While Kathy Rudkin was sitting in her high school math class during sophomore year, her opportunity to play Division I lacrosse suddenly came to fruition.

Syracuse head coach Gary Gait called Rudkin’s club lacrosse coach, Sarah Spillett, who in turn called Rudkin’s mother, Kate Rudkin, a teacher at Rancho Bernardo High School (California). She stepped into the hallway to take Spillett’s call during a class.

“(Spillett) was like, ‘Oh my God, Gary Gait just called me,’” Kate Rudkin said, “She grew up in Syracuse, so that meant something, a lot to her. She was like, ‘He wants Kathy to call him.’”

Kate Rudkin immediately found her daughter in class to tell her Gait had called. During Rudkin’s free period, she called Gait to set up a visit and that summer, she verbally committed to Syracuse.

After being forced to stop playing lacrosse after moving to a part of California where the sport lacked popularity, Rudkin made basketball her primary sport. But at the urging of her mother, she went back to the sport she loved and eventually turned out to be Syracuse’s highest-rated recruit in its freshman class and ranked the No. 23 recruit in the country by Inside Lacrosse 2014.

While SU junior defender Mallory Vehar recovered from an ACL injury last fall, Rudkin rotated into the lineup to fill the void and has played in a complementary role off of the bench early this season for the No. 4 Orange (3-0).

She developed her skills over a two-year period before Gait offered her a scholarship. But before, she had almost all but forgotten the sport following her move from Annapolis, Maryland to San Diego.

“There was no opportunity for them to play actual games,” Kate Rudkin said of the youth lacrosse program in California, “… So she just decided to play a team sport, and that’s when she picked up basketball and surfing.”

Rudkin loved lacrosse so much when she was little that when teachers asked her to draw her future goals, she sketched the United States women’s national lacrosse team.

When Rudkin’s parents moved to San Diego, they went to a neighborhood where a youth lacrosse league had been started. But she stopped playing because the league was little more than clinics with girls’ ages ranging from elementary school to high school.

Basketball filled the void lacrosse left. Rudkin played AAU basketball, going to tournaments all over California. For a time, it was her main sport.

“In eighth grade, I picked (lacrosse) up again when it was starting to get bigger in California,” Rudkin said, “and I forgot I loved it so much when I was little.”

Rudkin and her parents juggled flights to the east coast for club lacrosse and tournaments in California for AAU basketball during the summer. During the school year, club lacrosse coincided with school basketball, too.

Before her junior year, she played on the east coast with her West Coast Starz club lacrosse team and then stayed with friends and family to participate in other showcases.

“It wasn’t uncommon for Kathy to wake up early in the morning do a lacrosse workout, then run over to a basketball workout and then finish the day off with a lacrosse tournament and maybe a basketball game that night,” said Kai Harris, Rudkin’s basketball coach at Rancho Bernardo. “That was a very regular routine for her.”

Rudkin felt her 5-foot-4 frame might limit which basketball programs she could play for, but her stature wouldn’t limit her lacrosse ability.

She flirted with programs like SU and North Carolina — programs that could compete for a national championship. She also had doubts about California’s level of competition.

“Am I going to be able to do this?” Rudkin would ask her parents, “A lot of the girls I’m going to be playing with and competing against played for high school teams that could beat some weak college programs.”

She called Gait, visited SU and liked what she saw — even in the winter.

On Feb. 7, Rudkin played in the Carrier Dome and saw it for the first time without basketball courts monopolizing the floor. She had previously visited when a basketball camp was in progress during the summer and during basketball season.

But that Saturday afternoon, there was only the turf.

“When I was out there at one point during the game, I was like, ‘Pinch me, I must be dreaming, this doesn’t feel real,’” Rudkin said, “But it’s what I’ve been waiting for for two years now.”

Published on February 17, 2015 at 12:06 am

Contact Chris: cjlibona@syr.edu | @ChrisLibonati