Towson women’s lacrosse senior Lindsey Marshall recently chatted with PressBox about missing the 2022 season due to a knee injury, the grind to get back and more. The 5-foot-9 midfielder scored 48 goals, controlled 72 draws, picked up 20 ground balls and caused 11 turnovers in 2023, earning first-team All-CAA honors. Marshall is a native of Catonsville and graduate of Catonsville High School.
PressBox: How did you become interested in lacrosse?
Lindsey Marshall: Both of my parents played lacrosse growing up. They’re both sports psychos, so was put into every single sport that you could probably enroll in at 4 years old. I actually didn’t like it at first. I would cry after every practice and before games and practices, and then I would sit in the middle of the center draw circle and pick flowers while my team ran around.
PB: At what point did you start to love the game?
LM: I think it was probably first or second grade. I kind of started to realize that maybe I was pretty OK at the sport. Everything’s more fun when you’re good at it. I think I just started to realize that maybe I might have a little bit something going here. My mom kept telling me every year, “Keep doing it, keep sticking with it.” I’m like, “OK.” I just really liked it.
PB: Who were the biggest influences on your game growing up?
LM: Definitely my parents are the obvious choice. They both are just very driven people. They both get what they want when they want it, and that’s a really cool trait that they have. I think they’ve given me a little bit of it as well as my sister. They were hard on me, because I knew that they had goals for me. I think that was an amazing way to lead me to where I am today. I also had a club coach. Her name is Kristy Black. She played at the University of Maryland. She was amazing. She won a national championship. She also was integral in making me [what] I am today. She started to be my coach in fourth or fifth grade. She just challenged me all the time. She challenged our team like crazy. We were running the Maryland RunFest as our conditioning starting from sixth grade until club was over, which was insane. She just had really high expectations for all of us. It clearly worked, because I would say probably 20 out of 27 of us are playing at competitive Division I schools and are making a difference.
PB: What memories do you have from Catonsville High School?
LM: Lacrosse-wise, not many because I started at Glenelg Country School — my freshman and sophomore years — and then I transferred my junior year to Catonsville, and then obviously because of COVID only got to have one season. But the one season for lacrosse was extremely memorable. Everybody was so welcoming of me being on the team. My best friend growing up, Kolby Weedon — she plays at UMBC and was also on my club team, she and I got to play together again on a high school field, which was something we dreamed of our whole lives. Obviously, she stayed public and I went to private school and came back. Everyone just really accepted me with open arms. My coach Cantley Bailey, she’s amazing. She cared about you as a person just as much as she did as a player. I went through some stuff junior year along with the transfer stuff and everything, and she was so concerned that I was going to be OK. She was very helpful through some of the hard times that just happen in high school. She coached my older sister, too. My older sister loved her to death as well, so she made a huge imprint on our family. I got to play with some of the girls I’m play in college with now — Lindsay Posner, Lindsay Clarke. They both went to Hereford. We played them in the county championship my junior year — lost by a lot, but it was fun. I got that one last scrimmage in senior year. We played Bel Air in March and then the next day schools got shut down and that was it. Cantley did a really good job of making sure we were all still feeling [connected] during the COVID season. We had a bunch of Zooms. We did a bunch of team activities just to keep everybody involved through an unprecedented time.
PB: Why did you choose to go to Towson?
LM: I originally committed my freshman year, Nov. 11 of my freshman year, to Penn State. I was committed there for [two] years, and then I think it was the summer going into junior year I decided I didn’t want to be that far from home. I just really wanted to stay local. I talked to my club coach and everything. She was emailing with all the local schools just to see if anybody had any interest in me, and luckily Towson did. I immediately went on a visit the next day and got visit the campus. Growing up, I had relatives that lived in Towson and very close to Towson University, but I had never really been. I just loved what the campus looked like, what the field was like. The coaches at the time were [Sonia and Mike LoMonica]. They did a really great job of showing me the school and how amazing the facilities are. I kind of just put everything together. I wanted to stay local and the environment was great. Mike and Sonia were great on the visit. I knew also two girls from my club team, Paige and Paiton Abbott, were also committed to Towson, so they were helping me with that process, too.
PB: What allowed you to contribute right away with a 38-goal season?
