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rom the sidelines, Megan Carney’s parents often heard players whining. “He’s hitting me. Tell him to stop hitting me,” they’d complain. Between third and fifth grade, the “boy” wouldn’t relent.

“We would think, ‘Oh my god, he doesn’t even realize that’s a girl,” Kelly Carney, her mother, said.

After the games, Carney would take off her helmet, causing a revelation for the opposing team. She always loved that moment, her parents said.

Carney was one of two girls on the team when she played boys’ lacrosse in fourth grade, but it wasn’t like she took another boy’s spot. She earned it because she was a competitor, her father, Drue, said. She was one of the team’s best players, her brother AJ added.

When Carney played boys’ and girls’ lacrosse simultaneously in fifth grade, she brought the same level of aggression to both games, even getting yellow cards because she forgot the rules were different. And when she switched exclusively to girls lacrosse a year later, the transition was easy. She never feared getting hit because she knew girls wouldn’t hit that way, her mom said.

“She would run through a crowd of girls and people would be like ‘Oh my god,’” Kelly said. “But I’d say that, mentally, she was thinking ‘You can’t hit me, so how are you going to stop me?’”

Those childhood experiences — playing against boys for five seasons — laid the groundwork for her future. During her freshman season at SU in 2019, the attack was the third-highest scorer on the team with 32 goals. She was named to Inside Lacrosse’s preseason All-American list in late January as an honorable mention. At Syracuse, teammates and head coach Gary Gait call Carney a “fierce competitor,” something that’s followed her from her backyard, through boys’ lacrosse and into the Carrier Dome.

“To be able to play against males, they’re going to push her to work a little bit harder because they’re not going to want to get beat out by a girl,” high school volleyball coach Nicki Gonzalez said. “Her wanting to do that, that has been a huge, huge, huge component to her competitive nature.”

The gutters in the Carneys’ backyard are filled with dents. The wood trim along parts of the house has missing chunks, and some of the fence panels are cracked or blown out. One time, after a hailstorm swept through the McKinney, Texas area, Kelly and Drue tried to convince their insurance agent that the dents were from hail, not lacrosse target practice.

Growing up, Carney and her brother AJ would play a game called “make-it-your-goalie,” where one person would “rip shots” with a tennis ball while the other played goalie without pads, Carney said. She joked that all those years playing goalie against AJ — two years older than her — must make her a half-decent goaltender, even today.

At times, Carney and AJ’s one-on-ones would get too heated, and Drue would intervene. The two were always looking to “get under one another’s skin,” their dad said. Carney refused to play on the same team as her brother but still followed AJ’s footsteps. Because of his influence, she fell in love with lacrosse.

“First, she wanted to be just like AJ, and then she just wanted to beat him,” Drue said.

When AJ wasn’t around, Carney honed her passing and shooting skills on a bounce back, a rebounding contraption, in her backyard. During high school, that meant after classes, after practice or late at night under the backyard spotlight. Now, every time she goes home for break, the rebounder returns to the backyard from its storage spot in the garage.

Carney’s current bounce back is her third. The net didn’t tear on the first two, but they were so worn out and weathered they had to be replaced. The first rebounder made a loud thumping sound when the ball hit it, one that disturbed Drue because he worked from home. And because his office’s wall was right behind the bounce back, the loud noise when Carney hit the nearby fences and walls only made matters worse.

“If we hit that fence, you knew he was coming,” Carney said. “And we were like, ‘Sorry, Dad, it was my left hand, I’m sorry.’ He would just get mad and say, ‘Don’t hit the fence, you’re supposed to hit the goal.’”

During the spring of 2017, Carney, then a junior, quarterbacked her team in John Paul II (Texas) High School’s annual powderpuff football game. She threw multiple touchdown passes and on one running play pulled off a spin move that threw off a defender and tore their ACL. Carney’s performance left some of the guys on the football team asking if they could recruit her, history teacher and high school mentor Ashley McMurtry said.

“I’ve never seen a kid, let alone a young woman, destroy opposition the way that she did,” McMurtry said.

Because John Paul II didn’t have a girls’ lacrosse program, Carney played club lacrosse for GRIT Dallas and high school volleyball during the fall. After volleyball practices, she’d change clothes and eat in the car on her way to club lacrosse practice.

By then, Carney was playing only against girls. She verbally committed to Syracuse her sophomore year, in which she recorded the third-most points last year as a freshman. She dons Gait’s No. 22 jersey, and was also part of the U.S. women’s U19 lacrosse team that won gold at the 2019 World Championships. This season, the Orange will rely on her competitor’s mindset as they look to win their first NCAA Tournament.

Now, though, there won’t be any boys whining about her aggression.

“I think she plays like a very skilled player,” Gait said, “no matter the gender.”

Cover photo by Molly Gibbs | Senior Staff Photographer