When Madison Taylor played her last lacrosse game in Wantagh, she thought her time with her high school teammates was over. As a junior forward at Northwestern, that changed with a call from Team USA.

Taylor will soon compete alongside high school teammate Madison Alaimo in red, white and blue at the U20 Women’s Lacrosse Championship, which begins Thursday in Hong Kong.

“That makes it even more special,” Taylor said. “When I played in high school, I never thought I would ever play with (Alaimo) again. We finally get a chance to play together again. It’s super cool and super special. I feel like we picked up right where we left off.”

Team USA – ranked No. 1 in the world – will have five standout Long Islanders on its 22-person roster. Taylor and Alaimo will be joined on the team by Allison Reilly of Sayville and former Manhasset teammates Emma LoPinto and Caitlin Barrett.

LoPinto and Barrett are also looking forward to being reunited on the world stage.

“To finally get that call was really special,” said LoPinto, a senior forward at Boston College. “To get to this point, I spent a whole year training, going through the process and trusting the coaches. There was so much work and so much waiting that I was able to kind of breathe a sigh of relief knowing I had done it.”

Taylor and LoPinto played against each other in the Division I national championship last May, with LoPinto’s Eagles emerging victorious.

“Long Island has so many talented lacrosse players,” Taylor said. “To be able to play with them instead of against them this time is really exciting. It will really show the world what Long Island has to offer.”

The selection process for the national team began last summer with the selection of 100 athletes. The players then went through three rounds of selection before the squad was finalized on July 2. There was then a final training camp in San Francisco before the team left for Hong Kong.

This year’s tournament features teams from 20 countries, including the Haudenosaunee, a confederation of six Native American nations. To qualify for a national team, each athlete must be born in the country they wish to represent, or have a parent or grandparent who was born there.

“I’ve actually never been abroad before,” said Barrett, a sophomore midfielder at Duke. “I think this is going to be a really great way to be around such great people and play a sport that I love in a whole different country. I’m also really excited to play against other countries. I think it’s going to be great to meet all these new people from different places and see how they play lacrosse.”

The United States has won five gold medals since the tournament’s inception in 1995. The team won silver by losing championship games to Australia and Canada in 1995 and 2015, respectively. The most recent championship win was in 2019 with a 13-3 victory over Canada in Peterborough, Ontario.

This squad has the largest representation from Long Island since 2015, when six athletes represented the United States in Edinburgh, Scotland. All eight U.S. teams featured at least one Long Islander.

“It’s so exciting,” said Alaimo, a sophomore on Virginia’s offensive line. “It’s been my dream since I was a little kid to play for Team USA. I’ve always admired these girls, so this is definitely something I’ll remember fondly. To be able to represent Long Island at the highest level is incredible.”

Playing for the USA is something many of these athletes have dreamed of since they first picked up a lacrosse stick, and now the idea of ​​winning a gold medal doesn’t seem so out of reach.

“It’s an incredible feeling,” said Reilly, a junior forward at Army. “I’ve been playing lacrosse since I was five years old and I never expected to be part of a team as big as this one. I couldn’t be more excited.”