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Angie Benson’s second chance at college lacrosse began with a phone call.

The Palm City, Fla., native was two years and five months removed from her last game in net, then as Towson’s goalie. She’d started for two seasons with the Tigers, helping Towson to two NCAA tournament appearances (2016-17) and earning a spot on the CAA All-Rookie team her freshman year.

But she’d stepped away from the game after her sophomore season, returning to Florida to be closer to her family.

She spent those two years traveling, studying part-time at Florida Atlantic and running clinics, boot camps and individual lessons as a lacrosse coach.

Then one day in October, an old club coach gave her a call. Virginia Tech’s presumed starter in the cage had suffered a season-ending ACL injury in a fall ball game, and the Hokies were looking for a goalie. Would Benson be interested?

“I had no idea what it was about, but [head] coach [John Sung] and I got in contact,” Benson told US Lacrosse Magazine. “And bam, now I’m here.”

So began the journey that brought Benson to Blacksburg and back to college lacrosse. It was a tall undertaking. She had to officially enter the transfer portal, apply to get her amateurism back and then be officially reinstated by the NCAA.

But now she’s back in the net, with 83 saves on the year and the sixth-best save percentage in the nation (53.5 percent). And she’s helped Virginia Tech to a 7-3 record, including a six-game winning streak from mid-February to March 4.

“She knows this is her shot to play at the highest level and to try to get an opportunity to play in the pros and continue her lacrosse career,” Sung said. “It’s kind of a crazy story, but I’m just so glad it all worked out for her to be here and to be a part of what we’re doing.”

After some time away, she was ready to make a comeback. Coaching and leading individual lessons had given her a new outlook on the sport she’d grown up playing.

“I felt like, being a goalie, I saw a lot of the game and I wanted to challenge myself,” she said. “I wanted to see if I could teach the attacker to shoot perfectly, or if I could teach a defender to defend the way that they should.”

Former Towson and current Penn State assistant Mike Molster ran into Benson at an international tournament in the summer as she was considering the idea of returning to the college game. He’d worked directly with her when she was a Tiger and knew even then that if she wanted to make a jump back into the game, she was well-equipped to do so.

“Her staying involved with coaching and teaching, for some people, it allows them to conceptualize what they need to do better versus just hearing what a coach is saying,” Molster said. “By doing that, I think she stayed mentally in the game as well, and those things allowed her to just roll right back over and hit the ground running.”

With her reinstatement process underway, she made her way to Blacksburg and joined right in with the Hokies as the preseason was getting underway.

The rest of the players weren’t quite sure what to expect when she first arrived, Sung said, but on one of the team’s first days in the weight room together, they could tell they were getting someone good.

“She’s a kid who definitely didn’t want to overstep and definitely wanted to feel out what was happening here,” Sung said. “She started doing pull-ups and did more pull-ups than anybody else and put more weight on the bench than anybody else. And their eyes kind of popped out of their heads.”

Benson came out ready to play in her first game, a matchup against Davidson on Feb. 8. She made 11 saves against the Wildcats in her first game in two years — “#justlikeridingabike,” Sung tweeted after the win.

“The first game, I was extremely nervous, and I just felt like I had a lot of eyes on me,” Benson said. “And then once I got that first game out of the way, it honestly just felt like I was right back where I started back at Towson. It kind of all feels the same now.”

The road is set to become more challenging as the Hokies enter the real grind of their conference schedule. Virginia Tech is slated to play No. 20 Boston College on Saturday, and its remaining games include three straight against ranked opponents — No. 1 North Carolina, No. 2 Notre Dame and No. 16 Virginia — in April.

Sung likes what he’s seen from this Hokies squad so far. For the first time in his four years in Blacksburg, the freshmen on the roster are his recruits, and many of the upperclassmen were on the team in 2018 when Virginia Tech made its first NCAA tournament appearance in program history.

Benson wasn’t there in 2018, but she’s still undoubtedly a leader on this team. When she announced her return to college lacrosse on social media in December, she captioned all of her posts with the same phrase: “This time, I’m not starting from scratch. I’m starting from experience.”

“I’m not that young freshman coming into the game anymore,” she said. “Physically, I’m a lot stronger and bigger. Mentally, I definitely think I’m more stable. So when I say I’m starting from experience, I think I’ve already done it, and now I get to do it again, just with a stronger mindset.”