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“But still, like air, I’ll rise.”

Stony Brook attacker Courtney Murphy took this quotation by Maya Angelou to heart.

It anchored a Nov. 2 blog in which she openly recounted her 2017 ACL injury, her road to recovery, and most recently, her return to the lacrosse field this fall.

As the athletic department received hundreds of letters of support and encouragement from young fans that now want to become Seawolves because of her, Murphy was asked to share her story as inspiration to others.

At first, she was reluctant to put pen to paper. Then, she remembered why she taped her fans’ cards to the inside of her locker.

“I hope I can be as good as you one day,” one young girl had handwritten. “You are my role model.”

“When she saw that, she was rehabbing and coming back for something greater,” coach Joe Spallina said.

“I rise,” Murphy said. “I can overcome this, even though I may have some hard days.”

When she began to write, the words started to flow.

“My Seawolves story is unbreakable.”

***

Facing Towson on Feb. 4, Murphy had broken metacarpals in her left hand. It was a season-opening 10-9 win for the Seawolves, but it was her first injury in her lacrosse career.

Taking a step back was not an option according to Murphy, who had set the NCAA Division I women’s lacrosse single-season record with 100 goals in 2016.

Donning a red cast, she went on to play against Bryant one week later.

Then on March 5, in their second Top 20 win of the season against then-No. 12 Northwestern, a deafening scream silenced Kenneth P. LaValle Stadium. With just 10 seconds remaining in the first half, Murphy had hit the turf with a torn ACL.

“Mentally, just like anyone when you find out your season is pretty much done, it’s not a happy time,” Stony Brook women’s lacrosse trainer Barbara-Jean “BJ” Ercolino said. “It’s not one of those things we like to tell any of the athletes, but unfortunately it happens.”

Murphy was a senior.

She had her eyes set on reaching new heights after being on the cover of US Lacrosse Magazine in its annual college preview edition with Seawolves’ Tewaaraton finalist Kylie Ohlmiller, who broke a Division I single-season record with 164 points.

Murphy also already secured a job upon graduation at BTIG, a stockbroker company in New York City.

Her options, though simple, were hard to consider.

Murphy could either continue as planned – graduate and work on Wall Street like her brother, Steve, who played at Notre Dame – or redshirt and come back for a fifth season.

“She asked me what I thought,” Spallina said. “I said, flat out, ‘I think you know how I feel about you, but I also know that I would be doing an injustice if I tried to persuade you to come back.

“‘It’s something you have to want for yourself,’” he continued to tell her. “You’ve had an incredible career if you wrapped it up right now. But at the same token, it also would be nice to write your own ending, as opposed to it being written for you.”

It didn’t take long to make a decision.

“I just realized I don’t want it to end like this,” Murphy said. “[My family] realized where my heart really was.”

***

It took a trip to Gainesville, Fla., for the Seawolves’ March 11 game against Florida to put everything into perspective.

Just one day prior, the Stony Brook family had lost 19-year-old softball star Danni Kemp to a brain tumor.

Murphy then watched her team fall to the Gators, 22-14.

“[Danni] was one of us,” Murphy said. “We found out when we landed in Florida. It hit us really hard. The proximity of her [death] and my injury was definitely inspiring. The timing was insane. It was something that helped me push myself still to this day thinking about her and her battle.”

The Seawolves' loss to Florida was just one of two for the entire year, but Murphy needed it.

Watching the game from the sidelines, she “morphed into a very good assistant coach,” said Spallina, who clearly recalled the Gators subbing all 12 players after a goal as if it was “choreographed across the 50-yard line.”

It was in that moment that Murphy grabbed his arm, spun him around, and told him she was coming back.

“That probably helped plant the seed for her to come back,” Spallina said. “The way the Florida game played out confirmed her gut.”

With an impending winter storm in New York, Spallina paid for Murphy to fly home early for her March 15 surgery.

As predicted, her coach and teammates got stuck in Florida following its March 13 game against Jacksonville. Therefore, the rest of the Spallina family – wife Mary Beth and their five children, whom Murphy regularly babysits – joined Murphy’s parents in the hospital for the moment she woke up.

“She’s part of the fabric of our program and my family,” Spallina said. “You can say you care, but show you care.”

“It’s nice to know I have a second family here,” Murphy said. “They’re always behind me.”

***

The first day after her surgery was optimistic, but then the pain medication quickly wore off. The sleepless nights had begun and rehab was looming.

“BJ tells you to lift your leg up and you can’t lift your leg up,” Murphy said. “It’s something you wouldn’t think about right now, and then you can’t do it and you don’t know why.”

Murphy described the first few months of recovery as “brutal.” Much of it was several single-leg exercises, which she joked were hard enough if you weren’t injured. Once her incision healed, the underwater treadmill became a staple in her physical therapy – walking, agility exercises and ultimately running with reduced impact.

But as she improved, she witnessed her team succeed too – without her. She doubted she made the right decision.

“It kind of made me think that I was the reason we were losing [last year], even though I [had] personal success,” Murphy said. “As the season went on, I came to terms with it more during playoffs.”

After Stony Brook became the closest team to almost defeat eventual national champion Maryland in the NCAA quarterfinal in May, Murphy ran again.

“It’s never easy, but she mentally wrapped herself around it,” Ercolino said.

