Get the latest Syracuse news delivered right to your inbox. Subscribe to our sports newsletter here.

It was time for Courtney Maclay to cross the chasm from doubter to believer.

Her Stony Brook squad was gearing up for its NCAA Tournament First Round matchup against Loyola on May 9, 2025. The Seawolves’ senior midfielder wasn’t feeling like herself. Just ask her father, Chas Maclay, who’s been by her side through her entire 11-year lacrosse career.

“(Division I) sports are an incredible, intense, emotional cauldron between the kids, their desires, their fears and the constant battle for approval,” he said. “Courtney had a fight with confidence.”

Courtney expected to be a “very high-level offensive presence” on a Stony Brook team that fluctuated in and out of the top 20. Instead, she entered the 2025 NCAA Tournament with just 22 goals and 10 assists.

As Courtney walked into Alumni Stadium in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, to face Loyola, she knew it could very well be her last game. A loss, despite her denial, could mean the job search would begin.

Torrential rain soaked Boston College’s dark green turf. Courtney couldn’t shake an illness. But 60 minutes after taking the field, she left with a career-high six goals. Stony Brook lived to see another day with an 11-8 win.

“That game was my high,” Courtney said. “Probably as high as it could get.”

Courtney, her Williamsville East High School (New York) coach Emily Peters and her Stony Brook teammate Avery Hines agreed Courtney’s 72-hour stretch, which began with the sock trick against the Greyhounds and ended with a brace versus Boston College two days later, opened the door to her future.

Courtney Maclay leaps in joy during her six-goal performance in the NCAA Tournament last season. Many of Maclay’s peers believe her showing that day opened the door for her Syracuse commitment. Courtesy of Courtney Maclay

The “killer” weekend — and an additional year of eligibility — led to visits at BC, Pitt and Florida State, among other schools. It eventually resulted in Courtney transferring to Syracuse for her graduate year, a program she dreamed of playing for since growing up in Buffalo.

“What better time to be a star than an NCAA playoff game,” Stony Brook head coach Joe Spallina said postgame. “It was just a matter of time.”

The conditions couldn’t have been much worse. Courtney didn’t like the rain. She wasn’t much of a coffee drinker, either. For Courtney, who Hines called a “nervous wreck,” getting sick during the NCAA Tournament was dreadful timing. She kept her mysterious ailment to herself and her closest teammates, one of whom was Hines, her roommate on every road trip since their sophomore year.

The Loyola game was set for 4 p.m., but Courtney considered it an evening affair after 11 of the Seawolves’ previous 19 matchups began before 3. Stony Brook had a walkthrough that morning. Courtney said she’s more of a doer than a thinker, so those few hours were key.

She then returned to the team hotel and took a rare afternoon nap to calm her nerves before Stony Brook’s “Super Bowl” began. When she woke up, rain clattered against the pavement outside. All Courtney thought was, “Oh my God, here we go.”

The opening draw was hours away, and Courtney, who normally ate a full pregame meal, wasn’t hungry. So, she settled for a cold brew chocolate protein shake, which she enjoyed so much that she screenshotted the recipe.

The drink was new to Courtney, but otherwise, the scene was familiar. In her first three seasons, the Seawolves made two NCAA Tournament second-round appearances and an Elite Eight. The NCAA Tournament was Stony Brook’s standard, deriving from Spallina’s hard-nosed, high-intensity philosophy.

Spallina often preached that if you can handle hard things in practice, they’ll be nothing more than a blink of an eye in high-pressure situations. That mindset appealed to Courtney when she committed to the Seawolves as a freshman and resurfaced as she weighed whether her illness was enough to keep her sidelined against Loyola.

“I could stand up, I could walk, I could talk, I was playing,” Courtney said. “I just vowed to myself that no matter what happens, I’m gonna go out there … and give it all I got.”

The problem is, at Stony Brook, giving all you’ve got is far more demanding than at other programs. Courtney said the Seawolves ran a system called “Vibes.” The defensive and offensive schemes didn’t change regardless of the opponent. Players’ mileage trackers often read anywhere from four to eight miles per day, with a defender once clocking 13, Courtney said.

