A Hail Mary prayer. A scream. Bright lights. Bone and blood.

When the coronavirus epidemic cut short spring sports in 2020, history seemed to repeat itself for Lexi Kucia. Her senior season was coming to an end. Kucia, as a captain in her final year on the La Salle lacrosse team, felt a sense of injustice like so many across the country. But this wasn’t a new feeling for her. This was the second time that she would lose her senior season.

During her final season at Archbishop Carroll, on April 1, 2016, Kucia was coming off of a tiring practice. They had run the entire time—consequence for losing to a rival team the day before. Her legs were heavy in the back seat of her friend’s car afterwards, as they turned around a familiar curve, minutes away from her friend’s house. Then the car hydroplaned and crossed the center line, colliding with oncoming traffic. Kucia wasn’t wearing a seat belt.

She doesn’t recall much from the accident. Her friend’s scream of “no,” the bright lights of the other car. Then her 5’ 11” frame was flung onto the dashboard.

“I don't remember getting off the dashboard. I remember trying to get out of the car and looking down. It was basically bone and blood everywhere. So I was like… my life is gone.

“The first thing I thought was we say Hail Marys to my Poppy because he passed away, and his big thing was to say Hail Marys. And then I was like, ‘oh my God I'm never playing lacrosse again.’”

Just over four years from the very day, there are still flickers of emotion on Kucia’s face when she talks about the crash.

“They say that time heals all, at first I didn’t believe it.”

But she has come a long way from having panic attacks when discussing it. Now she’s calm and collected, telling the story through fragments of memory, piecing it together unscathed—for the most part. Her voice begins to waver, the fragments sharpen when she moves onto what happened after the crash.

“The one other distinct memory is having a neck brace on and being rolled in to see my parents [at the hospital]. That was horrible. I had never seen my dad cry, my mom was crying, and I was like, ‘oh God, what did I do to you guys.’”

Shock took away most of the pain from the initial accident, medication in the ambulance and in the hospital kept Kucia from feeling her leg. But there’s no analgesic for seeing your parents cry.

She awoke at 5 a.m. in tears.

“I had actually started to realize what happened. My dad came up to me and just started saying Hail Marys, which was bizarre because that was the first thing I said when everything happened.”

For reasons unknown (or perhaps known), Kucia would play the sport she loved again.

“[After surgery], the doctor came out and said he cut it surgically perfectly. It could have hit arteries. The way it worked out, they cut it perfectly and after that I was able to play again. If I cut major arteries in the leg…I could have lost my leg. The way he explained it to me afterwards, I had a really bad cut. I was like, ‘I saw bone, so I don't agree with you.’ But he said, ‘I know you're going to be pissed hearing that, but that's what it is. A really bad cut.’”

Lost in all of this was the question of Kucia’s life after high school. Since her sophomore year, she was set to attend the U.S. Naval Academy until decommitting late in 2015. Scrambling to find offers that winter, the feeling was that it was too late. She was ready to give up lacrosse. Then, in early spring, former Explorers head coach Candace Bossell reached out to Kucia, inviting her for a recruiting trip La Salle.

“I didn't even know lacrosse was for me anymore. I went and visited, met everyone, met the team and I was like, ‘I love it here. This is where I’m meant to be.’”

Still, she hadn’t given the Explorers a definitive “yes”—then the crash happened that Friday in April. The following Monday, reassuring Coach Candace that she suffered “a bad cut” that would only keep her out a few months, Kucia committed.

“My word has always been appreciation,” she says now. Appreciation for her family, her dad’s prayers and her mom’s “bigger, better, stronger” motto that has kept her afloat. Appreciation for her teammates who continued to motivate and support her. Every time Kucia failed her run test as a freshman, she was pushed to try again. And again. And again. 15 times, until she got it right on a Friday. That next Monday, she tore her ACL.

It was her teammates who continued to push her to go to PT when she didn’t want to, supporting her in her dark days. It was her parents who called and called, motivating and reminding her: “bigger, better, stronger.” It was her high school coach, Jess Lake, who answered every single text message with encouragement. They were there for every year and every hardship.

It isn’t what Kucia has learned to appreciate through adversity, it’s whom. She credits the people around her. She could have dwelled on the bright lights, the scream, the bone and blood. She could have been consumed by the “what-ifs” of a tree instead of a car or an artery instead of a clean cut. She could have given up on lacrosse. Instead, she was able to play in her final high school game and score with 30 seconds remaining. She returned to McCarthy Stadium and became a captain for La Salle.

“If you know me,” she says, “You know I’m a little dramatic. People will let me cry, and then, alright, now pick yourself up and let’s go.”