Knee injury sidelines Evans
Will miss senior season with Canisius, but retains NCAA eligibility to play in 2018-19
Erica Evans has some tough decisions to make regarding her lacrosse career but one thing she knows for sure is she won’t play this spring for Canisius College.
The Peterborough native suffered an ACL tear in her right knee in a fall tournament at Loyola University in October with Canisius. She had knee surgery on Dec. 14 and her recovery is expected to take between six to 12 months.
“It’s disappointing especially in your senior year,” said Evans, who has re-wrote the Canisius Golden Griffins and MAAC Conference scoring record books while winning the top midfielder award three consecutive years.
It’s the first significant injury the 21-year-old, who starred for Canada at the world field lacrosse championships in the summer, has suffered. She plans to finish her senior year of teaching studies at Canisius while also lending a hand as an unofficial assistant coach to Peterborough native Allison Daley, who was named Canisius head coach on Thursday.
Evans will red-shirt the season meaning she retains a final year of NCAA eligibility and it also opens up options.
“I don’t know what I’m doing yet. I haven’t decided,” Evans said. “I don’t know if I’m going to stay at Canisius or go somewhere else.”
Under NCAA rules a player must sit out a season in order to play at another school but since she’s sitting out this year it allows her to play wherever she chooses in 2018-19.
“People have told me it would be a good opportunity to play for a school that is more capable, I’m not saying Canisius isn’t, that has a better chance of winning a national championship,” she sad.
There is also the option of playing in a professional women’s field lacrosse league called the UWLX that is entering its third season. She was drafted 15th overall by the Philadelphia Force in the UWLX draft last month.
“I won’t be able to play this summer but the summer after,” she said.
Evans looks forward to learning the coaching side of the game.
“I’ve thought about coaching after my college career so I guess this is kind of like the starting point to see how that goes,” she said. “I’m going to help out Allison as much as I can as like a coach-player type of thing.”
Evans played when Daley was an assistant coach on Canada’s U19 team which won the world championship in 2015. She played with Daley on the national senior team which won Canada’s first silver medal at the world championships in the summer.
“She has a high IQ for the game and helped what was probably the best defence on our U19 Canadian team. I’m very excited because I know her personally having played with her. I know she’s a very good coach who knows what is best for her players and builds good relationships. When I heard she got the job I was very excited and I know all the other girls on my team are, too. She recruited my class which is graduating this year.”
Right now Evans is able to do some light biking and squats without weights but she’s early in the rehabilitation process and not yet pain-free.
“It takes time and you don’t want to rush anything because you want it to be 100 per cent and stronger than it was before so it doesn’t happen again,” she said.