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ifteen-year-old Charlotte North sat hunched over her laptop as an orange blur darted back and forth across the screen. With nothing but the glow of the computer to illuminate her room, North spent hours and hours deep into the night studying what would eventually, unbeknownst to her, become the ticket to a collegiate lacrosse career for the ages.

The orange blur began to materialize into the figure of Syracuse’s Kayla Treanor as she joined her teammates in celebrating the goal she had just rocketed past Maryland’s goalie. 

Pause. Rewind. Play.

There Treanor went again, but this time North noticed her stick glide elegantly over top of her defenders as her body seemed to move in two different directions. How did she do that?

Pause. Rewind. Play.

It’s her juke step—her motion appears to go one way, but a powerful push from the left foot sends her in the opposite direction. Keep that in mind. 

And on North went to the next play. 

“All growing up in high school when I started to really fall in love with lacrosse, I idolized Kayla Treanor,” North said. “I would study her YouTube highlights almost every day, watch her every move, every play.”

Thanks to North’s film-watching obsession, her former high school coach at the Epsicopal School of Dallas dubbed her as “a student of the game” in an article from Inside Lacrosse.

Stick in hand, she would head to her backyard to try to replicate the effortless beauty of Treanor’s offensive destruction. She watched Treanor move from college to professional to Team USA and modeled her play after her idol. 

“I loved her creativity, I thought she was super shifty, and she was super fun to watch,” North said of Treanor. 

It’s been a long road to this point, but North finally has the chance to play under the direct eye of her high school idol. A transfer from Duke, North is just beginning to find her place on Boston College lacrosse, but her career has begun to come “full circle,” as she put it, with Treanor on the sidelines as an assistant coach. 

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hough she earned the starting spot for both the Blue Devils and now the Eagles, North came to love lacrosse as somewhat of an accident. A two-sport athlete in middle school, her time was split between basketball and field hockey. 

“I really had no idea what lacrosse was, but I decided to go along with my friends trying out for the team,” she said. “I still didn’t really know much about it, but then right after my freshman year of high school, someone told me to join the local club team.”

From there, she blossomed into one of the nation’s most highly touted recruits, earning offers from the likes of Duke, Princeton, and Stanford before eventually settling on heading to Durham for the beginning of her college career. 

North had a celebrated high school career to garner such looks from top-tier colleges, earning accolades everywhere she went. She earned the MVP award at the Under Armor All-America Game her senior season and a third-team All-USA selection that same year, and she is the all-time leader in points and in goals at the Episcopal School of Dallas. 

She cemented her legacy in Texas—which she described as a “not spot” for lacrosse, meaning that it’s not a “huge hotbed” of lacrosse supporters—representing the South in the All-America Game.

With the ball at the top of the circle, North faked with her left foot and drove to her right, effortlessly weaving through defenders just like she had seen in Treanor’s highlight reel. A bottom-corner flick slid past the goaltender, and North walked off the field with a sudden-death overtime victory for the South. 

“After every goal or after big plays, if you watch her, she celebrates so much,” said Treanor. “I think she really has a passion for the game and a joy and a love for it. She truly does love the game. … A lot of players like it, but to really love the game is something different that she does.”

North beamed with the Texas flag draped over her shoulder as she accepted the MVP award in the All-America Game’s first-ever overtime contest, a bright future of Atlantic Coast lacrosse ahead of her. 

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In fact, she attributed both of her college decisions—first Duke, then BC—to the competitive spirit of the ACC and the high level of play found throughout the conference. Committing to Duke, then, was a “no brainer” for the Dallas native. 

But after two celebrated years playing for the Blue Devils, North realized it was time for a change. 

“I wanted to explore other options to see if there was something out there that might have been a better fit for me,” she said. “And I was lucky enough to get to talk to Acacia [Walker-Weinstein] here at BC and to come on a visit here. I immediately just loved every part of it.”

BC faced tough competition in recruiting her, as she had looks from Syracuse, Treanor’s alma mater, and the reigning national champion Maryland, who notably beat BC for the national championship title in 2019. But she knew BC was the place for her, and she joined Walker-Weinstein’s squad this fall.

Before even stepping on the field for the first time in maroon and gold, she earned a spot on the Inside Lacrosse Preseason All-America First Team. In her first game as an Eagle, she posted 12 draw controls and three goals, but she wasn’t ready to stop there. The very next game, North recorded a program-record 12 points in a single game on eight goals and four assists against Comm. Ave. rival BU. And on Feb. 18, she earned Co-Offensive Player of the Week honors from the ACC.

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efore she arrived on the Heights, North had already earned the admiration of one of her coaches. Conveniently enough, it was someone she had admired herself: Treanor. 

“I didn’t really know that she had looked up to me,” Treanor said. “But all the while I really admired her so much as a player her freshman and sophomore year at Duke. … She was one of the most exciting players to watch and in college lacrosse, and I just admired her so much.”

It’s no wonder she earned recognition for her time at Duke, as her stats jump off the page, even from her freshman season. Her first year, she led Duke with 59 goals and 64 points total, including a team-high 12 hat tricks and a second-team all-ACC selection. She came back for her second year and was quickly named to the Tewaaraton Award Watch List, which recognizes the national MVP of college lacrosse. She once again led the team with 105 points, a 64 percent increase from the year prior. 

“She is a player that can very easily take over a game and dominate a game, which is not easy to do,” said Treanor. “And you watch it in practice, or sometimes she’s in games and she just has an ability to dominate. … So now, being able to coach her is so cool, and I feel really lucky that she came to BC to play for us.”

It’s been a long road, but North’s lacrosse career has come full circle. From watching Treanor on YouTube in high school to playing under her on the Newton lacrosse field, North can finally ask her coach about that fake step in person. 

And who knows, maybe there’s another little girl in Texas out in her backyard copying North’s own highlights.