Maddie McTigue loves to play basketball.
She played AAU travel ball until she was 16 and played in high school. The game isn’t unknown territory to her family, as her sister scored 1,050 points playing for Immaculata from 2007-2011.
At a certain point, McTigue thought she was set to follow her sister’s footsteps.
“I actually didn’t know what I wanted to play until my junior year,” McTigue said. “I thought I was going to play basketball the whole time.”
Today, as a sophomore midfielder for the lacrosse team, McTigue still thinks about the decision she made.
“[Basketball is] still one of my favorite sports and I miss it,” McTigue said. “But I really enjoy playing lacrosse in college. It’s an experience and Temple’s awesome for that, and I think in high school it was more about the opportunities that I could have and this was a great opportunity.”
“I only played travel lacrosse for one year,” McTigue added. “So I was really late into the recruiting process. It was definitely a hard decision and I still miss basketball, but I’m happy with the decision I made.”
McTigue said she has always been a defensive-minded player and someone who will rarely show up in the goal column of the stat sheet. But it doesn’t really matter to her.
“I don’t really pay attention to that much,” McTigue said. “That doesn’t bother me that I don’t score, that I don’t go on offense. “
“You want to get caused turnovers and you don’t want to turn the ball over and things like that, but numbers I don’t really pay that much attention to,” McTigue added.
The only thing that matters to her after every game, she said, is how well the team played.
McTigue started in 15 games last season, recording six caused turnovers and 16 ground balls as a freshman. Her role expanded for her sophomore campaign, as she closes in on matching her numbers from last season after nine games, having already recorded four caused turnovers and 11 ground balls.
That bigger role included taking on more leadership. McTigue has also been taking the draw more, recording 21 draw controls in 2014, which more than doubles her nine from last season.
The draw played a big factor in Temple’s 9-8 comeback win against Hofstra on March 19, when the Owls took 14 of 21 draw controls – five of which were won by McTigue – to swing momentum in their favor and eventually overcome a 7-1 deficit.
Sports run in McTigue’s family. Along with her sister playing basketball, her brother, Patrick, was a linebacker for United States Merchant Marine Academy. The influence may have rubbed off on her.
“Athletics are a huge part of my life,” McTigue said. “My family is so competitive, and we’ve been playing sports since I was 2 years old. I think that my competitive drive comes from my family and where I came from and how we were growing up.”
Nick Tricome can be reached at nick.tricome@temple.edu or on Twitter @itssnick215.
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