It took Charlotte North all of 30 seconds to set the tone before the United States’ first game of the 2026 World Lacrosse Women’s Championship in July. Not with her stick, but with her words.
North, who ruptured her right Achilles tendon on June 6 in a Women’s Lacrosse League game, traveled to Tokyo anyway. Head coach Acacia Walker-Weinstein insisted that North’s presence was crucial — so much so that she allotted one of 22 roster spots to a player who would never see the field. That insistence bore fruit before the first game even started.
Gathered in a circle with their arms draped over each other’s shoulders, the U.S. players huddled before the opening draw against Ireland. The Oi Stadium sound system boomed and the buzz of peak cicada season filled the hot air.
But North’s words cut through the clamor with unmistakable clarity. She delivered a message that lingered long after the huddle broke from the blue turf.
“It’s not lost on me that I get to share a bus with you guys. I get to share a team room with you guys. I get to watch you dog it out here,” North said, peering at her teammates through sunglasses. “When you’re dying, when you guys get goosebumps today, when you guys feel like you’re gonna see the light and see God, just look over at me and I will give you whatever you need.”
Twenty-one pairs of eyes locked on North, a magnetism drawing them in and holding them hostage. This wasn’t the typical, jovial Charlotte North. She was as serious as the injury that derailed her life and would soon set her on a daunting path toward recovery.
“I believe in you guys,” North continued. “Go out there like you’ve waited your whole life to live out this dream. All of you. No matter how many times you’ve done this. Alright? Go out there and celebrate everything and have fun. You’re gonna make mistakes, but nobody cares. We’re USA.”
Anna Brandt had a front-row seat to the speech, linked to North on her right. Brandt celebrated her 24th birthday and deposited a hat trick in her world championship debut, an 18-5 U.S. win over Ireland. That was the first sign of the utter dominance soon to be displayed by the U.S. in its gold medal run.
Teammates hoisted Brandt onto their shoulders afterward and sang “Happy Birthday,” but she refused credit and dished it to North.
“[After that speech], I could do anything,” Brandt said. “It’s so important to have her here, even though she’s not playing, because she does stuff like that.”
North wasn’t there for show. This wasn’t a token invitation. It became evident a month prior that the attacker was the heartbeat of the national team.
One last tuneup at USA Lacrosse headquarters in June felt incomplete, almost melancholic, without North. It was just days following the injury, one that North defiantly refuses to go back and watch.
“She is everyone’s best friend and everyone’s greatest hype man,” said Sam Apuzzo, North’s roommate at the Prince Hotel Shinagawa in Japan. “She knows when to inspire someone or kick them in the ass. The room falls quiet when she’s not around. In a group of 22, you need someone like that.”
North’s magnetism returned at a staging camp in Los Angeles. Then it was pivotal in Tokyo, where she pushed herself to the limits of her new reality. She iced draw heads during the intense heat so they’d stay firm. She fed passes from her knee scooter during practices. In another life, she could be a DJ with the way she handled the aux, always smiling.
What wasn’t seen, though, was the toll it took on her. She made sacrifices, too, like waking up in the wee hours so she could work out and not miss something later in the day with her teammates. She leaned on Apuzzo to do remedial tasks like get her out the door or help her into the shower. It was just six weeks after her surgery, and the strong, confident superstar was perhaps the most vulnerable she’d ever been.
“My body was screaming at the end of every day,” North said. “Getting on and off the bus. Scootering around. The emotional endurance of being there, like at the end of every day, I was really hurting. I just wanted to show up for my team in any way I could.”
Indispensable
"The emotional endurance of being there, like at the end of every day, I was really hurting. I just wanted to show up for my team in any way I could."
— Charlotte North
Apuzzo had the closest view of North’s resilience. They share a special connection. Apuzzo was a Boston College assistant during North’s meteoric rise. The relationship blossomed when North graduated and the two remained together in Boston, training daily.
Apuzzo said she wouldn’t still be playing if it weren’t for North’s motivation. With Apuzzo taking the head coaching job at USC just before the world championship, this felt like a serendipitous — yet bittersweet — last hoorah for the Eagles legends.
Being cramped in a tiny hotel room with a pair of twin beds and little else gave them plenty of time to revel in the minutiae and have deep conversations about the struggles North faced. She said she felt like a burden. But it was simply time for everyone to repay all that North had given them.
“Every time we were in our room alone, that’s all we spoke about — this was an opportunity for other people to carry her,” Apuzzo said. “She carries other people all the time. She carries a lot that people don’t realize. She’s everyone’s rock in so many ways.”
Nine weeks after the world championship, 15 total since the surgery, North could walk on her own again. She threw out the scooter she bought off Amazon and tossed the boot in the trash, too. One of her red, white and blue Nike sneakers was noticeably dirtier than the other. North is back to training, at least in a controlled sense. She works with strength and conditioning coach Mike Boyle each day before a session with Holly Fitzgerald, the owner of Fitzgerald Physical Therapy Associates. This isn’t a recovery you can rush. No amount of work can expedite North’s return.
It’s all science — an inexact one given the rarity of the injury. A 2018 study in the Orthopaedic Journal of Sports Medicine found that women accounted for just 22.9% of Achilles ruptures in emergency room visits from 2012-16.
As North stepped up to the squat rack with great trepidation to elevate on her tippy toes and put continuous pressure on the bar for 10 seconds, Fitzgerald explained how the timeline for a full recovery is unknown. She’s studied video of the injury to see what might have happened, concluding only that it was a freak occurrence.
Rehab is straightforward, though. North must strengthen her calf muscles and take things slowly.
“The calf plays a humongous role,” Fitzgerald said as North relaxed and readied for another 10-second set. “You need that whole posterior chain for acceleration, jumping, deceleration, change of direction. With the repair, if you load it too soon and stretch it out, you’re taking away the strength of the graft. You just have to wait for the physiology to happen.”
North has no definitive answer for when she’ll be back. Right now, she’s busy visualizing getting back more of her normal life.
“Some days, you just don’t feel like yourself,” North said. “More of you gets taken than you think. It’s the sport, but on top of that, it’s who I am day to day.”
Journaling via her phone’s Voice Memos app has been an important part of her journey. She tries to add another chapter every week, detailing the most mundane things — doctor’s appointments, meetups with teammates or how she’s brushing her teeth and feeding herself left-handed so that she can come back stronger as a lefty.
She hasn’t listened back to the recordings yet. One day she might. Maybe she’ll compile them together to see “all the crazy things” she went through. For now, it’s a way to express the emotions of trauma and grief that she’s experienced since being on the brink of having her livelihood taken away.
“I’m learning a lot and I’m growing,” North said. “I’m being given an opportunity to have this be a part of my story.”
If there’s any silver lining, North said, it’s the timing. If this was going to happen to her, then at least it’s with the LA28 Olympics still far enough away that she has time to recover and make a push for one of 11 roster spots.
“She is going to be better than Charlotte North,” Apuzzo said. “She’ll be Charlotte North 2.0.”
