics.

Between all the early morning practices and late nights studying, no time was wasted. He was a student research assistant for the Child and Adolescent Health Measurement Initiative, a bystander intervention trainer, a research assistant for a team looking to expand preventative HIV treatment to Medicaid-eligible individuals and the uninsured, a member of four student organizations, and co-founder of Johns Hopkins’ chapter of Athlete Ally, an advocacy group that focuses on making athletics communities more inclusive and helping athletes advocate for LGBTQ equality.

McGough credits his parents, Scott and Nicole McGough, for instilling selfless values in him. He discovered a purpose either being the one assisting others or helping inform those who are directly helping people.

“I wouldn’t want to be doing anything else because I know there’s so much work to be done in our society,” said the 2021 Johns Hopkins Student Employee of the Year. “I want to be a part of it. I want to be somebody that’s contributing to that change.”

McGough helped enact change and provide a more inclusive environment during his time at Johns Hopkins. Athletics Director Jen Baker knew of Athlete Ally and enlisted McGough and his friend and teammate Matt Garza to create a chapter on their campus. 

In addition to the high quality of the university, one of the main reasons McGough felt the school was the right place for him was because of the family atmosphere he felt from the team and head coach Scott Armstrong during a recruiting visit. 

That family environment helped McGough between his freshman and sophomore years as he was coming out. Armstrong recognized one of his swimmers was struggling and made an effort to help him feel comfortable. Additional support came from teammates, assistant coach Margaret Zagrobelny and then-associate head coach Nick Charriez, who was out himself. 

McGough said having a safe environment, one that was paved by previous out members of the team and a collection of encouraging people, was integral in helping him through this significant time.

“Even though the majority of the team is cisgender and heterosexual identifying, I still view them as this chosen family because of the way that they have taken me in and allowed me to be myself,” McGough said. “When I am or when I was having a hard time, being able to go to them with anything and they’d be there with open ears and hearts, they were absolutely integral to me coming out and being safe.

“To be very honest, sitting here right now, I went through a really, really dark time, but they sort of had patience with me and were caring enough to hold me up to be able to come out to my family.”

While immensely grateful for the support system he had in coming out, he knows there could have been other resources to help him during that time and wanted to aid future student-athletes. The formation of the Athlete Ally chapter on campus gave him a profound sense of joy to connect with others who shared similar experiences.

“It allowed me to be myself on a different level than with nonidentifying LGBTQ athletes,” McGough said. “We all have very specific experiences and struggles being in athletics. A lot of times it goes against gender norms, so I think being able to come together and share our experiences is very cathartic and therapeutic.”

There’s a certain type of bravery that comes with being a vocal advocate for issues, and McGough hopes that sharing his story will make a difference for future student-athletes.

“Representation, even if it seems super silly, can have a butterfly effect,” he said. “It’s only going to be a positive change to be able to see someone you can identify with, even in some small way. I want to be able to hopefully be a small part of someone else’s change.”

When McGough looks back at winning the Division III LGBTQ+ Student-Athlete of the Year, he still cannot believe it. It’s taken a bit to set in, but remarkably it served as the perfect way to encapsulate his rewarding experience as a student-athlete.

“Because it was going back to a really deep part of myself, it’s something I never thought I would be celebrated for. I didn’t think I would ever be the person to win it,” McGough said. “It was a really great wrap-up of all this great work I had done in the classroom, in the pool and in my extracurriculars. It means a lot to me personally. I had five really great years at Johns Hopkins. I was able to make some sort of impact, and I’m ready to take it on to the next chapter.”

LGBTQ Inclusion in College Sports

For more information on the NCAA Division III LGBTQ OneTeam program, check out the June 8th edition of the NCAA Social Series, where host Andy Katz talks with Donna Ledwin, commissioner of the Allegheny Mountain Collegiate Conference and Danielle O’Leary, former SWA and head women’s lacrosse coach at Mount Aloysius College and currently assistant director of athletics at William Peace University.