So, if Courtney wanted to play, she needed to be in the right headspace. As she looked toward the stands during the national anthem, she found her motivation. Courtney’s parents, Chas and Darlene, along with her siblings, Trey, Lindsey and Kayden, perched on the bleachers in BC’s 44,500-seat stadium.

They were together for one of the few times in Courtney’s career. They proudly waved Fathead posters as Courtney readied for her eighth straight performance off the bench. She’d never scored with them in attendance, but her family now jokes she had six goals for all six family members.

The game started as usual. Stony Brook opened the scoring for the fifth straight game off of Courtney’s stick. Although Loyola answered with two consecutive goals, Courtney stopped the bleeding with a second first-quarter goal.

Then, the rain came down harder. Courtney said she couldn’t see. She fell into a trance for the next 45 minutes as the natural light faded. But there she was, scoring the next goal and two more across the final two quarters to turn a tie into a three-goal lead.

“I don’t even know what was happening,” Courtney said. “I was just hot every time I shot it on the net.”

After the game, Courtney stayed up all night with her siblings. She was riding a new high and carried it into Saturday morning practice before Stony Brook faced Boston College Sunday.

Hines laid in bed before the BC game, scrolling Instagram. A post from Inside Lacrosse appeared on her feed, reading, “Who’s a Courtney Maclay fan?” In that moment, even Courtney, who’d struggled with self-doubt throughout her career, could raise her hand.

“The best part about that weekend was seeing her finally have enough confidence to take shots I knew she could make that she didn’t know she could make,” Chas said. “It wasn’t so much the six goals as that moment where you go, ‘Holy sh*t, I can do this.’”

Although the Seawolves’ season ended against Boston College 48 hours later, Courtney’s display versus the Greyhounds had a lasting impact. The next week, Courtney entered the transfer portal. Most of her friends were graduating, and she needed a fresh start as she applied for a fifth year of eligibility.

The process of earning an extra year was “a fight, a struggle and a huge relief when it finally happened,” Chas said. Even before it formalized, Courtney began visiting other programs, including Boston College.

Sam Apuzzo, BC’s assistant coach, called Courtney shortly after she hit the portal. During Courtney’s six-goal performance, the Eagles’ entire coaching staff sat in a stadium box, all thinking the same thing.

Abby Aggarwala | Design Editor

“Holy F, who’s this girl we don’t even know about?”

BC ultimately wasn’t the right fit. Syracuse, however, a program Courtney long yearned to play for, was on the table. Courtney’s youth club team often took yellow school buses to the JMA Wireless Dome to watch SU women’s lacrosse games. Courtney said it felt like watching the New York Knicks play at Madison Square Garden. The players were “untouchable superstars.”

When Syracuse head coach Regy Thorpe was at Florida, he recruited Courtney in high school, so this was also his second chance. SU was Courtney’s final visit, occurring a few days before her graduate program at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications was set to begin.

Courtney sat down with Thorpe in his newly furnished office. She said he knew more about her than she did. He spoke about his summers being booked with his former players’ weddings. Their conversation checked all of Courtney’s boxes.

A few days later, she called Thorpe to commit to Syracuse.

“(Playing at SU used to feel) so completely out of reach and something I couldn’t even dream of,” Courtney said. “The standard is so high.”

Eighteen games into her Syracuse career, Courtney knows the end is near. But SU doesn’t want it to come any time soon. The Orange expect the same benchmark Stony Brook did — a deep playoff run. Courtney has met that standard before. She knows what it takes.

A lot has changed since that fateful day last May. Courtney loves playing in the rain, an inconvenient fact given the Orange are one of few teams that play indoors. She also can’t get enough of her cold brew chocolate protein shake, which Darlene retrieved for her in Chestnut Hill when SU faced BC on April 16. In Syracuse, she’s found a similar option at Recess Coffee for her semiweekly fix.

The biggest difference, though, is Courtney has crossed the chasm. She believes in herself. All because of a rainy night in Chestnut Hill, six goals and a protein shake she can’t stop ordering. The rest, she figured out herself.

DISCLAIMER: Courtney Maclay is a contributing writer for The Daily Orange. She did not influence the editorial content of this article.

Published on April 30, 2026 at 12:24 am
Contact Jordan: jordankimball28@gmail.com | @JordanKimball_