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THE TODDLER FELL INTO THE RIVER netting a jellyfish. No one noticed. The floating dock sloshed against the current as the young girl floundered underwater for more than two minutes before her sister saw she had slipped off the boat and into the drink.

By the time Patrick Boyle pulled his daughter out of the water, her face had turned blue. She lay motionless on the dock as he applied the life-saving measures he and his wife, Farley, had practiced just days earlier in preparation for the birth of their third child. She could only watch from the window as she tended to their newborn and a mother’s worst nightmare unfolded before her eyes. Time stopped, it seemed, with each chest compression and puff of air.

And then the young girl started coughing. Like a fire hydrant, she expelled a lung’s worth of salt water onto the dock.

Chase Boyle was 2 years old when this happened. She doesn’t remember almost drowning, but the story of what happened afterward almost always amuses her.

The pediatrician in the intensive care unit where she spent three days recovering warned she could develop a fear of water. Instead, as the family pulled into their driveway on Little Silver Point Road, she asked if they could go swimming at the neighbor’s house. A lifetime New Jersey shoreman from a family full of surfers, Patrick Boyle tearfully took his daughter’s hand, marched her across the street and leapt into the pool with her — both fully clothed and laughing.

“I’ve loved the ocean ever since,” Chase Boyle says as she reclines in the Ridley Athletic Complex press box overlooking the Loyola University Maryland lacrosse stadium and air dome.

Boyle finds this view disorienting. She’d much rather be on the field. Wearing grey Loyola sweats with a pale-yellow Long Branch Ocean Rescue shirt tied over her shoulders, the lieutenant lifeguard who moonlights as one of the most electrifying players in college lacrosse ponders what brought her here to Evergreen.

Starting with what could have happened that day in the Shrewsbury River.

“My parents say it’s a miracle and that God put me here for a reason,” she says, her sheepskin boots curled beneath her legs as she leans back in the chair. “That there’s big things in my life that I’m supposed to do.”

A fashion model who starred on the Discovery Health Channel reality series “Runway Moms,” Farley Boyle used her platform to increase awareness and education about child CPR and Heimlich procedures. She started a nonprofit called Chase for Life.

Twenty years later, the organization’s namesake has become a household name in lacrosse.

COMING OFF A BREAKTHROUGH YEAR in which she set Loyola’s single-season record for goals (85) and draw controls (208), finished as a finalist for the Tewaaraton Award and earned an invitation to train with U.S. Women’s National Team, Boyle has visions of leading the Greyhounds to championship weekend for the first time since 2003 and competing in the 2028 Olympics.

It wasn’t long ago that those dreams revolved around a ball at her feet rather than a stick in her hands. Boyle soured on soccer, however, after a negative experience with her club team. It opened the door for her to prioritize lacrosse going into high school. The family moved so she could attend Rumson-Fair Haven, the high school sports powerhouse that also produced U.S. Women’s National Team defender Meg Douty, who was an assistant coach on the staff when Boyle was a freshman.

Now the two are U.S. teammates, which blows Boyle’s mind. These “big things” have a way of sneaking up on her, you see.

Like the time ESPN’s Quint Kessenich surprised her with the news that she was named MVP of the 2021 Under Armour All-America Game after she led the North to a 16-8 win over the South with two goals, two assists, three caused turnovers, two draw controls and two ground balls — the kind of performance that has become customary for her in college.

“Chase Boyle, have you been told that you’re the MVP yet?” Kessenich asked on national TV.

Stunned, Boyle replied, “What?!”

She had only made the team as part of the last wave of additions that spring.

“You’re the MVP,” Kessenich repeated.

“Of the game?”

“Yes, of the game.”

“What?! I had no idea. Thank you.”

Waiting to congratulate Boyle near the track at Homewood Field were Loyola head coach Jen Adams and assistant coach Dana Dobbie. They made the short trip down Charles Street to support their prized recruit, a 5-foot-10 gazelle only scratching the surface of her athletic potential. Her father is 6-foot-5, her mother 5-foot-11. He played lacrosse and hockey at Lynchburg and Vermont. She played volleyball at Jacksonville.

“With Loyola, you know you're not going to be able to get the big fish, or what people are calling now the five-star recruit,” Dobbie said. “Chase was raw early on. The kid had a massive growth spurt in the middle of high school and hadn’t had any muscle definition yet. But you could see that competitiveness fly off the field.”

ADAMS AND DOBBIE SET THEIR SIGHTS on Boyle when she was in eighth grade playing for Jersey Shore Select (known then as T3 Shore Lacrosse) against the Long Island Yellow Jackets at the IWLCA Presidents Cup in Florida. She won the draw, split two defenders and ripped a shot on the run that beat the goalie and sent the college coaches scrambling for their notepads.

New recruiting rules would prohibit them from contacting her directly until Sept. 1, 2019, when they invited her to campus. Boyle had bigger schools in mind. Penn State and Florida expressed interest. Duke, Notre Dame and North Carolina were in contact with her club coaches. She liked the idea of going to a football school.

But Loyola made her feel wanted in a way those other schools did not.

“My mom took me here for my last visit, and I fell in love with it,” Boyle said. “It’s the culture. It’s not enough to say it. You have to feel it. Meeting the girls on the team, watching them practice, hanging out with them for the rest of the day — it was the most comforting, welcoming scene ever. You could see how much of a tightknit group they were, no matter their grade.”

