Johns Hopkins women’s lacrosse senior Madison McPherson recently chatted with PressBox about spending her high school years overseas, how those experiences shaped her as a person and more. The 5-foot-5 midfielder posted 33 goals, 6 assists, 31 ground balls, 13 caused turnovers and 33 draw controls for the Blue Jays in 2022. Her sister, Trinity, played at Hopkins from 2018-2021. Madison McPherson is a native of Catonsville, Md., and graduate of the American International School of Lusaka.
PressBox: How did you become interested in lacrosse?
Madison McPherson: I grew up in Catonsville. The town is small, and one day me and my sisters were playing soccer. Some parents came up to my parents and they were like, “Your girls should try out for lacrosse. They would be really good at it [with] their athleticism. They’d probably be really good at it.” And my friends had never heard of lacrosse, so they kind of just stuck us in there and then boom, we just were playing from a really young age.
PB: Who influenced your game growing up?
MM: I would say I loved Taylor Thornton. She played for Northwestern. She was one of the only other Black lacrosse players that we saw growing up, so it was really awesome to see someone at a really high level that looked like myself. I’d say her. A more recent one I guess would be Dempsey Arsenault. I just love the way that she played. She played while I was in high school, so I was a lot older when I was watching her, so I always thought she was insane, like so good. I’d say her as well. … I’ve had so many coaches, especially moving from different places. I would say most of my club coaches, obviously. I’ve played for the Sky Walkers and they were insanely supportive, especially moving overseas. Knowing that they supported me was really, really, really incredible, so I’d say that whole program and all the coaches there. But then also my coaches for basketball I would say were really important in terms of building relationships with me and supporting my athletic journey as a whole. And then obviously my previous coaches at Hopkins like [Janine] Tucker, Tara Singleton, Kristen Carr. All of them I feel so much love for, and they really built me up as a player.
PB: How did spending your high school years overseas come about?
MM: When I was in middle school, my dad was like, “I’m going to take this test to become a Foreign Service Officer. It’s a really hard test. Not a lot of people get chosen.” He told us this information and we were like, “OK.” We weren’t really thinking anything of it, and then when I was in eighth grade he was like, “Girls, family, I passed the test. This means that we can move overseas.” He got that job through the program. He currently works for the U.S. Embassy. Basically, you bid on a list of countries. You don’t get to choose exactly where you’re going, but you can rank your countries in terms of where you might want to live. And because my dad has a family, they give you a little bit more priority in terms of being in a place with a great school and its schooling system. So basically, we ranked a bunch of countries. My parents were really awesome about being like, “Girls, where would you want to live? What kinds of places? What kind of things would you want to do?” Our input was involved the whole time, but obviously we didn’t get the final say on everything. That’s kind of how that happened. Originally, we got assigned to the Philippines, which is where I did my freshman and sophomore year. Every two to three years you have to do that bidding process again. That’s what happened. We lived in the Philippines for two years and then we bid again and got we moved to the American International School of Lusaka, which is in Africa in Zambia. That was the second post.
PB: What did you study overseas?
MM: We did the International Baccalaureate program, so instead of APs, I was in the IB program. And we studied all the same things except I would say history classes were much more focused on world history. Obviously here in the States people will just take American history, but over there it was very much obviously world history because everyone’s from everywhere. We’re learning about everything. It was really difficult. It was a really rigorous program. I think sometimes if you talk to high school seniors now, they barely take any classes half the time in their second semester. You don’t have to go to school a lot of the time. But in the IB program, your senior year is your hardest year and we have these IB exams. Basically it’s a lot like college finals where you just study, study, study and you take like 10 exams, all wrapping up your coursework for the entire year. We have these big projects. It basically prepares you for college, I would say, a bit better than the AP program. We learn the same stuff, just more college-geared, I would say.
PB: Is there one story that sticks out that you’ll remember for the rest of your life?
MM: It’s actually one of the natural wonders of the world, but it’s called Devil’s Pool and it’s in Victoria Falls. It’s right on the border between Zimbabwe and Zambia. It’s these huge waterfalls. If you’ve ever seen “Black Panther,” the pool is where they do the fighting and everything. That’s where it’s set. We went to those pools. Basically, there’s a rainy season and a dry season in Africa for the most part. If it’s the rainy season, you can’t go to those pools because it will flood and you’ll just go right over the falls. But you can basically sit on the edge of the waterfall in those pools. The guides hold your legs back and you can look over these huge, huge, huge waterfalls. In order to get there, we had to swim basically diagonal to the water so that we wouldn’t get pushed over. My little sister wasn’t even allowed to do it because she was too small, I think. We’re in there and my mom starts to get swept toward the water’s edge, I kid you not. There was a rope over the edge of the waterfall to keep you from going over if you do get swept over there. She’s hanging on to the rope for her dear life and the guide literally swims over there at the speed of light, grabs her and swims her back to where the current doesn’t push you over. That was our little excursion just to get to the waterfall. Then once we were there, it was fine. It was beautiful. It’s funny now, but looking back in the moment it was so scary. I was like, “Oh my gosh, my mom is about to go over this waterfall. This is insane.” But here she is, still with us. That was a pretty crazy story, but it was beautiful as well.
