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organ Widner had attended Pine Cove, a Christian summer camp in her home state of Texas, her whole life. But in summer 2015 before her senior year of high school, her last opportunity to go to the camp, Widner couldn’t. She’d received a call from Syracuse asking her to come to a lacrosse camp more than 1,300 miles away.

Widner, at least initially, was devastated.

“When I first found out I had to miss Pine Cove I was bawling like a baby,” Widner said.

More than two years later, on a January day in Syracuse with more snow on the ground than she had ever seen in Texas, Widner laughed. Missing the summer camp for the SU lacrosse camp produced a chance to play for the Orange. And last year in her freshman season, Widner thrived from game one. She started every game and tallied 156 draw controls, the most ever by an SU freshman and third-most in Syracuse history.

But Widner didn’t just have a strong freshman season. She didn’t have an offer from Syracuse until the summer before her senior year, extremely late in the early-recruiting world of lacrosse. And she did it after growing up in Texas, a state not known for its lacrosse prowess. Widner is one of two athletes from Texas in the pool of 269 rostered players in the Atlantic Coast Conference, along with Duke’s Charlotte North.

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When Widner first started playing sports in elementary school, she said, she was unaware that lacrosse even existed. By the fifth grade, she was playing competitive soccer with her friends.

Two of the friends’ dads, whose sons played lacrosse, decided to introduce their daughters to the sport. The fathers didn’t have much more background in the sport than the girls, so they learned together.

The parents found an introduction to lacrosse book with a 3-on-2 drill called “West Genny,” made famous by West Genesee High School, a lacrosse powerhouse in the greater-Syracuse area.

“None of us knew a thing,” said Jill Widner, Morgan’s mother. “About how it worked, how the game worked, how the rules worked, none of us … It was just brand new.”

Widner didn’t take draws when she first started playing lacrosse. She and her parents didn’t really know anything about college lacrosse or the recruiting process, either. Widner was a “strong and fast” defender who possessed raw talent but didn’t have anyone to coach her in the nuances of lacrosse. All of the above changed with the arrival of Molly Ford.

Prior to Widner’s freshman year of high school, Ford, a three-time All-American at Georgetown, arrived to coach club lacrosse in Widner’s hometown of Coppell.

“(Ford) was young, she was pretty, she was fun,” Widner said. “… It was like a superstar had come down to coach us.”

Once Ford arrived, Widner realized that a world beyond Texas high school lacrosse existed.

Widner still wasn’t taking draws when Ford arrived, and that didn’t change for two seasons. But during her junior year, Widner began to take draws as “an opportunity to do something new,” and remembers taking to the process immediately.

Widner’s newfound skill didn’t change the lack of interest from colleges, though. Most schools didn’t have spots open for Widner. They’d already filled their recruiting classes for that season.

She and her father, Bob Widner, had seen her friends make recruiting videos, so they made a video and sent it to 15 schools. Only Princeton showed any interest, but the Tigers never offered Widner a spot.

“We recommended her to a bunch of different coaches,” Ford said, “A lot of them were like, ‘Hell no, we don’t see potential, it’s not going to work out.’”

And no one would be looking to Texas for lacrosse talent. Widner would have to go to the schools to make them notice her.

She and her parents became “friends” with Southwest Airlines, her father, Bob, said, flying out of Dallas to camps all over the country. They visited Princeton, Stanford, Duke, Florida and more. Widner said that only five days went by in the summer before her senior year where she didn’t play lacrosse.

Most interest remained limited. Coaches had full recruiting classes or they couldn’t see past the rawness of Widner’s lacrosse skillset. But back home in Texas, one of Ford’s old teammates from Georgetown was laying the groundwork for Widner’s shot to play at Syracuse.

Maggie Koch played goalie at Georgetown as Ford’s teammate. In spring 2015, Widner’s junior year at Coppell, Koch was the head coach of the girls’ lacrosse program at the Episcopal School of Dallas. And when her team played Coppell in Widner’s first full season as a draw taker, ESD got “crushed,” Koch recalled. Unbeknownst to Widner, Koch had spent her time between Georgetown and Dallas as an assistant coach for Gary Gait at Syracuse. Koch gave SU a call soon after seeing Widner play.