Farley Boyle loved that Loyola presented a vision for her daughter as the centerpiece of their midfield and successor to do-it-all dynamo Jillian Wilson. They spoke of the Tewaaraton stage and national team invitations long before Boyle’s big Under Armour breakthrough.

“Jen and Dana said in that meeting, ‘We recruit what we can’t teach.’ They recognized something innate in Chase,” she said. “I said to her, ‘Let’s go where you were shown the love. These people recognize something in you that they’re willing to bet on.’”

Loyola offered Boyle a full scholarship. A day after Boyle accepted, she scored in overtime to lift the Rumson-Fair Haven soccer team to a stunning upset of top-seeded Jackson Memorial in the Shore Conference Tournament. She trained even harder after making her college commitment, motivated more to prove Loyola right than anyone else wrong. In addition to her physical transformation, her stick skills improved.

“She started to develop her left hand,” said Chris Raichle, director of Jersey Shore Select. “Once she got that, I was like, ‘It’s over.’”

Her senior year, Boyle exploded for 89 goals, 57 assists, 177 draw controls, 47 ground balls and 30 caused turnovers while leading Rumson-Fair Haven to just its second-ever Group 2 state title.

When she got to Loyola, Boyle felt the same sense of sisterhood that had clinched her decision to go there. It wasn’t just a recruiting pitch. She bonded immediately with classmate Georgia Latch and gravitated to veteran All-Americans like Livy Rosenzweig and Katie Detwiler. Wilson took Boyle under her wing. They occupied the same corner of the locker room and pushed each other in practice especially on draws after Rosenzweig graduated.

“We both realized we could make each other better,” Wilson said. “It just kind of blossomed.”

THE GREYHOUNDS PLACE A PREMIUM on players who can attack, defend and draw. Wilson calls it their superpower. While some teams tinker with draw specialists and most designate midfielders for offense or defense, Loyola keeps it old school. Dobbie made her living this way, seldom leaving the field at Maryland and operating as a permanent fixture for Canadian national teams for more than 20 years. She recruits athletes in the same mold. From Grace Gavin and the VanThof sisters to Wilson and Boyle, the Greyhounds produced a pedigree of multi-tool players.

“Loyola breeds midfielders that way,” Boyle said.

Boyle benefitted from sharing a midfield line with Wilson for two years. She played in all 22 games as a freshman and ranked second on the team with 56 goals as a sophomore. Still, she did not believe any one person could fill the void Wilson left when she graduated as the IWLCA National Midfielder of the Year in 2023. Wilson led all Loyola field players in goals (61), ground balls (38) and caused turnovers (22) while setting (temporarily) the school and Patriot League single-season record with 198 draw controls.

“I was shocked at the way she played and how she could be so good on the field all the time and never come off,” Boyle said. “I didn’t understand how that was possible.”

Boyle learned as much from Wilson’s example as she did her own experiences. Playing the part of the 60-minute midfielder meant being in the best shape of her life. Running in the sand between lifeguard shifts built up her leg strength and endurance. Her multisport upbringing (she played basketball, too) taught her how to conserve energy in between bursts of movement.

“Chase has stepped into that role and has exceeded any expectation,” Wilson said. “She’s blowing the doors off.”

Boyle's Tewaaraton candidacy took off with a pair of six-goal games and a combined 25 draw controls in wins over Johns Hopkins and Penn State. The Greyhounds also defeated Florida during a 9-0 start. The unbeaten streak came to an end at Syracuse, where Loyola lost despite another sock trick from Boyle, who succeeded Wilson as the IWLCA National Midfielder of the Year.

Boyle, Latch and Sydni Black all eclipsed the 100-point mark, but Boyle bore the added burden of guarding the opponent’s top scoring threat and carrying the draw unit.

Speaking at the Tewaaraton Award ceremony in Washington, D.C., Adams called Boyle a unicorn. “If you look up ‘true midfielder,’ you’re going to see Chase Boyle’s name next to it,” she said.

That skillset earned Boyle training opportunities with the U.S. sixes and field teams. She enjoyed a full-circle moment at the Presidents Cup in November, suiting up with her idols like Sam Apuzzo, Dempsey Arsenault, Ally Mastroianni and Marie McCool.

Afterward, a young fan approached Boyle for an autograph and said she wanted to be as fast as her one day.

“I was one of those girls, oohing and aahing,” said Boyle, whose older sister, Mackenzie, played at Jacksonville and whose younger sister, Abby, is a freshman at Ohio State. “It’s such an honor being able to represent the U.S. in any form, living out my dream.”

Boyle, 21, figures she will be in her prime when lacrosse returns to the Olympics three years from now in Los Angeles. She wants to play professionally in the Women’s Lacrosse League and continue this path with the U.S. team, even as she embarks on a career in finance. She interned the last two summers with Royal Bank of Canada and has a job waiting for her on the sales and trading desk in Manhattan.

Before then, there’s unfinished business at Loyola. She called it the “elite eight curse.” Boyle’s three collegiate seasons have ended in NCAA quarterfinal defeats at Boston College in 2022 and Northwestern in 2023 and a second-round loss at Penn last year. The Greyhounds have won 57 games during that stretch, but the postseason shortcomings do not sit well with Boyle.

“It just takes grit and I think we just will have to see how much our team's able to develop from Jan. 13 when we start practicing until Memorial Day weekend,” she said. “I want nothing more than to be able to bring a national championship to Loyola.”