PB: How did lacrosse fit into your high school experience?
MM: I would come back to the States in the summer and play with my club teams all summer long. The typical lacrosse recruiting experience where you go to the summer tournaments and [coaches] look at you there, I had all of that. Honestly, when I was overseas I didn’t really practice very much. People are always so shocked when I say that, but I actually really enjoyed having the break from lacrosse and just being able to do other sports, really find passions in other things. It made it easier for me to not get burned out, I would say. I played basketball and soccer, and I ran track year-round in all of these places. And then I would just come back in the summer and play lacrosse.
PB: Looking back on it, how did your experiences overseas shape you as a person?
MM: I would say the biggest things are that it made me incredibly open-minded, incredibly resilient, I would say, and it just gave me so much perspective. People often just have very small views of what the world really is. People just don’t really know that much, I would say. But I think living in all these different places and experiencing all the things I experienced and the challenges of living in third-world countries and trying to also be successful in the classroom and on the field and thinking about what I wanted to do back here, back home. All those things made me a very resilient person. I would say there are challenges that come anywhere you live. Being back home, being in college, I’ve had so many challenges. But I think I’m able to face them with a really resilient, positive, bounce-right-back mindset because I just know there’s so much more in life than, honestly, lacrosse. It gets very easy to get really down on yourself or disappointed and upset if things aren’t going your way lacrosse-wise. It’s a challenging thing to do, to be a Division I athlete. I would say the experiences that I’ve had have really allowed me to remember there’s so much more in life. It’s important to remember that you’re valuable outside of your sport. There’s a huge, wide world for you to experience and learn and grow from.
PB: When and why did you commit to Hopkins?
MM: It was my sophomore year of high school. That would be 2016. I committed in December, so it was 2016, about to be 2017. I was in the recruiting class before the rule change where you can’t even talk to people before their junior year. I would say I was a little bit on the later end because I really wanted to take my time. I was not pressured to choose a school very quickly. All the coaches that I was talking to knew that I was overseas. I really chose Hopkins because No. 1, they made me feel super, super valued. I was overseas [but] they were super persistent and consistent in how they were communicating with me. I wanted somewhere that felt like home. I’m originally from Catonsville, so it’s close to Baltimore. I needed the aspect of family because I didn’t know where my family would be. At that point, I had no idea if my parents or my younger sister would be able to be close by for my college experience. I really wanted wherever I went to feel like a second family, especially if my own was across the world. So I would say that’s another reason. Obviously the coaching staff was incredible. They just wrapped me up. As soon as I visited I was like, “Oh my gosh, I have to be coached by this staff. I love them all so much. I know that they’re going to take care of me as a person and not just as a lacrosse player.”
PB: What has been your favorite memory at Hopkins so far?
MM: My favorite memory as a whole of lacrosse at Hopkins specifically is being able to play with my older sister, [Trinity], because she was there with me for two years. In my sophomore year we really got the chance to play together, and that was just so incredible. … And then obviously I would say making it to the Big Ten semis was really incredible for two years in a row. My sophomore year [in 2021], it was really awesome because we hadn’t won in the quarterfinals before, so that was really incredible to be able to do for our head coach. We had a really close game with Maryland and lost by one in the semis, so it was a really good year for us. All those big games are super fun.
PB: Janine Tucker retired following the 2022 season. What did she mean to you?
MM: She is just the most incredible person. I love her so much. She is honestly a second mom, family. As a team, we tell her we love her all the time and she tells us she loves us all the time. I can go to her for literally anything. I’ve gone to her for serious stuff that’s happened off the field. She’s just one of those people that make you feel like you can do anything. Those are the type of people you just have to keep close. She’s my encourager, my champion in everything — pushed me so much while [she and I were] at Hopkins to be a great player and to really reach my potential. Even now, even though she’s not our coach anymore, she’s still super involved in all of our lives. I credit a lot of who I am as a player to her and that coaching staff because they built me up. They really raised me in a lot of ways. She’s family to me, honestly.
