From near and far, St. Joseph’s women’s lacrosse has gotten the job done when it comes to recruiting.

Nearby, there are several suburbs in New Jersey and Pennsylvania to choose from. A little bit farther away, players from California also show up on the roster.

But, to examine the backbone of the Hawks, you have to go even farther.

In two cases, all the way down under.

Rebecca Lane and Stephanie Kelly both hail from Australia, which might not be the first place one thinks of as a lacrosse hotbed. But both have found their way into the college lacrosse world, where they’ve dominated for the Hawks.

“I always wanted to come to college and compete in lacrosse,“ Lane said. “I tore two ACLs, and when I tore the second, I thought it was over. No coach would recruit me and it was hard to contact them. They hadn’t seen me play.”

That’s not where the Hawks international presence ends. Penny Green, a native of Herefordshire, England, is in her second year with the squad.

All three started playing lacrosse at a young age and quickly rocketed up in the ranks of their nation’s club and national teams.

For Green, she played in a county league with just three teams before playing for Wales. Lane was competing at age 14 in leagues with 35-year-old women, and Kelly was in that same league at age 15.

Lane, the Hawks leading scorer, has 11 goals and 11 assists to lead her team. Last season as a sophomore, she scored 66 points.

The Victoria, Australia native also never played this style of lacrosse until three years ago.

“The lacrosse side is very different,” Lane said. “It’s very fast paced and physical. It’s up and down the field all the team. The adjustment to how fast the game is, and the rules. I wasn’t used to defenders being able to go in the crease. That took a little bit to get used to.”

That adjustment hasn’t been too bad on the field, since she’s played at such a high level. Lane has also had tougher battles, with two torn ACLs and thinking her career may be over, before she ran into Hawks assistant coach Colleen Dawson.

“When I was 15, before I tore the first ACL, an assistant coach Colleen [Dawson] came to Australia and played for a club,” Lane said. “She coached us both on the U17 team and I played with her for the state league team, and made that connection.”

Kelly was coached by Dawson, but her process of entering into college lacrosse was aided by a different coach.

“My process was different,” she said. “I was recruited at the U19 by the New Zealand coach Remington Steele. For about a year I thought I was going to Furman, where he was going to be. That fell apart, so he sent an email out, and I got a few emails back, St. Joe’s being one of them.”

Green was recruited by Dawson as well, making a connection with all three of them.

“I was at the U19 championship playing for Wales,” she said. “Colleen was there recruiting, and somehow picked me out. In the final game against Scotland, we made contact.”

The trio had played on the same field before St. Joe’s. Lane and Kelly grew up playing the game together, and in the 2015 U19 games, they faced Green in one of the games.

Now, as international players, they share the same bond.

“All three of them are great people and amazing athletes,” Hawks coach Alex Kahoe said. “It’s challenging being far away from home for them, but between the three of them being great people and loving the sport, our team has really embraced them and hopefully reduced a number of homesick days.”

While all three have different stories, part of what brings them together is the adjustment to the game. There hasn’t been too much difficulty, as evidenced by the results, but they have had to figure out the different rules and pacing.

“We all had what we needed to play college lacrosse, but it’s still a step up,” Kelly said. “It’s like another game to me.”

“In America, the play is very different than home,” Green said. “The players’ styles are so different. It’s faster and more aggressive. When I go home, it’s not the same. There’s a happy medium between the two, I like going from one to the other.”

Different rules on the restarts was a big part of the adjustment, and for players like Kelly and Lane who are a year or more in, the new free movement rules this season were an even bigger change from recently adjusting.

“It’s different in different ways,” Kehoe said. “The rules are different than college rules. Parts of the game are different, and the way they grow up through lacrosse is different. They played more for a club system. It’s unique, and what’s helpful for them is they are used to playing with players older than them.”

But, maybe the biggest adjustment of all has been the cultural change.

“When I came here I thought they all speak English, but all the slang is a language barrier,” Green said.

The change from playing for a club team to a school team is also drastically different. But playing for a team where everyone cares about the sport is a nice change.

In other countries where the end goal is playing for a national team, there isn’t always that same intensity throughout the roster.

But, on a college team, lacrosse being the dominant sport in the lives of the players is something they can get behind.

“What’s interesting to get used to is playing lacrosse every day,” Lane said. “Two games a week was hard to get use to freshman year. Now that I’m used to it, I love it. Everyone has the same focus and drive for it.”

While each player had different paths to the states, now they find themselves a part of the “St. Joe’s family,” as Kehoe put it.

Valuable contributors on the field, they’ve found themselves off as well. Each had the chance to play somewhere else, but as fate had it, it brought them all together.

“In the end, it was a no-brainer,” Kelly said. “St. Joe’s won.”