Morgan Mason (‘17), a midfielder on the women’s lacrosse team, has been named Landmark Conference Athlete of the week three times in her career at Drew. She is one of the top scorers in the conference, leading the conference for shots taken with 54. Mason has also scored in the last seven games for the Rangers.
Although she is having another standout season, Mason attributes much of the success of the team to her teammates and her coaches. Her path to Drew was an unconventional one, as she had originally committed to a different school when the previous coach, Julia Steier, reached out and recruited her. When she visited campus, she fell in love with the school and changed her commitment at the last minute. She described the campus as feeling like “home” when she visited.
Looking back at her time in the Forest, Mason believes that the team has come together this season in a way that have not in the past. Specifically, she pointed the shots being taken by her teammates and the impressive performance of their defense. She cites the new talent that the team has coming into the season as another factor in their outstanding season start this year.
Despite her successful career at Drew, Mason’s time has not been without adversity. Towards the end of her sophomore season, she tore her ACL, MCL and meniscus while playing in a game. She was given a nine month recovery period but was back on the field for her junior season, after seven months and not missing a game. As a part of her recovery, she had to complete three hours of physical therapy daily. Between classes, team practices and her physical therapy, Mason was forced to take a lighter class load. When asked about the most difficult part of being a student athlete, she said “The biggest challenge was staying on top of my physical therapy because if I missed it, I was letting myself down, letting my team down because I needed to get back.”
Looking back on her recovery, she offers advice to those going through recovery, saying “My biggest piece of advice would be to keep a journal of your progress. There were two days that I remember throughout my recovery process that I just could not do it. My first bad day was a month after my surgery when I couldn’t do a straight leg raise and from that point on I kept a journal of all the milestones I was hitting and how I was feeling everyday after PT and now looking back on it when I had my next bad day I could look back on it and see my accomplishments this far.”
Off the field, Mason has been making the most of her time at Drew, participating in both the Wall Street Semester and a study abroad trip to Ireland over winter break on a program led by Associate Dean Rodgers with several of her teammates. Describing the program, she says “We learned so much, during that… We learned a lot about Irish suffrage which I think a lot of people in the program didn’t know happened which is kind of sad.”
Catch Mason and her teammates in action at their next home game Saturday, April 1 at 1 p.m. against Old Westbury.
