Morgan Alexander knew her fifth knee surgery was inevitable. Driving toward the cage and executing a face dodge, she planted her left leg awkwardly and collapsed to the turf in Ensley Athletic Center. After four surgeries on her right knee since 2017, she knew the feeling. There was no official diagnosis yet, but that day in early Feb. 2020, she knew her left ACL was torn. 

In the Ensley lobby, Alexander sat by herself. With crutches at her side, she called her dad, Mike Alexander, and told him she would never play again. She asked him the point of continuing to bring her lacrosse stick to practice because there was no point in playing wall ball if she would never return. 

She’d felt that initial anguish immediately after her previous injuries, too. Then, a day later, she did the same thing she’d done before — change her mind about returning.

“Obviously, when you’re in shock you’re like, ‘I’ll never play, I'll never play,’” Alexander said. “I took about a day and then came to the next practice, and I was like, ‘No I'm playing again.’ And that's just how it was.”

For Alexander, it was nothing new. Since 2016, she’s played only one season that wasn’t cut short by injury. In mid-March, Alexander announced her plans to return for a sixth year in spring 2021. The attack is part of a Syracuse side that was ranked No. 4 in 2020 and is pursuing its first national championship. Alexander is one of 10 Syracuse players returning for an extra year of eligibility, alongside Emily Hawryschuk, Asa Goldstock, Kerry Defliese and others.

It’s always more difficult to rehab when there’s one more injury, head coach Gary Gait said, but the decision to do so emphasizes Alexander’s strength. Her drive and determination are relentless, her father said. 

“I want to go out on my own terms,” Alexander said. “That was the biggest thing — injuries are not my own terms. Those are uncontrollable things, [but] I have the control to rehab ... and put myself in the best possible position to play again. If I have that opportunity, why wouldn't I take it?”

During her redshirt-freshman year, Alexander suffered one of the worst injuries Syracuse trainer Kathleen Chaney had seen in a while, Mike Alexander said. Alexander was in the emergency room for four hours, and the injury was so severe that doctors initially thought it was broken and asked what color cast she wanted. A torn ACL, MCL and lateral meniscus, along with a dislocated kneecap, meant multiple procedures in the following weeks, one of which included inserting a fake kneecap. No ACL injury is “normal,” Mike Alexander said, but the most recent one was far more straightforward than 2017’s. 

A year later, another right knee injury led to months more of rehab, sidelining Alexander for her redshirt-junior year. It wasn’t until 2019 that she played a full season. But experiencing that complete season made her most recent injury that much more devastating, she said. 

“It kinda got ripped out from underneath me, and now I’m back to square one. And I think that’s the hardest part,” Alexander said. “I had a taste of it, I played well for myself, and then it just got taken from me [again].”

Because Alexander’s most recent injury happened weeks before Syracuse sent students home due to the COVID-19 pandemic, she wasn’t able to rehab in Syracuse with Chaney like before. Alexander asked her father to build step-ups out of lumber, and she FaceTimed her trainers to verify she was doing the proper recovery regiment. She didn’t see a doctor in-person until six months post-surgery. Gait said Alexander loves the feeling of being back on the field and that motivates her to “want to do it again.”

Few other players have the strength and willingness to come back from multiple injuries, but Alexander has always done everything doctors told her so she could return, her father said. Dr. John Cannizzaro, Alexander’s regular surgeon, told her he’d never seen anyone rehab that well.

“She’s a fighter,” Mike Alexander said. “I don’t know where she gets it from.”

After her third surgery, Alexander was told by Dr. Cannizzaro that he thought she should stop playing for good. Alexander asked for one more chance. He gave her “one more shot” because she rehabbed so well, and for 2019, things were smooth. In 2020, when Alexander went down again, she told Dr. Cannizzaro that he couldn’t sideline her because “it’s the other knee.” 

“He was like, ‘You've got to be kidding me,’ and I was like, ‘I hope you know I'm playing again.’” Alexander said. “I think he thought I was being crazy, and I was like, ‘No, I'm seriously playing again.’”

Gait said the fact that Alexander has spent more time rehabbing than on the field serves as a reminder — and as inspiration — to her teammates to savor the fleeting opportunity to play collegiate lacrosse. Having friends, family and classmates in the Newhouse School of Public Communications to turn to helped Alexander get through difficult stretches of rehab. Every night, she reads a passage from the Bible, and her Catholic faith is something that has guided her through injury rehabs, she said. 

Mike Alexander said lacrosse is “therapeutic” for his daughter, and that’s why she continues to fight to return. Before COVID-19, she used to take her stick to Manley Field House and play wall ball for hours, just to clear her mind. 

“Coach Gait giving me the opportunity to come back and me not taking it, I feel like that would've just been giving up on myself,” she said.

Over the span of five surgeries, Alexander has received countless direct messages and texts from younger kids nationwide who reach out for advice. She said getting hurt is largely mental, so she pushes positivity. During a US Lacrosse webinar in the “Athlete Mindset” series, Alexander emphasized the importance of personal motivation. 

“I was doing it for me. That’s what made me come back again,” she said in the webinar. “At the end of the day, it’s you and your injury.”

In Alexander’s last game before the most recent injury, a 20-2 win over Binghamton, she was facing backward when she received a pass from Sierra Cockerille at the top of the crease. Without turning, she corralled the ball and flipped it over her left shoulder for a no-look goal. 

Gait knows that despite the injuries, her skills will remain at that level when she returns in the spring. This semester, she’s sitting out from fall ball, but her recovery process puts her on track to be medically cleared ahead of the Orange’s season-opener. 

When Alexander was younger, her fathered remembered the way she was always all-in with everything she did. She didn’t just like Star Wars, she memorized everything about every character. Today, that mentality hasn’t changed.

“When she finds something she likes, she's very passionate about it, and just doesn't stop,” Mike Alexander said. “She just keeps fighting.”

And for Alexander, a sixth year of Syracuse lacrosse is worth fighting for.