Photography by Steve Buchanan
Making the Severna Park varsity girls lacrosse team meant a lot to then-sophomore Alyssa Chung last spring. After all, the Falcons rank among the best programs in the state, winning a state-record 14 Class 4A state championships since 1990.
With an elite set of skills and having played a few seasons for one of the nation’s best club programs, M&D Lacrosse, it would have been tough to bet against her.
But Chung had a concern: she hadn’t played lacrosse since October of 2020, when she suffered a severe knee injury playing for her club team. She wasn’t sure how she would perform in tryouts.
“I was so nervous,” Chung recalls. “I was definitely anxious. I didn’t play for a year because I really messed up my knee. It was a step-by-step process. Three-fifths of our team is the 2023 class, and they are all really good.”
But everything worked out quite well. The 5-foot-8 Chung, now a junior, easily made the team and went on to have a memorable season. She earned The Baltimore Sun First-Team All-Metro honors.
“Alyssa blew us away in tryouts,” former Severna Park Girls Lacrosse Coach Kaitlyn Hines says. “She went on to lead the team in almost every statistic. As good as she is now, it’s crazy to think what having two more years of high school could do for her.”
College lacrosse has been a big focus of Chung’s in recent months. She’s starting the process of picking a school. Coaches started contacting her in July, which is the opening of recruiting season. West Point and the Naval Academy were the first two schools that reached out to her, and she was thrilled. Chung, who carries a weighted 4.38 grade point average has had an interest in both prestigious schools for a few years. She’s interested in majoring in aerospace engineering.
“I really enjoyed talking to the military academies,” Chung explains. “They have been high on my list. The idea of serving my country is something I have been interested in. I am looking at schools that are good in engineering and they are very good engineering schools.”
M&D Lacrosse Coach John Brown expects the interest from colleges to be consistent. She’s played five years at midfield and defense for the club. “There will be some top-10 or top-15 lacrosse schools in the country that will be interested in her,” he believes.
The sport Chung will give a lot of time to this fall is field hockey. Severna Park didn’t have a season in 2020 because of the pandemic and she spent the following season splitting time between varsity and jayvee.
The 17-year-old Chung also plans to play basketball this winter, and she ran track for a few years before high school. But her main focus come spring will be lacrosse. She plays for nine months of the year for M&D Lacrosse and another three for Severna Park.
And what a season she put together for the Falcons last spring. The attacker led Severna Park in goals (48), points (64), draws (84), caused turnovers (22), and ground balls (35). Chung, who grew up playing lacrosse in the Severna Park Green Hornets program, saved her best game for the Falcons’ most important—the state championship. She totaled four goals and two assists in a closely contested 11-10 loss to Marriotts Ridge.
“She is such a hard-working player,” Hines says. “An hour before practice she’s working on her stick skills. She would always come up during and after practice and ask, ‘What can I do? I want to try this or that.’ She is always pushing herself to be better each day. I have been at the high school for eight years. I haven’t seen anyone like her.”
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