The World According to Ally Mastroianni

In the eyes of Scott Ratliff, there are two types of people in this world — people who book their flights and people who don’t.

Count Ally Mastroianni among the former. There might not be another lacrosse player on the planet who logged as many air miles as the U.S. Women’s National Team midfielder did in 2025.

And while Ratliff’s trope more specifically has to do with people who put action to their words versus people who don’t, Mastroianni fits the bill. She went to Japan, Germany, Poland, Czech Republic, Denmark, Spain, China and Senegal — all in one year.

“Ally’s a flight booker,” said Ratliff, a former professional long-stick midfielder who now works alongside Mastroianni at the Callum and Jake Robinson Foundation. “She puts action behind the things she wants to do. She’s very aware of how much the game has given her.”

As the Director of Lacrosse The Globe at the Callum and Jake Robinson Foundation, Mastroianni’s mission is to put goals all around the world. Bright yellow ones in memory of Callum Robinson, the former professional player and Australian National Team alum who was murdered in May 2024 alongside his brother and their friend on a surfing trip in Mexico.

But Mastroianni’s globetrotting last year was entirely done on her own volition. She cares so much about growing the game that she wrote her thesis on it at North Carolina.

She got her master’s degree at the renowned Hussman School of Journalism and Media. Her major of strategic communications focused on philanthropic communication and corporate responsibility. Sounds niche, right?

Still, Mastroianni wasn’t quite sure what to write about. So she tapped into her roots and the thing she loves more than anything else.

“I was really stuck,” she said. “Then I went to the world championship in 2022. It was my first with the U.S. team. I was just so inspired by all the players and all the teams from all around the world.”

What stood out most was the passion. Even after games that the U.S. would win by close to 20 goals, opposing players lined up for pictures with smiles from ear to ear.

A gold medal came from that experience, the first by the U.S. on home soil. But so did Mastroianni’s thesis: “Growing the Game, (L)across(e) the World.”

After getting buy-in from her professors — some of whom were curious if she could even pull off a thesis about lacrosse — Mastroianni set out to do research. She turned to Instagram, where she knew she had an audience and an ecosystem of like-minded individuals.

She asked people about their own philanthropic experiences in lacrosse and if they ever did something in their communities to give back. Within a few days, she had more than 1,500 responses — more than enough to work with. The takeaways shaped her future.

“People want to help,” Mastroianni said. “They just don’t know how. My goal with my thesis and what I’m still doing now is to figure out how.”

She created a mock app, page for page, and mapped where every single button would take a user. Her goal one day is to create it for real so people can participate in philanthropy. The app is called “GiveLax,” but she’s considered name changes to include other sports.

One of Mastroianni’s biggest supporters is Sam Geiersbach, her best friend who famously transferred from Richmond to North Carolina and was pivotal in the Tar Heels’ 2022 national championship run. They traveled to Senegal together to experience a community eager to try something new.

Despite a language barrier, they soon spoke the same love language — lacrosse. Mastroianni and Geiersbach were shocked each day as the turnout for their clinic would double, and even quadruple, from the day before.

“Our first clinic, we had maybe a group of 20 girls and it was in the stadium of Tambacounda,” Geiersbach said. “There were a lot of different sports and different types of athletes, and then everyone came and joined our clinic. It had to be 40 people, maybe even more than that.”

That’s the beauty of growing the game in places that might be experiencing it for the first time.

“The impact will be compounding,” said Ratliff, who himself was inspired by a trip to Managua, Nicaragua, to grow the sport. “You go to those places, and it’s not just the kids and the adults you coach and meet. It’s all the other people they’re going to introduce to the game and inspire.”

Geiersbach and Mastroianni first met because of the graduate program at the Hussman School. They had never crossed paths in lacrosse, and all Geiersbach knew of Mastroianni was her reputation as one of the most dialed-in draw takers and do-it-all midfielders in the nation.

Turns out she is much, much more than that. Quite literally, actually.

In the final regular season game of her freshman year at North Carolina, Mastroianni tore her hamstring. She was diagnosed with a Grade 3 proximal hamstring tear — meaning all three hamstrings were torn. That left her sciatic nerve exposed.

During surgery, Mastroianni’s doctors wrapped her sciatic nerve in shark collagen for extra support. So, yes, Ally Mastroianni is part shark.

“There’s just something about her,” Geiersbach said. “She has this different perspective on life and what to do with it. She is one of the smartest people I know.”

The lacrosse reputation held up just fine, by the way. Though Geiersbach got to experience it firsthand in Chapel Hill.

“She could break your ankles, score on you, then get off the field and be the most bubbly, nice human to you,” Geiersbach said. “When she steps on the field, she’s an entirely different person.”

Anyone you ask will say the same things about Mastroianni, the two-time ACC Midfielder of the Year (2021, 2022) and North Carolina’s all-time leader in draw controls (360). She’s a fierce competitor. She’s kind and generous with her time. She’s also organized. She has no choice but to be.

Her LinkedIn page would suggest she’s the busiest person in the lacrosse, not just the most well-traveled. Mastroianni owns and operates two businesses (Ally Mastroianni Lacrosse and Ally Mastroianni Elite Performance Academy), works for the Callum and Jake Robinson Foundation, plays for the U.S. Women’s National Team and Women’s Lacrosse League’s California Palms, and she finds time to volunteer on the side when she can.

To top it all off, she’s planning her wedding.

“I don’t know how she balances it all. Truly,” Geiersbach said. “She has this aura about her.”

“Grow the game” is a common refrain in lacrosse circles. Who wouldn’t want to spread the game to others so that they might experience the same joy you received yourself?

Many talk the talk but don’t walk the walk. Mastroianni books flights.

“I think she sees herself in a lot of these girls,” said Geiersbach, who is also a coach for Argentina, which benefitted from an impromptu Mastroianni draw clinic at the Pan-America championship last summer. “She had experiences when she was younger of meeting these awesome players and not really receiving a lot from them. She knows there are girls that look up to her on the field, and so she knows how important that interaction is off the field. She wants to be the reason why this game has grown. She has experiences she wants to create for others. She’ll be damned if she was the reason for someone to not love the sport.”

That means lacrosse could take her anywhere and everywhere. She’ll be in Japan with the U.S. team in July for the World Lacrosse Women’s Championship, and she has plans to go to Adelaide, Perth and Melbourne in Australia with Geiersbach later this year.

Mastroianni is coming to a field near you — no matter where you are.

“I’m definitely doing well with my United account,” she said. “Racking up the miles for sure.”