Chloe Humphrey: Lacrosse’s Young GOAT Continues to Dominate After Historic Freshman Year

North Carolina's Chloe Humphrey became the freshman to win the Tewaaraton Award a year ago as she led UNC to a national championship. (6:42)

When the North Carolina coaches saw the metrics, they assumed the energy tracking monitor was broken.

Nobody can run that hard for that long. No one can maintain that kind of output.

But the device wasn't defective. It was working perfectly.

So what was the explanation?

Exactly what they thought it might be.

Chloe Humphrey.

"It measures distance, it measures high-speed running," Tar Heels coach Jenny Levy said. "So we usually see in our games about 12 to 15% of your running is about high-speed running. It usually was about 12%. In practice, Chloe was hitting like 18 to 20% of her movements were high-speed running, which is really demanding. Accels, decels and sprints. So her distance was above everybody. Her high-speed running was double everybody. Like, we were like, 'What in the world is going on?' And we just hadn't seen it. And we've had a lot of great players, [but] we hadn't seen that work rate before. She has a different kind of motor."

With Chloe Humphrey, there is a lot that is different. Her skill set. Her vision. Her competitiveness. For Levy, who has been the Tar Heels' head coach since the program's inception in 1994, and who has won four national titles in the past nine years, it all adds up to one conclusion.

That Humphrey can be to women's lacrosse what a few other Tar Heels have been to their sports.

What Erin Matson is to field hockey.

What Mia Hamm is to women's soccer.

And yes, what Michael Jordan is to basketball.

In other words, an all-time great. Maybe even a GOAT.

"Have you ever seen anybody like Chloe?" Levy was asked.

"Nope," she said. "Not a chance."

And Levy has seen them all.

Last season, as a redshirt freshman, Humphrey led the Tar Heels to the national title. They went 22-0, winning every game except two -- both against Boston College -- by at least three goals. Humphrey scored a freshman-record 90 goals last year en route to becoming the first freshman -- man or woman -- to win the Tewaaraton Trophy, which has been presented since 2001 to the nation's top players. She outdid herself this year, with 92 goals as the Tar Heels begin their title defense this weekend as the No. 2 overall seed. They will play the winner of Clemson-Davidson on Sunday in the national quarterfinals.

Making things even more special last year was who Humphrey was playing with. Because while she may have been honored as the nation's top player, she was not the leading scorer on her own team -- or even her own family. Her 118 points were three fewer than the total amassed by a teammate who had transferred in 2024 from Stanford, a graduate student named Ashley Humphrey, Chloe's older sister.

Together, Chloe and Ashley were all but impossible to defend against. Ashley would feed Chloe, who would hammer home goals. Ninety assists for Ashley, 90 goals for Chloe. Twenty-eight assists for Chloe, 31 goals for Ashley.

At the same time, there was another grad student playing for the Tar Heels, who had transferred back to North Carolina after a year at USC: Nicole Humphrey, the oldest of the three Humphrey sisters. Even as she was nursing some injuries, Nicole played in 18 games and scored six goals.

"Literally running on the field in a Carolina jersey and alongside my two sisters, I truly was like, living my dream," Chloe said.

For the Tar Heels' opponents, that dream turned into a recurring nightmare.

For Chloe, the season -- a freshman season unlike any before -- was even more remarkable because it came almost two years since her last competitive game, when she was a senior at Darien High School in Connecticut.

When she was a true freshman, in February 2024, Humphrey suffered a stress injury in her left foot. Levy had seen such injuries before and knew immediately how debilitating they could be.

"We had had a player in the past who had an avicular injury with surgery," Levy says. "It took her about a year and a half to get back, and she struggled with it through the rest of her career. So for Chloe, we were like you don't want to mess around with this, this is going to put you out for 8 to 9 months, and you're not allowed to do anything on that foot until we give you the clearance."

Sitting out the entire season and into the fall was a serious challenge for an athlete who doesn't have an off switch.

"A lot of people describe discipline as waking up early and going and working out early, but for me discipline was not touching my stick, not going on runs," Chloe says. "It was just resting and doing the things that I needed to do even though it wasn't the things that I wanted to do. I wanted to be running 24/7 and be on the wall 24/7. So to be told that I wasn't able to do that, I just, again, like had a different role on the team. I became a cheerleader and hoped to be a light in someone else's day. That definitely was, I think, so advantageous just going forward and being on the sideline and having that perspective and seeing the interactions with people on the sideline because, you know, I just think like being on the sideline ... gave me a whole different perspective for the sport and the game."

All that pent-up energy has been released, but it never seems to be depleted.

Teammate Addison Pattillo, the Tar Heels' second-leading scorer this season, grew up a couple of towns away from Darien, in Wilton, Connecticut, and has seen Humphrey's talents up close for years.

"She has so much grit, and she'll do whatever it takes to win a game," Pattillo says, "and she's constantly moving. If you look at her mileage after a game, she has covered so much ground, and that's just a testament to how hard she works on and off the field."

Off the field, Humphrey is working not only her game, but her social media presence. It is a core part of her identity, and she hopes to be able to build a career as an influencer. What's clear is that however far she goes, she will be taking the sport she loves along for the ride. The mission is to gain followers, not merely on her accounts, but for lacrosse.

The GOAT? The face of the game? Humphrey says bring it on.

"I love it," she says. "I love that challenge. And I don't feel it as pressure. It's a privilege to be able to elevate the game. And especially with the sport now being in the Olympics, there are going to be a lot more eyes on the sport, which is just absolutely incredible. And it is getting the attention that it finally deserves."

_Originally reported by [ESPN](https://www.espn.com/college-sports/story/_/id/48665780/north-carolina-womens-lacrosse-star-chloe-humphrey-best-ever)._