“I thought Syracuse would be open to checking her out because I think they’re second to none in player development,” Koch said. “If a kid does something well, then they’ll enable her to do it even better and improve everything else about her game around that special skill.”

It was very late in the recruiting process, and Koch got the sense that Syracuse wasn’t actively pursuing anyone else in Widner’s class. But SU invited Widner to a camp that summer and offered her a chance to play for the Orange by the end of July.

“In my heart I was like, ‘please don’t have her go to Syracuse because that’s so far,’” Jill Widner said of her daughter choosing the right school. “We’re big prayers … We had our whole church praying about it.”

Widner accepted SU’s offer by early August, just before her senior year at Coppell began. That year became one of necessary refinement.

Ford knew that Widner’s stickwork still needed improvement. For much a Widner’s senior year, she — a natural right hander — was forced to play with her left hand. It was a skill that many players develop to an extent when they’re younger, Widner said, but in Texas, there was no such youth coaching.

“It was so goofy, it was like a hot mess honestly for the first week,” Widner said, laughing.

After arriving at SU, Widner felt she proved a good learner. Her late start in lacrosse made her feel like a “whiteboard,” less locked into bad habits and more easily molded by coaching. But she still wasn’t sure what her role would be. She had a discussion with Bob before the season in which she wondered if she’d be redshirted. He insisted that wasn’t “her purpose.”

Only 15 minutes before the 2017 season opener, Gait told Widner that she’d be starting.

Before that game, Widner found herself alone on the block “S” at the center of the Carrier Dome turf as her team headed to the locker room. She raised her head in prayer, something not unusual for Widner.

Courtesy of Jill Widner

“It’s one of my favorite pictures because I think it genuinely explains just how an enormity Syracuse is to me and I’m just this little girl from Texas,” Widner said.

Widner won 16 draws in that game against Boston College, the second-most in a single game in program history.

That first game was a sign of things to come. Widner put up the seventh-best draw control rate per game (7.09) in the country during her freshman season. Widner always knew, though, that there was still plenty she needed to work on. In a way, she was playing catch-up for the time and coaching she missed out on as a younger player.

So, Widner went home this past summer and spent more time being coached by Ford. They worked on what happens after the draw — how to get from winning it to using her speed and attacking the goal. Widner’s stickwork had always been the skill that needed to catch up, so even with no defenders on a field back home in Coppell, Widner worked on dodges and different types of shots.

“I would say there’s a little bit of a chip on my shoulder,” Widner said. “I think it’ll stay there with me forever, especially going against older girls, different teams, teams like Maryland, UNC. There’s this internal drive to just destroy those teams.”

When Widner was in elementary school, lacrosse wasn’t even on her radar. Now when she goes home to Texas, she sees first graders sporting shirts supporting North Carolina or Maryland lacrosse. Widner said she hopes she’s just one helpful push toward lacrosse’s relevance in her home state. She never had disciplined coaching infrastructure at the youth levels. Now, young girls in Texas do.

“She plays for all those girls who were told at one point ‘you’re not good enough’ or ‘you missed the boat,’” her father said.

Courtney Anderson, a midfielder/defender from Widner’s hometown of Coppell, is committed to play at Stanford next year. Megan Carney, an attack from Dallas, is committed as a member of SU’s 2018 recruiting class. But this year, it’s just Widner at Syracuse. She’s in a place, on a field, in a sport that she would never have imagined as a little girl.

“Being from Texas, us playing lacrosse so late, we didn’t even believe it was possible to play in college,” Widner said. “It was always like a dream.”

Banner photo by Alexandra Moreo | Senior Staff Photographer

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Published on February 4, 2018 at 9:09 pm

Contact Billy: wmheyen@syr.edu | @Wheyen3