LM: I think I just have really high standards. Growing up, my parents and my coaches had really high standards of me, so I think I kind of put my head down and worked. I think that really [allowed me] to get some field time. I was also very open and honest with my coaches about where I sat. … [That told me] what exactly I needed to work on to get where I wanted to be, which was in the starting 10. Blair Pearre was a sophomore when I was a freshman, and she was, for lack of a better term, the shit. She was just amazing. Everybody was faceguarding her every game and never wanted her to touch the ball, so I think she had a lot of pressure on her and she took some off me. I started scoring when people were faceguarding her because I guess they didn’t really know who I was yet. When I started having good games and they released the faceguard a little bit on Blair, then Blair would start having good games, so it was kind of a two-headed monster. It was great. She also did such a great job of helping me integrate. She was always working with me to get me better. We had a really great two-man game on both of the elbows. She was just great. I miss her. She was just always looking out for me and helping me get better and answering every question that I had because I had a lot of them.
PB: Then you missed the entire 2022 due to an injury. What was it?
LM: I completely tore my ACL in my right knee as well as I tore my meniscus and had to get a root repair, so basically my [I tore] my meniscus in half and off my bone, which is the bone. They had to stitch it back together and anchor it back on to my knee. It was during practice. I just took a bad step and then hit the ground. I remember just saying, “Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god.” Somebody was like, “What’s wrong?” I was like, “It’s torn, it’s gone, it’s gone, it’s gone.” I just kept repeating that. My trainer came over to me and tried to do the ACL test. It was way too swollen. I got an MRI scheduled for that day at 4 o’clock. And then the next morning at 8 a.m., they read it and they told me that’s what it was. I had literally never been injured before. It was so random. ACL injuries are just so common now. It’s so terrifying. I’m lucky that my trainer, Miranda Boucard, was amazing. My teammates, coaches and staff at MedStar Health, everybody was great. My parents were amazing. I made a lot of really great friendships that year just because you could kind of see who was really there to help you, which was a blessing and a curse. Actually, I re-tore my meniscus this summer and got surgery in August. When they went in to fix it, they found out that I had broken my femur during my ACL injury in 2021. I’ve been battling that a little bit now. I’m playing, but we’re monitoring everything just because it’s a lot of stress on the knees.
PB: Going back to the first injury, what was the physical and mental grind to get back like?
LM: I had never had an injury before, and then on top of that I had been a three-sport athlete my whole life, played every sport under the sun and played in all of those. I never really sat out and watched for a long period of time. My recovery in total I think was [14 to 16] months, which was just insane. Sitting and watching my team was just so hard. I just wanted to be out there with them so bad. It’s hard, too, because it’s not like I did anything to tear my ACL. It wasn’t like I was irresponsible and didn’t do something which caused my ACL tear. It’s just unlucky. This is what happens. It’s fortunate, but it is what it is. I think that was really hard to wrap my head around at first, because then you’re just like, “Why me? Why did that happen? What did I do?” It’s just the drama. I think that it’s what was supposed to happen. It’s changed my life. I’ve realized a lot of my friendships and my parents were amazing. I’ve made a lot of really great friendships stronger that year.
The first game, we had a home game and I walked to the locker room. They hang up everybody’s jersey in their locker and I walked in and there was just nothing in my locker. I just started balling and left the room until literally game time. I had to go into my trainer’s office and sit in her office and just cry. It was the most overwhelming set of emotions that I’ve ever experienced. It was hard, too, because I was so happy for everybody that had worked so hard to come out and be able to play was able to play now for our first game, but then obviously just the selfish feeling of, “I can’t and I know that I can’t and that really sucks.” We had a really bad loss in the CAA championship due to a kind of touch-and-go call at the end, lost in overtime to Drexel. You just feel completely helpless. You want to help your time. You want to get out there. It’s hard to watch stuff like that from the sideline at all, even in the game. But sitting there knowing I couldn’t do anything about was just so hard.
PB: What’s your favorite memory at Towson so far?
LM: Definitely freshman year [in 2021], we beat Loyola at home. It was our first night game with the lights. They had just gotten new lights at Tiger Field. Every time we scored a goal, they flashed the lights a bunch. It was so cool. We beat them, [13-7]. Everyone’s nervous to play Loyola, especially having a local rivalry. It’s so hard to just go out there and play [a top-10 team] in the country at that point. We went out, kind of ignored everything that people were saying and just took care of business. It was so cool to see the whole team rally around everybody like that. Everybody just seemed to click that day. It was the right day to do it. The locker room dances and everything after that was just so fun, especially being a freshman and still in that awkward phase. COVID did just happen so we weren’t really allowed to see our team a whole bunch. We weren’t really in fall ball. We still didn’t really know anybody other than our own freshman class. Getting to see people’s personalities that day in the game and after the game was just so fun.