“What most people don’t know, as great as she is, she was on the Yellow Jackets 'B' team,” Spallina added. “I don’t want to say defy the odds or overachieve, but she’s always had to come a little bit behind the 8-ball. This was something where I think when you look at something she had to overcome, I don’t think it was completely foreign to her.”

***

Murphy completed a summer internship at BTIG before returning to Stony Brook to work on her master’s degree in business administration, but in doing so, she had to continue physical therapy on her own. Working long hours in the Big Apple made it harder than expected.

She came back feeling out of shape and disconnected from the team. Due to her class schedule, she had to condition on her own and could only attend Friday practices, which became “a slippery slope” because her teammates were worried they’d injure her further.

Murphy pondered whether she actually could come back better than she was, but ultimately learned to persevere with grace, thanks to Kemp.

“It hit me,” Murphy wrote in her blog. “Danni Kemp just fought the boldest battle one can endure and here I was complaining about something I am sure she would have defeated in a heartbeat.”

Slowly, Murphy regained her strength.

She was cleared to play in fall scrimmages, including against Florida, and successfully passed the final fitness “beep test” before winter break.

“She has a redefined focus from last year to this year,” Ercolino said. “She’s probably in the best shape she’s ever been in since she’s been here. She’s looking more athletic than she ever has.”

Not to mention, she came back inspired for what could be one of Stony Brook’s best seasons with 10 returning starters, three 100-plus point scorers (Murphy, Kylie Ohlmiller and younger sister Taryn Ohlmiller), and hosting rights for the 2018 NCAA Division I women’s lacrosse championship. Furthermore, Murphy is 44 goals shy of becoming the NCAA’s all-time leader.

“You don’t want to be watching in your own stands someone win on your own field,” Murphy said. “My brother played in multiple national championship games and multiple final fours and was never able to accomplish that. Having the chance to I know is something my family really wants as well.”

“It’s about being in control of our own destiny, just like her injury,” Spallina added. “Murph came back to write her own ending, but part of her ending is us as a team writing our own ending to the season.”

For players like Murphy, who committed to Stony Brook on Spallina's vision before he coached a single game and now witness young fans hoping to be Seawolves instead of attending perennial powerhouses, it's about making a name for yourself even when doubts may surface.

"Ultimately, it’s not even shocking the world, but making it clear that we’re here and we’re here to stay," Murphy said. "It would just be the ultimate accomplishment for myself personally to come back and have everything pay off, graduating with my master’s, finishing with a national championship from a mid-major school. Most people don’t realize we don’t get a lot of the perks that people who play at Notre Dame and UNC do, but that’s just another motivation factor for us. ... Everything we do is self-accomplishment.”

ABOUT STONY BROOK

  • Coach: Joe Spallina

  • Last Seen: Falling just short of dethroning Maryland, losing 13-12 in the 2017 NCAA quarterfinal in College Park, Md.

  • Key Returners: Kylie Ohlmiller (78G, 86A, 164PTs), Taryn Ohlmiller (65G, 36A, 101PTs), Courtney Murphy (16PTs before season-ending surgery), Keri McCarthy (106DC), Brooke Gubitosi (55CT, 46GB)

  • 2017 Team Stats: No. 1 scoring defense (7.27), No. 3 scoring offense (16.09), No. 1 in assists per game (10.09), No. 1 in points per game (26.18), 14.15 draw controls per game, 10.69 caused turnovers per game, 16.68 ground balls per game

  • Last Nike/US Lacrosse Ranking: No. 2

  • Conference Snapshot: Stony Brook finished 2017 with an undefeated regular season conference slate for the third straight year and clinched its fifth consecutive America East championship. Despite Albany remaining their biggest competition, the Seawolves are confident of repeating again.

OFFSEASON HOT TOPICS

Several rule changes are coming to women’s lacrosse this spring, including the 90-second possession clock to Divisions II and III, free movement and simplified stick specifications. Spallina provides his feedback on these three hot topics in the women’s game.

  • Possession Clock: “It’s going to be good for the sport. I think the biggest thing is it’s such a great sport when it’s played at such a fast, high pace. You see what it did for Division I, so I’m excited for Division II and Division III. I think they’re really going to enjoy it and embrace it. I would love to even go shorter. I’d love to see it go to 75 or 70, or even 60. I’d love to see six-on-six on the offensive end with a 60-second shot clock. It would open space up."

  • Free Movement: “I like it. I think it’s something that could make things more specialized, maybe more with an LSM position and something where players can get up and down. It actually made it easier for us to sub players, our middies line. We’re running one of our defenders the same way you would run an LSM in men’s lacrosse where they go over, are a big part of the clear, play a little offense, get people on and sub them over the 30. It’s going to be an adjustment regardless, but I think it’s going to be better for the sport. It allows more players to be a part of it. Sometimes it’s difficult in the game with the stop and go to actually be able to sub without impeding the style of play."

  • New Stick Specs: “It was rushed a little bit. I like that we’re being proactive with some things, but I think if we’re going to have mesh, are we going to allow the V? The men took the V out. I think we should’ve been more specific. … The people that are finding loopholes with the draw, I'd like to see it more streamlined. But I worry about that. ... Women haven’t had mesh before, but now we have mesh. Those are my concerns, but for me personally I love it because I’m invested in the men’s game as well."

SOCIAL SNAPSHOT

Fall ball has ended, but teams are still busy gearing up for the 2018 season. Here's a snapshot of what has happened in the lacrosse world the past few days: