There are two ways to view a pipe shot in lacrosse.
The attacker thinks it’s a sure bet it will ricochet in. The goalie believes it’s going wide.
Ping!
With shooters trained to aim for corners, the sound echoes throughout stadiums more frequently than physics would suggest.
But on this breezy Tuesday afternoon in March, as the Maryland women’s lacrosse team practices for the next day’s game against Princeton, goalie Megan Taylor, the Terps’ phenom between the pipes, guesses right — and it makes her day.
Taylor’s older brother, Alex, a former Salisbury goalie who graduated in 2014 as an honorable mention All-American, has been warming her up ahead of a scouting practice for the Tigers in Maryland Stadium. His little sister can’t help but critique every shot he takes.
“Terrible!” she shouts from a cage situated on the sideline as her teammates perform full-field passing drills.
“It’s a tennis ball!” he yells back.
The routine is always the same.
First, tennis balls. Then, lacrosse balls.
Taylor the goalie wears full protection. Their father, Gary, has insisted on it since the day he came home from work to let their dog outside only to hear his 11-year-old daughter screaming, “Ow, Alex!” as her 16-year-old brother bombarded her with lacrosse balls.
“That goes to a whole other level to a brother-sister relationship,” Maryland coach Cathy Reese says. “I laugh, because I think of my own kids. That’s kind of how it works. The younger one gets pelted with everything. For her to go through that and still love to be goalkeeper and be passionate about that position is kind of funny.”
“[My dad] said, ‘It was an out-of-body experience. I could not believe my eyes,’” Megan Taylor says. “From that day on, we had to use tennis balls and I had to wear a helmet. It was crazy. I wasn’t scared because of that.”
Gary Taylor, watching his children from a deck perched above their backyard in Glenelg, Md., wondered at the time why his daughter would continue to subject herself to such punishment.
“My daughter was out there saying, ‘Ow,’ but still was not leaving the goal,” Gary says. “She’s staying in there. What is going on?”
Alex Taylor just like being the assailant, for once.
“I wasn’t good enough to play on the field,” he says. “The only way to make the travel team was to hop in goal. But I still wanted to shoot like any kid does.”
“That’s how it started,” Megan Taylor says. “‘Oh, hop in goal,’ and I’m like, ‘OK, here I am!’ I just love playing. I’m just a little kid in that aspect. I’m a little lax rat.”
That backyard bond has followed Taylor to College Park. A three-time Big Ten Goalie of the Year, she is in the running to snare her second IWLCA National Goalie of the Year. Taylor sits second in the nation with a 56.3 save percentage, trailing Mount St. Mary's goalie Jillian Petito by one-thousandth of a point.
No goalie has ever won the Tewaaraton Award, either. After being named as one of five finalists on Thursday, she inched closer to making history.
“It’s Megan Taylor’s world and we’re all just livin’ in it,” Maryland tweeted March 20 with a video featuring several sublime stops on the doorstep, to which former Syracuse and current U.S. national team goalie Liz Hogan replied, “Think we can finally get a goalie as a Tewaaraton winner?”
With Boston College and Maryland potentially on a collision course for championship weekend, Taylor, an integral player in the Terps’ run to the NCAA title in 2017, should have plenty of opportunities to make her case.
As they finish their hand-eye coordination warm-up, Alex Taylor quips, “’Til next time Meg!”
He turns to Ben Kessler, a Maryland media relations assistant on hand to help juggle multiple reporters in College Park to interview his sister that day, and adds, “Life of a brother, man.”
For the past two years, Alex Taylor has been a volunteer assistant for Maryland, traveling from Olney, Md., to attend practices twice a week during his lunch break from his job in technology sales. He’s at every game.
Even before he had this role, Alex would visit Megan whenever it best suited her schedule — twice each week at a minimum, even if that meant under the lights on a Friday night on whichever field defensive assistant Lauri Kenis texted them was available because the Field Hockey & Lacrosse Complex was occupied.
“[Then] we’ll go out and get Sweetgreen for dinner,” Alex Taylor says. “She could be hanging out with her friends, but she spends that time with me. No brother gets to experience that.”
Reese says Alex Taylor provides needed expertise at the sport’s most scrutinized position.
“He is able to give really specific goalkeeping instruction, just fundamentals and skills that I can’t — that’s probably fair,” Reese says with a laugh, turning to Caitlyn Phipps for affirmation ahead of their film session in the Varsity Team House.
“It’s crazy how fast time has flown by and how good she’s become,” Alex Taylor says. “It’s just so cool, just how good she is, but how good of a person she is. I see how her teammates gravitate toward her. She brings everybody up with her.”
Taylor not only takes to heart the message her dad taught both his children — “You have to hate losing more than you love winning,” Gary Taylor would say — but she also possesses resilience.
“She has that ability that every great goalie has,” Alex Taylor says. “She’s able to move on.”
“One of her greatest strengths as a goalkeeper is her ability to reset and not get caught up in the last play,” Reese says. “Stay present and move forward. I don’t do that nearly as well as she does.”
Taylor oozes personality. She’s just “5-foot-3 with cleats,” she proudly proclaims. She belts out “new” songs that came out three weeks ago without knowing the lyrics and even laughs at her own jokes as her team’s and family’s resident Washington Capitals “maniac.” Her sense of humor comes through even in the wake of a critical error, such as when she threw an interception in overtime against Syracuse.
“I’m yelling to the sideline, ‘I didn’t even see her, but she’s the tallest girl though! I don’t know how that pass got to her!’” Taylor says. “I threw a pass and it clearly went to the other team. No Maryland people in sight. [Kenis] was like, ‘What?’ and I was just laughing. I guess I thought I could throw it all the way down the field. I can’t.
“Can we just have fun?”