Lacrosse started as a family affair for Stony Brook sophomore defender Clare Levy. She used to attend her cousin’s games. In many ways, it still is.

“On Christmas and Thanksgiving, we always brought our sticks and practiced lacrosse,” Levy said. “We still do it even though we’re in our 20s. Here comes Easter, and we’re going to have a lacrosse catch after dinner.”

Growing up on Long Island serves as a running head start for anyone who wants to play lacrosse in college. Garden City, Shoreham Wading-River and Mount Sinai have display cases full of state championship trophies. The Island is also home to elite club teams, most notably the Yellow Jackets, which has produced college All-Americans like North Carolina’s Jamie Ortega and Florida alumna Cara Trombetta. The program plays in national showcases attended by a who’s who of top college coaches. 

Levy didn’t win any state titles in high school, and she didn’t play club lacrosse. She grew up in Rocky Point, a blue-collar Suffolk County hamlet New York City folks pass through on their way to pick pumpkins in the Hamptons each October. A three-sport athlete at Rocky Point High School, Levy couldn’t decide which sport she liked more — soccer, basketball or lacrosse — so she skipped signing up for travel for any of them and just had fun.

Her sophomore year, it clicked. Lacrosse was her favorite. But by that time, she had some catching up to do if she wanted to play in college.

“I hadn’t played travel and [knew I had to] work extra hard to go to college for [lacrosse],” Levy said. “When we were playing teams like Mount Sinai, I knew coaches were coming. My game didn’t change, but I knew the game was important.”

Enter Joe Spallina, who grew up in Rocky Point and coached the girls’ team to three Suffolk County titles before joining the college ranks. His brother, Dan, coached Levy during her freshman season at Rocky Point High School and gave him a heads up about a diamond-in-the-rough midfielder. She may have lacked a brag sheet, but her Rocky Point roots meant something to Spallina.

“A Rocky Point kid is a blue-collar kid,” Spallina said. “A Rocky Point kid is a kid with good values, is a family person and cares about her teammates. I know what I’m getting in that situation.”

It was good news for Levy, who had her sights set on Stony Brook and only Stony Brook. Staying close to home was important to her, but it was more than that. Even as a kid, she exuded the Seawolves’ brand of grit and determination. She wasn’t a future blue-chip, but she did have a chip on her shoulder.

“Growing up, in every sport I played, parents always came up to me and said, ‘You’re a Stony Brook kid. Have you ever thought about Stony Brook?’” Levy recalled. “That is what drew me at first: ‘Stony Brook kid.’ It means so much. It means you are blue collar and hardworking. You don’t look for credit. You play the game because you love the game. “

Even with the tip-off from his brother, Spallina didn’t attend a Rocky Point game to see Levy. He was there to watch someone else but was immediately drawn to her. She was raw but lightning-fast and athletic. He thought he had found his next ringer.

“The single most important thing for me in recruiting is how hard that kid competes, and that popped off to me immediately, just how hard she went,” Spallina said. “You could tell it was important to her without talking to her. At the end of the day, she was the top recruit on the field against a lot of other kids who were going to the Power Fives in the country.”

It’s well known in the lacrosse community at this point that Spallina built the Stony Brook program with blue-collar kids who were unheralded coming out of high school. But Spallina’s not scraping the bottom of the barrel, either, and Levy admits she felt behind when she arrived on campus in the fall of 2020. 

“I was definitely intimidated at first seeing people who were in club since fifth grade and people getting on the field doing their fancy stick stuff,” Levy said.

Levy calls herself a quick learner, something she and Spallina attribute to the “athletic IQ” she gained by focusing equally on three sports in middle school. But she’d have to learn faster than she could run to take on what Spallina threw at her in the first game of her collegiate career.

The Seawolves were initially slated to open the 2021 season against Villanova on February 18, and Levy wasn’t going to start. But when James Madison had to cancel its usual opener against UNC because of COVID, Stony Brook swooped in on three days' notice and agreed to take on the top-ranked Tar Heels in Chapel Hill. Then, the injury bug bit the Stony Brook defense. The coaching staff wasn’t sure Levy, a midfielder, had enough experience, but they put her in the rotation during practice. It was, quite literally, a game-time decision to start her.

“She found out she was starting when everyone else in the stadium found out she was starting,” Spallina said. “This was a kid who had no senior year, didn’t play club and flew a little bit under the radar to starting her first collegiate game against one of the most, if not the most, powerful offenses in the country, and she was fantastic. From that point on, she and I have developed trust.”

For the next three months, Levy became the first — and only — person who could defend All-American midfielder Ally Kennedy in practice. (Kennedy respects Levy so much that she still hits her up to practice before U.S. national team training.) She started all 19 games at defense as a freshman, causing 25 turnovers, landing a spot on the America East second-team and helping Stony Brook push UNC to the brink in a 14-11 quarterfinal loss last May. 

A year later, Levy’s lacrosse IQ has caught up to her athleticism. Spallina now calls her an “eraser” and one of the best 1-v-1 defenders he’s ever coached.  

“Whoever we set 42 [on] isn’t going to be in the score sheet too much,” he said.

Levy’s teammates call her captain. Though she’s only a sophomore, Spallina had no reservations about tabbing her as a team leader heading into the 2022 season.

“She has a little bit of a swagger to her,” Spallina said. “She exudes confidence and poise, and her teammates gravitate towards her, which is why to me, a year later, making her a captain was one of the simpler decisions. She’s made of things I want our program to embody.”

Stony Brook’s defense is holding opponents to an average of 7.27 goals per game, the fewest in the country. Levy has once again started every game — something Spallina doesn’t anticipate changing over the next two-and-a-half years.

“We have the No. 1 scoring defense in the country, and she’s a big part of that,” Spallina said. “She does such a good job of disrupting the top of offenses. Most of the time, a super athlete lacks the ability to think a game, and a kid who can think a game lacks the ability to match athletically with some players. That’s where I think she is different.”

Levy wants to help Stony Brook script a different ending. For all the progress the program has made (the Seawolves won four games in 2012, the year before Spallina took over), a Final Four appearance still eludes it. Levy is hell-bent on changing that. Spallina, an assistant for the U.S. women’s national team, thinks Levy has a shot at making it at some point and calls her a “surefire All-American” right now.

But one thing won’t change: That blue-collar, Rocky Point mentality that landed her a spot at Stony Brook in the first place.

“I don’t want anyone to think I do not deserve to be here,” Levy said. “I want to prove myself. There is never a day I am not trying. If I am not trying, I am not getting better and making people around me worse. I am a try-hard. That is why this team is so unique. We are a bunch of try-hards.”