Feature Story: Kate Mulham's Long Road To 2023
February 16, 2023 | Women's Lacrosse
Kate Mulham heard the pop and didn’t need an MRI machine to tell her the obvious. Her knee was shredded.
That day was in the fall of 2018. It seems like a hundred years ago. If you could have stopped time in the moments before it happened, back on that day when Mulham’s first collegiate lacrosse practice ended with a torn ACL and asked her to describe her path to February 2023, there is zero chance she would have gotten it close to correct.
And so it was that Mulham was not in an office in New York City, or even a college graduate, when she sat down this week to talk about just how — what’s the right word? Funny? Unpredictable? Ironic? — life’s path can be.
Kate Mulham is a Princeton women’s lacrosse senior, which in and of itself is a huge part of her story. That senior season begins this Saturday, when Princeton hosts Virginia at noon in the opening game of a Sherrerd Field doubleheader, one that concludes with the men’s game against Monmouth at 3.
In her time at Princeton she has played in just 24 lacrosse games, with 41 goals scored. At that pace, had she been given the expected allotment of games she might have figured on, she’d be sitting somewhere between 120 and 125 for her career, which also, by the way, would have ended last spring.
“It’s obviously been a very challenging few years,” she says with a smile.
“Challenging … but also rewarding.”
That’s how it works. It’s a tough lesson to learn when you’re 18. When you’re 22, you can really appreciate it.
“Kate’s experience in her playing career at Princeton has made her resilient and tough,” says Tiger head coach Jenn Cook. “And that’s not just in the way she plays. It’s her mentality too. She views every single opportunity on the field as a gift. She knows anything can happen. When you play in the moment like that, anything can happen. Her whole journey has led her to where she is, and it hasn’t been easy for her.”
Mulham, an All-American in field hockey and lacrosse at Ward-Melville High School on Long Island, came to Princeton in 2018 as one of nine women’s lacrosse players in the Class of 2022. She had been focused on this moment for several years by the time she arrived on campus, and she was ready to make an immediate impact as a goal scorer and feeder.
Instead, her very first practice — first — ended with a torn ACL and an uncertain future.
“It was Sept. 14,” she says. “It was the very last drill in practice. We were doing a 7 v 7 drill and I went to dodge and took a bad step. It was an immediate realization for me. You know how you hear people say they heard the pop. That’s exactly what happened.”
Instead of continuing to work her way into the lineup, Mulham instead had her knee surgically repaired that fall break. Her freshman season was gone in a blink.
“I barely knew my way around the campus,” she says. “I barely knew anyone. I did get one of those fancy jazzy scooters to get around.”
She did stay involved with the lacrosse team, though, even if she couldn’t help on the field. She was a constant presence, first at practices and then at games.
“Figuring it all out was so difficult,” she says. “I was at every practice and every game, and honestly I learned so much, watching and absorbing.”
At the same time, she threw herself into her rehab, a grueling process that saw her undergo physical therapy three or four times a week. It was a slow progression for her, as she worked to regain the speed and explosiveness that makes her the scorer she is.
Finally, after a year, she felt like herself again. She went through the fall and made her delayed college debut on Feb. 15, 2020, starting and scoring three goals in a 16-14 win over Temple. She had six goals and two assists in the first five games of the year, the fifth of which was a loss at Stony Brook, whose stadium is less than four miles from her home. The entire team had eaten at the Mulham house the night before the game. When it ended, there was the traditional postgame tailgate.
“I was so excited for my sophomore year,” she says. “I felt so ready. Things were starting to go well. I was playing well in practice. I was proving myself. The game at Stony Brook didn’t go our way, but we were really motivated for the next week.”
And then?
“And then, boom.”
She doesn’t need to finish the thought. It’s obvious. Mulham’s sophomore season, and everyone’s season everywhere, ended on a dime, due to the Covid pandemic.
“I never in a million years would have guessed that the season would end there when we were at Stony Brook,” she says. “It was so shocking.”
Just like that, her lacrosse career was halted, five games in. By the middle of the week, everything was shut down. By the following weekend, she was back home, this time for good.
Everyone spent the rest of the spring semester at home. What would the next year bring? Nobody knew. Mulham and her eight classmates talked it through. Should they stay enrolled? Should they withdraw to preserve their Princeton eligibility.
“It was such a hard decision,” Mulham says. “We had to make the decision with limited information. We had no idea what the next year would look like Would it be remote? Would there be a season? There were so many unknowns, and we had to make the decision quickly. We were all together in Delaware that summer, my original class. We started to talk about a gap year. Would we regret it? We had no idea what the future was going to look like. The decision was an individual one for everyone. For me, I was going to be a junior, and I had played in five games as a Tiger. It wasn’t enough for me. I’d been dreaming of the moment, and I knew I’d regret it if I cut it short.”
In the end, four members of her class — Lucie Gildehaus, Gaby Hamburger, Annie Price and Tara Shecter — stayed enrolled, while the other five — Mulham, Shannon Berry, Maria Pansini, Shea Smith and Lillian Stout — withdrew.
There would be no 2021 lacrosse season. When 2022 rolled around, everyone was back on campus, and there was a senior class of 10 players. Mulham was now a junior.
She started out as a reserve on attack, scoring 11 goals in the first nine games of the year. Then she went off, scoring five against Maryland and Penn, adding 24 goals in the final 10 games and finishing her season with 35 goals and 13 assists. Princeton swept through the league at 7-0 and then won the Ivy tournament and an opening-round NCAA game against UMass before falling to Syracuse in Round 2.
After that? It was a day of wild emotions.
“Graduation Day was so bittersweet,” Mulham says. “The nine of us were so close during our time. They were my sisters here. Annie, Tara, Lucie, Gaby — it was so weird to see them go. When we first stepped on campus, we were in it together. I miss them so dearly. And for me, Graduation 2022 was here, and that was the year I figured I’d graduate my whole life.”
This year, she’s one of seven Tiger seniors, with the remaining five from her class plus Meghan Curran and Christy Sieber. Mulham will be part of a dynamic attack unit that returns three players who had at least 35 goals last year, along with Grace Taukus (47) and McKenzie Blake (36), as well as returnees Ellie Mueller and Nina Montes and impressive freshman Jamie MacDonald.
“Kate is an incredible competitor,” Cook says. “In tight games, she wants the ball in her stick. She goes to the goal and is a finisher, and to be an attacker, you have to have that confidence. It’s awesome to see it in her. Her leadership has also been incredible. She’ll do everything she can to make the group around her better. She’s going to have a great year.”
Maybe that big senior year is a year later than she expected it would be. Maybe she’s cleared obstacles she never would have dreamed she’d face. So what? She’s here now, better and stronger, physically and emotionally.
“That injury and Covid shifted my perspective as an athlete,” says Mulham, who would have two post-Princeton years of eligibility remaining but who will be going to work in New York City instead next year. “I have a new-found appreciation. Obviously it’s been very challenging, but that experience has made me much stronger. It sounds funny, but I really appreciate it.”
— by Jerry Price
