Second Chances: Once Cut, Reagan O'Brien Took Her Game to Another Level

During her time at Boston Latin, Johns Hopkins defender Reagan O’Brien became accustomed to a routine sprint from the locker room to the train station. The daily dash merely kickstarted a 30-plus-minute journey just to get to lacrosse practice.

O’Brien took this to new extremes this summer, flying back from her study abroad program in Bologna, Italy, to attend June’s U.S. U20 Women’s National Team training camp ahead of final cuts.

She said the cross-Atlantic flight let her settle her nerves and ponder a process that began about 11 months earlier, when head coach Kelly Amonte Hiller didn’t name O’Brien to the initial 42-player training team.

“Getting cut once definitely hurts your heart a little bit, but I just wanted to show what I was capable of,” O’Brien said. “I wanted to show [the coaches] it was the right decision to bring me back … and how much I cared about this whole experience.”

Johns Hopkins coach Tim McCormack, who serves as an assistant on Amonte Hiller’s U20 staff, told the Charlestown, Mass., native to keep her head held high despite the disappointing result.

While O’Brien said she used the experience as fuel, she quickly shifted gears toward preseason preparations, logging countless hours on local fields and on the assault bike. Her work paid significant dividends, as O’Brien racked up 38 caused turnovers and 35 ground balls in 20 games, helping the Blue Jays make another NCAA tournament bid.

“I watched it fuel her all year,” McCormack said. “I don’t think there was a thought of, ‘I want to make this team.’ It was just like, ‘OK, my focus is here, and I’m going to make my teammates better.”

A week and a half after wrapping up her sophomore campaign, O’Brien entered the coach’s office for a supposed exit meeting. Just outside the room, she ran into Johns Hopkins assistant coach Dorrien Van Dyke, who O’Brien said had a “huge smile” on her face.

McCormack then delivered news months in the making — O’Brien was invited to compete for one of 22 U.S. roster spots at the World Lacrosse Women’s U20 Championship.

“I was flabbergasted,” O’Brien said. “I was just so excited that they saw I had potential and gave me a second chance. I wanted to show them I learned a lot my sophomore year, I grew as a player and I was going to put 100-percent effort every single day.”

Although she debated whether she should try out or perhaps forgo her trip to Italy, O’Brien, her family and her coaches carved out a plan. She flew back stateside for the three-day training camp then immediately returned to Italy.

As she awaited her U.S. roster fate in Bologna, O’Brien sought out a place of comfort. More than 4,000 miles from home, O’Brien found her way to a lacrosse field. There, she and her roommate — Blue Jays midfielder Emily Peek — practiced with a local squad.

“Seeing lacrosse on that level … I really found my joy and love for lacrosse and why I wanted to play on the U.S. team and represent my country,” O’Brien said. “It made me want it so much more, and I’m very grateful I was given the opportunity to play with the Bologna Sharks. I haven’t laughed that hard playing lacrosse in a while.”

The session with the Sharks provided O’Brien’s first taste of international competition, but it will prove far from her last chance, as the defender was named to the final roster on July 3 and will compete for gold in Hong Kong, China, later this month.

O’BRIEN AND HER OLDER SISTER, QUINLAN — a senior midfielder at Johns Hopkins — first crossed paths with McCormack at a Northwestern camp when the O’Brien sisters were in sixth and seventh grade, respectively.

Seven years later, McCormack took the head coaching position with the Blue Jays in 2022, sparking a “full circle” moment.

“Reagan came to every single one of the Boston camps that we did,” McCormack said. “I remember her as a little sixth grader and us bringing her up with the varsity group. You fast forward to me getting the job, both names jumped off the page.”

While she went through the recruiting process during the pandemic and with former coach Janine Tucker’s staff, O’Brien said she swiftly found a home at Johns Hopkins. During freshman year fall ball, the former midfielder shifted into a defensive role.

With both new to Homewood Field, O’Brien and Van Dyke — the Blue Jays’ defensive guru — built a strong rapport.

“I really got to know the defense we were playing, and I realized my love for defense was always so much stronger than my love for offense,” O’Brien said. “I fell in love with the way [Van Dyke] taught our zone, and I really wanted to improve and sharpen my skills.”

On an experience-laden Johns Hopkins group, O’Brien earned pivotal playing time as a true freshman and became one of McCormack’s most trusted contributors.

“[There] have been less opportunities for younger players to thrive,” McCormack said. “But Reagan, she never turned back. She came in with full confidence. She’s just a playmaker, a great anticipator and she’s got excellent athleticism as well.”

Similar to O’Brien in the prior season, Jordan Carr transitioned from the midfield to the Blue Jays’ defense in 2024. O’Brien said she learned countless on- and off-field lessons from her veteran defensive counterpart.

For McCormack, seeing the duo compete side-by-side unlocked a new dynamic. With O’Brien and Carr occupying their zone’s two top spots, the Johns Hopkins defense surrendered just 10.8 goals per game and boasted the nation’s No. 12 clearing percentage.

“There was a lot of similarities between the two, and you could see Reagan settling in the more she was next to her, watched her and the more those two talked,” McCormack said. “When you know the person to the left or right of you is going to be buttoned up, you’re going to be that much better.”