PB: Tim McCormack is your new coach. What’s it been like so far? What can fans expect out of you guys?
MM: Coach Tim is also incredible. It’s been very different is what I would say. I think we as a team have had to say very open-minded and very coachable because we’re learning a style of play that’s very different than what most people are learning at this time. I would say fans and people should expect to literally be just shocked. We’re going to look completely different than how we’ve looked in the past, and I think that’s a good thing. We are going to be really, really, really good and really dynamic. It’s going to be exciting. It’s going to be fun. It’s going to be new.
PB: What’s your favorite thing about Baltimore?
MM: I love Baltimore, actually. I would say my favorite thing is that since it’s a smaller city, you can really see everything that you want to see. You can really honestly see the major things pretty quickly. I would say that I love that it’s a very homey type of city. People really know each other because it’s smaller. People really love the culture of Baltimore, I would say. People are really diehard Ravens fans, diehard Orioles fans. The stuff that people love about Baltimore, they [really] love, if that makes sense. I just like that it’s small, the food is really good [and] people care about each other.
PB: What’s your favorite thing about Hopkins?
MM: I would say the culture and the history. The fact that it’s one of the best academic institutions in the country but then there’s all of this lacrosse history, you’re getting the best of both worlds in terms of I’m getting a world-class education but then I’m also really in this historical, longstanding alumni network with other Hopkins lacrosse players. Lacrosse has been played at Homewood Field for so, so, so long.
PB: Who’s your best friend on the team and what’s a story that underscores your friendship?
MM: The first one that came to mind is Haleigh Moore. She has been my roommate since freshman year, so this is our fourth year now living together. One night we need to go to Dairy Queen, and mind you, I’m really close with my whole house. I have several people I would consider best friends. So my whole house is in the car and I’m driving. We’re like, “We need to go to Dairy Queen.” The closest Dairy Queen is like 25 minutes away. So we’re in the car. We’re driving. We wanted this Dairy Queen so bad. It’s probably like 10:30, practice the next day. Driving, driving, driving, and then boom, we get into a car accident. We pull over. I do all the stuff with the people, the license and registration and blah, blah, blah. We get back in the car and it was a small little hit, so just the corner of my mirror chipped off. We were good. It was fine. But I was a little shaken up and I was like, “Ugh, I’m so annoyed. I just got into a car accident.” And then my friend Haleigh is sitting in the back and she’s like, “So, are we still going to go to Dairy Queen?” And I’m like, “Haleigh, we’re not going to Dairy Queen anymore!” And then we turn around and we go home. I would say that’s just a little tidbit of the friendship. She’s so funny, so honest and just open about what she wants to do even in the situation where it’s like, “Haleigh, we’re not going to Dairy Queen anymore.”
PB: Who did you look up to when you first got to Hopkins?
MM: Yes, my older sister, but also, there were so many. I would say Jeanne Kachris was incredible as a player but also as a person, and I looked up to her. I still do. We still talk and everything. I looked up to her so much as a player and a person. She was just one of those people that was like a really great friend, a really great player — so positive all the time and just infectious energy. [She] reminded me that lacrosse is supposed to be fun. It’s intense and it’s serious and you’re trying to win games and you want to play and it’s competitive, but it’s also just supposed to be joy and fun and being with your teammates and loving each other. If I had to pick one, I would say her, but I could also say a million more also.
PB: What advice do you have for younger players who are going through the recruiting process?
MM: This is obvious, but control your effort the most. Maybe you won’t be the most skillful player, maybe you won’t have the most incredible stick skills but if you have an insane work ethic and you are just a hustler, the best coaches and the best programs are going to want you because you can’t teach. But then I would also say my biggest advice is to just remember that your value is not only how you are as a lacrosse player. Pick a program that values you for who you are as a person as well and not only as a lacrosse player because I can tell you that your journey is not going to be a straight line. Your lacrosse journey is probably going to have a lot of bumps. If you only know your value in lacrosse, it’s going to be very difficult to enjoy your experience as a whole. There may be one year where you start every game, and there may be another year where you’re on that third line you just really have to remember your performance is not what makes you valuable and pick a program that really supports that as well.
PB: What are your goals for after lacrosse?
MM: I hope to get my master’s, probably. Even if I don’t end up getting my master’s, outside of that I really do want to do work in community health or working with vulnerable populations and looking at the social and behavioral determinates of health — race, education status, environment, where you live, and how all of those things affect the public’s health. And ideally I’d like to do work with NGOs and probably move overseas again as well. I just love living overseas, so I could see myself doing that, obviously — maybe not right away, but eventually I would love to do that.
Photo Credit: Courtesy of Johns Hopkins Athletics