Out of the Woods and into the Spotlight with UNC Defender Sam Forrest

Sam Forrest’s name appears just three times in the play-by-play of the 2025 NCAA championship game, a 12-8 win for North Carolina over Northwestern. Her name appears four times if you count the fact that she’s listed as a starter.

Box scores, of course, don’t tell the entire story. They can tell you the “when” and the “who” but not the “how” or the “why.”

Forrest, North Carolina’s redshirt junior defender, is a 5-foot-5 concrete wall — unassuming, reliable and nearly impenetrable. There’s little flash to her game. Sure, she wears bright green cleats that don’t exactly complement Carolina Blue, but those are less a fashion statement and more an illustration of her antithetically soft nature.

Because of her father’s poor eyesight, she started wearing neon cleats so he could find her on the field. Now she just loves them. And while her name might not have been in the box score all that much during championship weekend, people certainly took notice. At first for the footwear, and then for her footwork and peskiness that kept Northwestern superstar Madison Taylor in check.

Wherever Taylor went, Forrest followed. She swam through picks, tiptoed through traffic and swarmed Taylor whenever the ball found her crosse.

Forrest held Taylor — who set an NCAA single-season record with 109 goals — scoreless on just three shot attempts with six turnovers.

“She locked up one of, if not the best attacker in college lacrosse, and she made it look easy,” said Tar Heels attacker Chloe Humphrey, the NCAA championship MVP and newly named Tewaaraton Award winner. “Sam consistently locks up her matchup, and we never have to worry about her.”

The thing is, they did have to worry about her in 2023 for an entirely different reason.

Forrest was born with hip dysplasia, a genetic disorder in which the hip joint doesn’t form properly, leading to the hip socket being too shallow to support the ball of the thighbone. Adopted at birth from Kalispell, Montana, Forrest said she likely would not have known about her condition even if she knew her birth parents.

A track runner in middle school and high school, Forrest used to have “weird, unexplained” hip issues. She never thought too much about it. Then she tore her labrum as a sophomore at North Carolina.

On April 10, 2023, she underwent a periacetabular osteotomy (PAO), a surgical procedure in which doctors essentially built her a whole new hip. During the surgery, they also repaired her labrum and corrected a femoroacetabular impingement (FAI), a condition in which the bones of the hip joint don’t fit together properly.

In good spirits, she posted “brb Shakira lied to me” on Instagram after her surgery. The hips, apparently, do lie. But she was far from out of the woods. This recovery would not be easy. It was a struggle just to walk again.

“I knew it was going to be a mountain to climb. I just didn’t think I knew how many muscles need to fire when you walk,” Forrest said. “It was the most frustrating part of my rehab after surgery. It might have been two months after my surgery, but at that point, I had been on crutches for two months.”

Forrest’s parents, Pamela and Jon, stayed with her for a little over a month after surgery. But she yearned for independence. She wanted to prove to herself she could carry groceries up to her apartment or do the remedial things she used to take for granted.

After they left, and even during their stay, former North Carolina athletic trainer Shannon Murphy was her rock. They tackled this together.

“I probably cried every day for the first six months after my surgery,” Forrest said. “It was just me and [Murphy] against the world at one point.”

Forrest didn’t pick up the context clues. Her team of doctors and athletic trainers had never gotten a field sport player back onto the field. Her treatment plan was pieced together through research and common sense. While sidelined, she watched film of North Carolina great Emma Trenchard and learned to appreciate watching baseball and golf.

She just always thought she’d be back on the field, even while those caring for her remained realistic.

“It was nice because everyone kind of lied to my face the whole time,” Forrest said. “It was the best kind of lying because it was for my benefit. If everyone believes in me, I’m not going to quit. I don’t think I would have had the same outcome if I knew the statistics about my surgery.

“It explains why they were all crying when I ran again.”

Even as she progressed, Forrest had to stay patient. As someone who’s headstrong and always wants to push for more, Forrest had to give in to Murphy’s requests to take it slow.

Cleared after a 10-month journey, Forrest put on her uniform for the first time in a year-and-a-half to play Florida on Feb. 17, 2024. She thought she’d only play a few minutes late in the game. Then she found herself in the substitution box only five minutes into the action, and the entire crowd erupted. Her dad cried.

“That was actually the least nervous I had been in the entire process,” Forrest said. “I’ve known how to play lacrosse for 10 years.”

She got through that game unscathed, but her first true test came about a month later against Louisville. She was hit hard and fell to the ground. She popped right back up like nothing had happened.

At that point, she knew she was back.

“You need to know you can have quote-unquote the worst thing happen and you can bounce back from it,” Murphy said, emphasizing that recovering from any injury is just as mental as it is physical.

Forrest progressed to being UNC’s primary mark for the opposition’s top player this spring. Under the direction of new defensive coordinator Kayla Wood, Forrest took every matchup in stride.

Forrest’s first attempt at shutting down Taylor came March 27. North Carolina won 15-12, but Taylor had three goals (on eight shots) with one assist.

“I wasn’t happy with my performance the first time we played them,” Forrest said. “I didn’t quite have my angle down right, and my gap was too big, and I was super nervous.”

Wood and the scout team were instrumental in molding Forrest’s mindset leading into the championship game. Even 24 hours before the title game’s opening draw, Forrest was hard at work.

“She did a bunch of reps in practice, and I just helped coach her through different reps and scenarios,” Wood said. “She really enjoys being challenged, and her teammates do a great job pushing her to be better and preparing her for these big moments.”

After practice, with as many reps under her belt as she could endure, Forrest turned to mindfulness. She knew her job — be annoying, keep Taylor in front of her, and as she put it, “get in her grill.”

“I sat down in my bed the night before, and I was just watching highlights of her,” Forrest said. “I love to visualize specific situations. It’s the one thing I nerd out about. … Her specific moves and how I respond to them.”

Forrest visualized so well that she might have seen into the future. She had a response to each of Taylor’s steps, effectively keeping Northwestern out of sync.

Murphy left North Carolina after the 2024 season, one in which the Tar Heels dealt with more injuries than head coach Jenny Levy can remember in her 30 years with the program. But she watched the game on television with her fiancé and witnessed the fruits of her labor pay off.

All those injured players from 2024 — Humphrey and star defender Brooklyn Walker-Welch among them — were healthy and productive. Forrest, who was finally herself again in 2024, was an X-factor.

“I just felt joy,” Murphy said. “I can’t think of a better word to describe how I felt for Sam and the rest of that injured crew. To be frank, we went through hell last year, but we did it together. I cried on Sunday for them.”

As far as Murphy is concerned, Forrest is out of the woods. There will always be maintenance to be done on her hip, but the worst is behind her. The nagging injuries are gone.

“She’s ready to go climb Mount Everest if that’s what she wants to do,” Murphy said.

Don’t put it past her. You’ll probably see her bright green shoes at the summit.