WITH THE INTERNATIONAL GAME’S UNIQUE NATURE, McCormack said Amonte Hiller and her staff sought versatile defenders. They’ve made use of midfielders — and even attackers — on defense during scrimmages, but O’Brien’s comfort on the clear stood out in evaluations.

“We’re playing the best people in the world, so you have to be versatile,” McCormack said. “One of the styles we’ve discussed being able to use is getting after people, making them a little uncomfortable with an up-tempo style. We’re making sure we’re a very diverse defense and very adaptable.”

Though she excels as a takeaway defender, O’Brien built an adeptness with the ball in her stick through years of midfield play with Mass Elite and Boston Latin.

As just a seventh grader, O’Brien joined her sister on Boston Latin’s varsity squad.

“She was an impact player right from tryouts,” Boston Latin girls’ lacrosse coach Tegan Avellino said. “She clearly was just a presence, physically, on the field. Her skill had surpassed almost every other player on the team.”

When Quinlan O’Brien made the team a year prior, Avellino’s group had yet to record a win. She and her younger sister propelled the program to its first-ever state tournament appearance.

Avellino said the younger O’Brien sister, who amassed more than 400 goals on the offensive end while routinely dropping yard-sale checks on defense, grew into one of the most phenomenal athletes she’s seen at the high school level.

“I’ve been around the game for a long time,” Avellino said. “I have never seen a player like Reagan. Grit is the word I would use. She just has that killer instinct.”

The O’Brien sisters also excelled on the soccer field, where Quinlan shined as a pass-first player and Reagan starred as a scorer. The latter said her bond with her older sister is “indescribable.”

“She is my biggest inspiration; she’s such a great role model,” Reagan O’Brien said. “She shows me the way in every aspect of my life. Growing up behind someone like that has really shaped who I am and how I play.”

While O’Brien drew consistent guidance from her older sister, she actualized her own mentorship role when representatives from A Shot For Life reached out. The organization, founded by Mike Slonina in 2010, raises money for cancer research through youth athlete advocacy.

When Slonina and Matt Freitas looked to expand operations to lacrosse, they turned to O’Brien.

“If we could create an ASFL athlete in a lab, it would be her,” Slonina said. “She is the exact combination that we want — a superstar athlete on the field, but you’d never know it just by talking to her. [She’s] the nicest young woman in the world. She really believes in what we do.”

O’Brien said she jumped at the chance to play for a cause and honor her late grandfather, George Stump, a former Northwestern football and baseball player who died from glioblastoma.

She hosted youth clinics and competed in games for charity, helping raise more than $100,000. In the process, O’Brien and her grandmother, Elizabeth Stump, worked to develop a fundraising plan and gather old mementos from her late grandfather’s college days.

“That was the last thing I got to do with my grandmother before she passed away,” O’Brien said. “I’m so grateful for the opportunity that I was able to work so closely with my grandmother. She was one of my best friends.”

MUCH LIKE WHEN O’BRIEN BID FAREWELL to her time on the soccer field with Quinlan in what Boston Latin girls’ soccer coach Jon Rudzinski deemed the “most fantastic” senior night speech he’d ever heard, the sisters will share the college stage for a final season in 2025.

“I learned a lot about myself because I realized I didn’t have to be in my sister’s shadow,” O’Brien said of her dual-sport experience with her older sister. “She really allowed me to be my own person and just grow and figure things out for myself. She’s the most caring, loving person ever.”

McCormack pointed toward O’Brien, attacker Ava Angello and midfielder Ashley Mackin as experienced players he expects to step into significant leadership roles ahead of next season. O’Brien said she and her teammates are ecstatic to embrace the challenge.

In the meantime, she’s the lone Massachusetts representative on the U20 team, and Mass Elite coach Meredith Frank McGinnis said O’Brien has a state’s worth of youth players looking up to her.

A player Frank McGinnis watched blossom from an exuberant fourth grader to college star status, O’Brien embodies commitment to the process.

“She’s just a phenomenally driven athlete. She’s an unbelievable person,” Frank McGinnis said. “It’s inspiring to have someone that has invested so much time for our other club members to see that achieving that level of success is possible.”

O’Brien said she’s not concerned about personal stats ahead of the World Championship, but she’s holding herself to an especially high standard.

With the 10-v-10 format of international play, O’Brien anticipates elevated defensive responsibilities.

“A big thing that I’ll be able to carry into Hopkins with me is that I’ll be able to cover more space and be a bigger threat,” O’Brien said. “Playing with a new group of girls and learning from new coaches, I’m very excited to see that translate because you can never learn too many things.”

Although O’Brien said the reality of representing the U.S. has yet to fully sink in, Avellino and Frank McGinnis said many in O’Brien’s hometown of Charlestown and its surrounding areas have purchased her USA merchandise.

At Boston Latin — the oldest existing school in the U.S., where 1980 “Miracle on Ice” gold medalist Jack O’Callahan attended — O’Brien’s No. 9 U.S. jersey will soon adorn athletic director Jack Owens’ office wall.