Impact Of A Scholarship: Megan Kelly Walter

Walter was officially a two-sport athlete at Maryland. She was a speedy forward in field hockey and a gritty defender in lacrosse during her career from 1998-2001. Furthermore, she was a key contributor to two of the most decorated collegiate athletic programs during some of their most dominant years. 

In her freshman season with the women’s lacrosse team in spring 1999, Walter won a national championship. Then, in the fall of the same year, Walter’s sophomore season with the field hockey team, she won another national title. The feat allowed her to become one of a select few athletes to win two titles in a single year.

Walter is also the last athlete to accomplish the feat, despite Notre Dame’s Jordan Faison coming close to the same achievement in lacrosse and football. According to an article published by The Wall Street Journal, before Walter, Anthony Muñoz was an offensive tackle on the USC football team that claimed the 1978 national championship, months after he pitched for the Trojans’ baseball team, which won the College World Series.

In addition to winning two championships in the same year, Walter accumulated seven ACC titles: field hockey (1998, 1999, 2000, 2001) and lacrosse (1999, 2000, 2001). She won four NCAA titles overall, with three earned on the lacrosse field. She even helped Timchal’s team extend its remarkable NCAA championship streak to seven in a row dating back to 1995, while Walter was still in high school. 

“It could have gone very differently had I not had stress fractures,” Walter said. “Or had the trainers not said to me, ‘You shouldn’t be playing on turf in January, but you can go play lacrosse on grass.’”