LOS ANGELES — It’s easy to watch USC beach volleyball player Caitlin Cummings and say to yourself, “Wow, she’s got it all together.”

Cummings is a now two-time national champion, playing at one of the top universities in the country. And while it is admittedly a dream come true, that’s not always the case.

“I think that student athletes in general are a little bit of an enigma. I mean, I have kids who direct message me on Instagram and ask how I got to where I am today,” Cummings said. “It makes me realize, like, I am living other people’s dreams, but I think that those stories a lot of times are a lot darker than we may initially think.”

While being a collegiate student athlete has brought Cummings plenty of highs, there have also been some very deep lows. After her first year at USC, she saw her performance drop off a little. It wasn’t up to her standards.

“It kind of hit a crux last year, my freshman year of college,” she explained. “There were just some things that felt like were out of my control, and I was kind of grasping for whatever I could to feel like I could control the situation.”

Cummings is one of many student athletes across the country who saw her sport affect her mental health, eating and sense of worth. She began to seek that control in under-eating and over-working out.

“I kind of just hit a wall, and the whole facade faded away, and I realized like that I was really hurting myself,” Cummings said.

Fortunately, she recognized what was happening and sought help, but that’s not always the case.

Now more than ever, Cummings believes more needs to be done to open up the conversation surrounding mental health on college campuses and to provide resources to athletes who need them.

“I feel like one of the pitfalls of society is always people saying, ‘Oh, we wish that we had done something to attack this sooner,’” she explained. “And I think that there’s something so powerful to be said for people coming forward and sharing stories, taking preventative measures before something catastrophic happens.”

That’s exactly what Cummings has found with what’s called Uncut Los Angeles. It’s a group that was co-founded by Cummings’s fellow students, Hana Rosenthal and Bella Robakowski, meant to allow student athletes to share their stories in their words.

“It’s really easy to see them and see what’s posted on the USC socials and just think that they have it all together, and it turns out that they struggle with those same things too,” Robakowski said. “It’s just harder to talk about it. They don’t have the time.”

“There’s something going on beneath the surface with everyone and, you know, opening up this platform to be able to talk about those things is where you’re going to be able to make the difference,” Rosenthal added.

Both are part of the board of the group, which currently exists on several college campuses. It gives athletes a platform to write out and share their own experiences, de-stigmatizing the conversations about mental health.

“The mission is entirely this: We want athletes to make sure that they have the space to tell their stories on their own terms,” Robakowski said. “You know, our slogan is, ‘Their story, their way.’ That’s it, as simple as that.”

“We want to highlight athletes as humans, you know, person over performer,” Rosenthal said. “And I think when you open that side to the conversation where these athletes can have an identity outside of their sport, it’s a beautiful thing.”

Cummings has joined several others in sharing her story already and has even joined the board at Uncut.

The young women hope they can work toward normalizing this type of vulnerability and conversation.

“It’s really important for people to have a space where they can go and see other people dealing with the same things that they are,” Cummings said. “They can go, and they can see that they’re not alone.”