This story appears in the January 2020 edition of US Lacrosse Magazine. Don't get the mag? Head to USLacrosse.org to subscribe.

Five months later, Jamie Ortega can still effortlessly rattle off each and every near miss from those first six minutes of overtime.

A draw control North Carolina almost won to start the extra period. Olivia Ferrucci breaking free for an open shot only for Boston College goalie Lauren Daly to save it. Another shot by Gianna Bowe that glanced off the post — the literal inside of the post — and out of the goal.

They were close. So close. But, ultimately, not close enough.

BC star Sam Apuzzo scored a minute into the second overtime of the NCAA semifinals played in front of more than 10,000 fans at Homewood Field in Baltimore, sending Ortega and the 2019 North Carolina women’s lacrosse team back to Chapel Hill with a heartbreaking 15-14 loss to chew on until now.

“That’s still in the back of my head,” Ortega said. “And everyone else’s head.”

North Carolina, which also lost to James Madison in the 2018 NCAA semifinals, is a perennial championship contender. But expectations are especially high this season for the top-ranked Tar Heels and Ortega, their star junior attacker. And rightfully so.

In her first year, Ortega burst onto the scene with 70 goals (two shy of a North Carolina record) and 86 points (three shy of a North Carolina record) en route to ACC Freshman of the Year honors.

Then, as a sophomore, she eviscerated the record books with 81 goals and 112 points — both North Carolina records by a comfortable margin — and added a laundry list of other accomplishments: first-team All-America, first-team All-ACC, ACC Tournament MVP.

Talking to her, though, you’d never know it.

“She’s not cocky or anything,” teammate Scottie Rose Growney said. “Never has been.”

Like many lacrosse prodigies from Long Island, Ortega’s career started early. But it was mostly on a whim. It was “just another sport to do” alongside soccer, Ortega said. Her father, Louis, chose lacrosse over field hockey because a coworker’s daughter was playing, too.

Ortega joined the Yellow Jackets, a club superpower that shot up to four teams per age group. It was one of about 10 travel teams in the area, Ortega said. Soccer suddenly took a back seat.

“Lacrosse got more serious: ‘Oh, it’s more than a sport, it’s my life,’” Ortega said. “Everything revolved around practicing, training, going to tournaments.”

By seventh grade, Ortega was playing on the Middle Country varsity team — the youngest and, as she’s quick to note, the smallest. But her sister, Nikki, a high school freshman at the time who’d later play on the U.S. U19 team and at Notre Dame, helped her mesh with older teammates. Ortega started that year.

Middle Country isn’t necessarily known for lacrosse. But the Ortega sisters were must-see stuff. In just two seasons, Jamie Ortega had already caught the eye of North Carolina’s coaching staff. Head coach Jenny Levy and her assistants, Phil Barnes and Katrina Dowd, first met their future player at a fall clinic on Long Island. Ortega, not yet in high school, knew North Carolina primarily for its colors. But after that first conversation?

“It just kind of exploded,” Ortega said.

Ortega committed early in her freshman year, her recruitment coming before the new contact rules were enacted in 2017, and said enjoyed her stress-free high school career. Representing Long Island Metro, she won the Heather Leigh Albert Award as the top player in the schoolgirls division of the 2016 US Lacrosse Women’s National Tournament.

As a senior, Ortega carried Middle Country to its first-ever state championship game appearance with 98 goals and 45 assists. She graduated No. 2 (behind Shannon Smith) on New York state’s all-time scoring list with 588 points (now ranked third) and had a hat trick in the Under Armour All-America Game.

Moving to Chapel Hill was scary, sure, but it wasn’t hard. After all, Ortega had been waiting the better part of four years to join North Carolina’s team, which had won NCAA titles in 2013 and 2016.

Safe to say she hit the ground running.

The 5-foot-5 attacker’s 70 goals as a freshman obliterated the previous record of 50. The  No. 2-ranked recruit in her class (behind only Notre Dame’s Andie Aldave), Ortega put college lacrosse on notice when she scored four goals and fed Marie McCool for the game-winning goal in overtime to beat then-defending NCAA champion Maryland.

During Ortega’s 81-goal sophomore season, she set an ACC tournament record with 12 points — eight goals and four assists, both career highs — against Virginia Tech in the quarterfinals. She ended 2019 with 16 hat tricks.

Ask her about that crazy production, and she’ll credit her teammates first — especially Katie Hoeg, who had a school-record 73 assists and 104 points of her own in 2019. Hoeg also comes from the Long Island Yellow Jackets pipeline.

But Ortega also gets candid about her desire to stand out among her peers.

“You only have four years here,” she said. “You want to make as big of an impact as you can.”

Growney, a junior midfielder who has known Ortega since high school, is happy to brag on her teammate. Ortega’s style, she said, is “effortless.” The dodging, the shoulder positioning, reading defenders and goalies, the jaw-dropping shots — it’s all so natural.

“Truly, everything she does is very impressive,” Growney said, “and what’s so unbelievable is how carefree and easy it comes to her. Really a one-of-a-kind type kid.”

Ortega’s 198 career points have her well on way to becoming North Carolina’s all-time leading scorer.  Only 10 Tar Heels have ever surpassed the 200-point threshold. Corey Donohoe (2008-2011) currently tops the list with 256. Among those Ortega will pass on her way up are Molly Hendrick (220 from 2014-2017), Ella Hazar (221 from 2015-2018), Aly Messinger (230 from 2013-2016) and Marie McCool (246 from 2015-2018).

Then again, all four of those players have at least one NCAA championship ring. Messinger bookended her career with titles.

“We’ve had so many great players, and they’re all different,” Levy said. “We don’t compare them. What makes Jamie special is that she’s so humble. She wants to be great and she makes things look easy when they’re not.”

Off the field, Ortega frequently volunteers. She’s a communications major with a particular interest in speech therapy. She’s also a person of habit.

For dinner, Growney said her housemate, without fail, prepares a meal of chicken, sweet potatoes and either broccoli or Brussels sprouts. Every time. And she never turns down a warm cup of tea.

In terms of TV, Ortega is slowly grinding through all 14 seasons of “Criminal Minds” — she did make an exception last winter break to binge “Game of Thrones” — and enjoys rom-coms. Her only pregame routine is sitting in silence to relax and get in the zone. Any music outside of country is fine.

“She’s not super complicated,” Levy said with a laugh.

Through fall ball, the team’s focus has been practicing for those final seconds — making sure that last draw control or shot on goal goes their way in crunch time. The team’s veterans are growing “sick and tired” of semifinal losses, Growney said. They want more. With Boston College and Maryland both gashed by graduation, several teams would like to stake their claim to No. 1. None are more qualified than the Tar Heels, led by Ortega and Hoeg to go with a top-10 defense that returns nearly entirely intact in front of streaky goalie Taylor Moreno.

Ortega, as irreplaceable a player as any on North Carolina’s loaded 2020 roster, can’t wait for the challenge.

“I think everybody’s ready,” she said. “There’s still a lot of work to do, but everyone’s in that mindset that this is our year. We have to put all we have to together.”