Radnor’s Taylor Murphy leads a special generation for club and school – Delco Times

Taylor Murphy of Radnor is the Daily Times’ 2024 girls lacrosse player of the year. (PETE BANNAN-MEDIANEWS GROUP)

RADNOR – Taylor Murphy is comfortable showing her own strength with the ball, but she also knows how valuable the people around her are.

In Radnor, that meant Mondays and Wednesdays all winter long, the junior midfielder was surrounded by a core of seniors looking to make up for last year’s second-round state championship exit. That led to practices against one of the state’s best goalies, some of the area’s most athletic and defensively gifted players.

For her club team, the Big 4 HHH, summer and fall means working with some of the best 2025 recruits in the country, top-tier teams that regularly make Final Four appearances.

So yes, Murphy, who scored 71 goals and had 69 assists for the Raptors, led them to 23 wins, a Central League title, a District 1 Class 3A title and the PIAA finals. But when you ask Murphy how that happened, she first looks to the goalie she shoots at every day before practice, All-Delco Arden Jansen.

Or to Division I defenders like Grace Gordon and Margot Johnson, who she has to beat in practice before she even gets to face an opponent.

“I owe everything to my teammates,” Murphy said. “I got this award, but I think my team earned it for me. Grace Gordon, Margot Johnson, Anna (Reger), Maeve (Muksavage), literally all seven of our defensemen are so strong and make us so much better. And Arden is literally one of the best goalies in the area, if not the best, in my opinion. And I think we all just loved going to practice every day too because we were all so close. Practice was just such a fun atmosphere, but at the same time, we made each other better.”

This award for Murphy is the 2024 Daily times Lacrosse Player of the Year.

Also on the All-Delco team are teammates Jansen and Gordon, as well as fellow midfielder Sarah Kelley, Maura Irish and Quinn Whitaker of Episcopal Academy, the Agnes Irwin duo of Mairyn Dwyer and Caroline Chisholm, Chloe Bleckley and Sienna Golden of Archbishop Carroll, midfielder Kate Stanton of Penncrest, Sammy Wood of Garnet Valley and Notre Dame freshman Riley Daivs.

Kelley, Bleckley, Stanton, Whitaker and Chisholm are each making the team for the second time. Murphy is one of six members of a special class of 2025 who are on the first team. Davis is only a freshman. The All-Delco team is selected in consultation with local coaches.

About the class of 2025: It is incredibly full.

Delaware County is no stranger to top-level lacrosse, but the current generation is exemplary.

In the classes of 2024 and 2025, 43 players from Delco schools have committed to high Division I schools, from Delaware, James Madison Lehigh to the Ivy League and power conferences. Expanding that to all of D1, the class has more than 60 commitments/signees.

The All-Delco first-team college destinations are as follows: Notre Dame (plus a second-teamer in Johnson), two to Penn, two to Boston College (plus a second-teamer), two to James Madison, Penn State and North Carolina, plus Murphy to Penn. Second-teamers are headed to Maryland, Virginia, Yale, Brown, Georgetown, Stony Brook, Colorado and Army. So yeah, pretty good.

All of this has a direct impact on Murphy’s efforts to commit to Duke. In her high school practice, she tries to beat a goalie who is transferring to Penn State with shots while a defender who is transferring to Notre Dame covers her.

She gets passes from girls who go to Army, Penn or Delaware. She’s teammates with Whitaker and Chisholm and shoots for second-team All-Delco goalie Grace Holland. All three go to Boston College, which has been to the last seven Final Fours with two national championship titles.

Murphy understands that iron is sharpened with iron. Along with Kelley, Gordon and Kate Gallagher, she is the interface between young talent and Radnor’s top management. This not only resulted in a “choose your poison” attack, but also a resilient and committed team.

“We have so many threats, so I think if one day one person has a bad day, there are six others that can make up for it,” Murphy said. “I think that goes for practice too. Every day we just practice and the same goes for our defense. Our defense is making us better. We’re improving our defense. We had so many threats that it was pretty easy to put them in games because our practice was so focused and so good.”

Murphy has been through the highs and lows of the season. She recorded a hat trick in an overtime loss to Archbishop Carroll in late April, which she called a wake-up call for the team. She was snubbed by Conestoga in the Central League final and had just one assist in Radnor’s 7-6 win.

When the teams met again three weeks later in the District 1 final, Murphy took the lesson to heart and punished Conestoga with five goals in a 9-7 victory.

“I was definitely pretty disappointed with how I played,” she said the first time against Conestoga. “Obviously I was happy the team won and couldn’t have asked for much more. But I definitely watched a lot of film and talked to my parents and my coaches and realized I just needed to step up and do a little better. I was a little sloppy in the first game and not as assertive. And then I realized the district championship is on the line, so I need to do whatever I can to get my team a win.”

This game was part of a thrilling postseason game. Garnet Valley pressured them in the district quarterfinals, limiting them to one goal. Then they went on a tear. Seven goals and two assists against Penncrest in the semifinals. Five against Conestoga. Five in the first round of the state championship against Garnet Valley. Five goals and five assists against Pleasant Valley. Five and one in a 13-11 win over Penncrest.

Radnor’s momentum waned in the face of sheer attrition. Three starters were missing until the state finals – Johnson suffered a midseason ACL tear, defender Ella Hoey broke her hand again, midfielder Gallagher badly sprained her ankle in the second Penncrest game – and they had no answer for Conestoga, losing 9-4.

That ended Radnor’s season against Conestoga two years in a row, albeit under different circumstances. Murphy, who scored two goals in State College, turned the disappointment into motivation in the 2023 quarterfinals. She’s confident her graduating class can do it again.

“I think the seniors this year have taught us a lot not only about lacrosse, but how to be a good leader and how to build a good culture,” she said. “I think they’ve made such an incredible mark on the program and left it so much better than they found it. I think that gives us the momentum and the ambition to do the same for the classes that come after us. We definitely want to build on what they’ve done for us.”

“I said this at the end of our state championship game: We all need to remember that moment and how awful it feels so it doesn’t happen again. We can remember that and use it as fuel.”