PB: What have been your initial impressions of new coach Kristen Carr?
LM: I worked the [Athletes Unlimited] league this summer, and she was playing in it. I met her there as soon as [it] was announced that she was coaching. She was just this huge ball of bright energy. She was just super happy to meet me and went out of her way to say hi to me. It was great. I think fans should expect a lot from us now. We’ve got four very competitive new coaches, Kristen being the head of that. I think it’s going to be a really exciting season and we’re going to do a lot of things that we have on our checklist.
PB: What’s your favorite thing about Towson the town?
LM: I like to say that it’s a town with a college town built around it, if that makes sense. I feel like there’s literally everything here. You’re not going five minutes out of the way without hitting a Target or a grocery store or the most random stuff. Everything’s here. Everything’s super close. There’s a lot of different places that you can live. There’s also a lot of good neighborhoods and everything around us. I’m from Catonsville, so I’m only 25 minutes away. My mom lives on Kent Island, so even so, she’s an hour. I’m close to my family, which is nice, so freshman year if I was lonely or having a day or whatever, one of my parents could come pick me up and make me a home-cooked meal, which was great. Now, since I have my car on campus and live in an apartment [that isn’t] on campus, I can go home and give myself a little bit of a break because obviously college sports are mentally challenging. You just need a break sometimes that I’m close enough to be able to get that break when I need it.
PB: Who’s your best friend on the team and what’s a story that underscores your friendship?
LM: I think probably my roommate Blair Goodrich. We met on our official visit, but nobody really knew each other around then anyway. I think it was one of our second nights in the dorm and everybody was really hungry. We were all still moving in and it was really random. We’re like, “Oh, we’re hungry.” And we looked at each other and we were both like, “Chipotle?” … We just got really close really fast. She actually lives on Kent Island as well. My mom’s house and her house is like seven minutes away from each other, if that.
PB: Who was a player you looked up to when you first got to Towson?
LM: Definitely Blair Pearre. I knew of her coming into college because I was really close with Kayla Abernathy. She plays at Penn State. I was really close with her, and I knew that Blair went to McDonogh. I also was getting recruited a little bit in high school by McDonogh, so I knew Chris Robinson as well, [Pearre’s] stepfather. Obviously she’s all over everywhere because she’s just absolutely ridiculously talented. It’s insane. I remember meeting her and she was not at all what I expected. I was definitely really scared of her coming into college. I met her and she was just this goofball. People used to call her “Barbie.” She’s just so funny. She’s an absolute terror on the field, and off the field she’s just a normal girl. It’s great. She always has to have her done and her outfit picked out. She’s amazing. She was so good. She brought me right in under her wing right when I got there. I remember there was one [time], she came up to me and she was like, “OK, let’s just take 2v2s together this whole time,” and I was like, “OK, please!” I think we developed some chemistry from that and then just kept going. I miss her so much. She was a huge part of our offense and defense, honestly.
PB: What advice do you have for younger players going through the recruiting process?
LM: To keep your options open and look at everywhere. I kind of think that I made [that] mistake a little bit getting into recruiting. I got really caught up in all the glory of some schools. I didn’t really focus on anything but maybe where they were ranked at the time or other factors, but I think you have to realize that you’re going to school for school and lacrosse is just something you get to do to there. You want to like where you live and go to school. Don’t just go somewhere because you like that school and you hate the area, or maybe you like the area and you don’t like the school. Make sure that it’s both things and make sure you visit, especially since there are going to be some silent times. Maybe you might not get what you want, but at the end of the day if you work hard you either get to where you want or you find that where you end up is where you were supposed to be anyway.
PB: What are your goals for after lacrosse?
LM: I am a sports management major, and I really want to work in the NFL. My whole family is huge sports psychos. My mom, my dad and I really like the NFL a lot, grew up watching football for eight hours a day on Sundays and still do. I don’t know exactly what I want to do in the NFL, but I do know that I want to be in maybe fan experience or social media or sales partnership, anything really that’s involved in there. Just want to be close to the game. I don’t want my work to feel like a job and I really don’t want to sit at a desk. I think the NFL would be a great opportunity for me, and I would really, really enjoy it.
Photo Credit: John Malamphy
Issue 285: February/March 2024
Originally published Feb. 21, 2024