Broadcast by Brett Thompson; Written by Logan Ulrich
Sydney Holman watches the time tick away. Five seconds, then four, then three, two, one. Victory. 13-7,
North Carolina, against previously unbeaten Maryland in the college women’s lacrosse national
championship.
Her teammates on the North Carolina women’s lacrosse team race onto the field. For years they’ve
channeled blood and sweat, anguish and toil, all for one goal, the realization of which sparked such
jubilee that the only thing to do is to run.
“Winning a national championship is what I’ve dreamed about since I was with a stick in my hand when I
was 5 years old,” she later says.
It’s a dream that served as a beacon on summer days, counting down the seconds in her head as she
practiced the game-winning shot in the backyard. A goal driving her to rise before the sun and allowing
her to set herself down only after she felt she’d worked hard enough to take another step closer to a
championship.
Often, those steps have been strides. Sydney holds the record for the most goals in North Carolina high
school history with 416 in four years at East Chapel Hill High. Her first ever game as a Tar Heel was a
five-goal outburst and she led the team in assists her first two years.
So when that dream morphs into hard, concrete reality, all Sydney can do is let out the years of work in
a scream of raw exultation.
But she doesn’t run with her teammates. Instead the midfielder hops in place on the sideline, up and
down on one leg.
Two scars run down the front of each knee. The mark on her right is dark and faded, the reminder of a
torn ACL at the end of a standout rookie season. The reminder of months in the weight room spent in
grueling monotony trying to recover for a sophomore season that ended up good when it could have
been great.
Her left leg, bent back and raised above the ground as she jumps, bears a fresher wound. She tore her
ACL in that knee only two months prior during a game in March against Northwestern. She cut between
two defenders, angling for the goal. Her foot stuck in the turf and her parents, watching miles away
from home in North Carolina, instantly knew what had happened.
“I’ll have to be honest, I lost it,” Sydney’s mother, Laurie Holman, said. “I just couldn’t believe this was
happening again.”
With the dream of playing in the title game crushed, and facing another year of rehab, Sydney could
have withdrawn into her own troubles. Depression is common in athletes recovering from serious
injuries. It’s easy for injured players to feel disconnected from the rest of the team.
But two torn ACL’s don’t define Sydney Holman.
“We have a saying that your influence is never neutral,” UNC women’s lacrosse coach Jenny Levy said.
“You’re either really positive or you’re a space eater and really sucking everybody’s energy.
“Sydney is somebody who’s really positive. She’s standing in the rain and in the cold and the heat with
the best of us. She kept everything positive through a situation for herself personally that was really
challenging.”
Through the remaining 13 games of the season, Sydney maintained a constant presence on the sideline.
She stayed so invested in the team and its success that at the end of the season, when they all hoisted
the trophy high, she still felt enough ownership to lay claim to the title of national champion.
“One of the greatest things I’ve ever experienced in my whole life,” Sydney said.
But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t want a bigger part of it this time around. She knows time is precious
and hers is limited.
“I want it again, and I have one more year to do it.”
* * *
Lacrosse runs in the Holman family. Sydney’s parents both played in college — her father at Johns
Hopkins and her mother at Towson. Her two older brothers, Matthew and Marcus, played for UNC.
Matthew was a goalie while Marcus graduated as UNC’s all-time leading scorer.
Sydney inherited her family’s athleticism and played multiple sports growing up, but even without her
family’s lineage, she would have played lacrosse. She’s been ambidextrous since she was young, which
gave her an edge over the competition by letting her shoot from more angles.
She was born to play lacrosse.
“I think it’s just in her DNA, to be honest,” her mother, Laurie, said.
But DNA alone isn’t enough. For women like Sydney, there’s little future in women’s lacrosse. The
United States has a national team that’s won seven out of nine World Cups, but women’s lacrosse isn’t
yet an Olympic sport. The first women’s lacrosse professional league launched play this year, but there
are only four teams and the infant league doesn’t have the resources to offer players more than a travel
stipend.
Imagine being among the best in the world at what you do. Legitimately great, not merely good.
Imagine having only one more year to do whatever it is you love the most. The great ones become what
they do, actions melding irrevocably to identity like vines around a tree. Take away the vines and the
tree collapses.
However, the past doesn’t define Sydney Holman. She’s proved as much. Take away lacrosse, and
Sydney Holman will still stand tall on two surgically repaired knees.
“When lacrosse comes to an end, I do think it will be really difficult,” she says. “But,” she emphasizes,
“I’ve had to deal with six to eight months at a time twice in my life of being completely out of it. And I
think, in a weird way, I’m kind of lucky to experience life without it, because I know for a lot of girls it’s
really difficult when they end college and it’s just over with.”
* * *
In preparation for her next step, when college lacrosse ends after her senior year, Sydney is majoring in
journalism at UNC with a concentration in broadcast. Her sights are set on becoming the next Erin
Andrews, and she’s shown some promise as a sideline reporter. She was hand-picked as part of a team
of 29 students sent to cover the Rio Olympics in Brazil in August from UNC’s J-school. They reported
about the Games for the Olympic News Service and sent quotes and video back home to media outlets
in the U.S.
In some ways, Rio was just as tiring as life as a Division-I athlete. Sydney had to kneel for long periods of
time to fit her microphone through the crush of press. She’d stand up on numb and shaking knees, then
run up several flights of stairs to the press box, then repeat. Days started early and ended late, with long
bus rides through the favelas between the run-down hotel and the arenas built just for the occasion.
Through the whole trip, Sydney continued rehabbing her injured knee. Every single day, even if she had
to rise earlier to work out, she was up doing her exercises, thoughts of a national championship at the
forefront of her mind even as she worked to prepare for a day job.
“When Sydney wants something, she’s going head on to try to get it,” her mother says.
Sydney remembers getting back to the hotel one night at 11:30 without having done her workout yet.
The hotel’s “exercise room” sported only a treadmill and a bike, so Sydney improvised. With water
bottles filled with sand from the beach, she zig-zagged along the narrow hallway practicing her cuts —
trusting her knees to bear a little bit more weight on her plant foot each time. Back and forth, back and
forth, brushing up against the walls, down along the hallway to the end where a door stood ajar.
Sydney looked out. Her eyes adjusted to the blackness, and her gaze followed the rise of the mountain
up to Christ the Redeemer standing aglow on the peak — His arms stretched wide over the city.
The sand-filled bottles dropped to her sides. She stood still.
She wasn’t looking back. She was looking ahead.
