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Women’s lacrosse players knew when they took the practice field on the afternoon of March 12 that they might not play another game. During a drill, Rachel Perrett, a senior elementary education major, glanced at one of her teammates, who was wearing an Apple Watch. “I could just tell her whole demeanor had quickly changed,” Rachel said. President Lugo’s email had just landed in her inbox. “I started to cry because my senior season was over,”
Rachel said. “What really hit home is that we had worked so hard for the past two years to get to where we were, and for it to be taken like that was definitely difficult to swallow.”
Te suddenness stung. Rachel knew, of course, that
this year would be her last playing a sport she’d loved since middle school. Still she thought she’d have at least until the South Atlantic Conference tournament in late April and
probably beyond into the NCAA tournament in May—the team started the season 5-0. She dealt with the dismay by spending time with her
classmates on Snapchat, taking frequent runs and engaging in what she admits is a bit of denial. “Honestly, I don’t know if it really has hit me yet,” she said. “It just felt like I’m at home for a mini-break and would be coming back to school. I don’t know when I’m going to come to terms with it.” Rachel, who spoke from her parents’ home near
Greenville, South Carolina, hadn’t decided whether she’d come back to play lacrosse next year as a graduate student or teach third grade. She did her student teaching in 2019 and continued helping out in the classroom earlier in the spring semester because she enjoyed it so much. “I don’t have a set plan anymore,” she said, “because everything has been kind of flipped upside down.”
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