Saint James’ Trevor Owens signs to play lacrosse for University of Maryland

Two years ago, during Maryland’s NCAA championship season in men’s lacrosse, “I think I went to every home game there was,” said Saint James senior Trevor Owens.

Starting in 2025, Owens will have an even better view of the Terrapins.

Owens, a Herald-Mail All-Washington County first-team honoree as a junior long-stick midfielder last year, signed a National Letter of Intent on Wednesday inside Alumni Hall to join Maryland’s storied program.

“Ever since I was little, it was a dream to play for Maryland,” said Owens, a three-sport standout for the Saints who lives with his family in Boonsboro. “It almost doesn’t feel real, like I’m still sleeping.

“I never thought I’d get to this point. I knew I was good at lacrosse, but I thought I wouldn’t get the looks I wanted. Being able to finalize it and knowing I’m going to be a Terp is a great feeling.”

Boys lacrosse: The 2023 All-Washington County high school teams

Discovering the fastest sport on two feet

Owens played other sports before discovering lacrosse after his family moved to Smithsburg before fifth grade: “It’s kind of a hotbed there,” he said. “After playing club for a couple of years, I realized I want to play lacrosse in college, so I continued to keep training in lacrosse.”

Owens soon traded in a short stick for a long stick: “I was so confused as to what to do with it,” he said. But he quickly found his calling as a two-way threat in midfield.

“My game involves a lot of offense, so being able to go from defense straight to offense, it opens up the game a lot more and makes it more enjoyable,” he said.

Marching in for the Saints

Owens arrived at Saint James and was part of the varsity lacrosse team immediately as a freshman.

“I came in and we probably had six guys who had actually played lacrosse before on the varsity team,” Owens said. “Our numbers were low, only half the students were on campus that year (2021). We only won one game that first season and only played like five games, all (Mid-Atlantic Conference) games.”

The Saints didn’t stay down for long. Saint James posted an 11-4 record in 2022 and went 11-6 last year, when Owens earned all-county first-team honors after producing 19 goals, nine assists, 62 ground balls and 26 caused turnovers.

Ranking the top 30 county boys athletes: Where did Trevor Owens rank in 2023?

“We finally got a team of kids together whose main sport is lacrosse, so after that our record slowly started increasing,” Owens said. “Being able to play every day here, I’ve gotten a lot better playing the higher competition. We’re playing schools like Bullis and Georgetown Prep. Being able to play against a high level of competition made it so I could get to this point.”

“It’s been a pleasure to watch how hard he has worked to achieve what I think he’s always set out to be: A Division 1 athlete,” said Saints lacrosse coach John Tucker.

Owens’ defense in particular stands out. At 6-foot-6, he covers a lot of ground with his legs and wingspan, which his long stick only accentuates.

“He has a lot of range. In terms of coverage, he can handle most people he plays against,” Tucker said. “I think playing basketball has helped him a lot in getting a feel for rotations and positioning his body. … He can cover a lot of ground, obviously, being so long. He has the ability to take two steps and be in the right spot.”

Good on the gridiron, too

Lacrosse isn’t the only sport Owens has excelled at during his time at Saint James.

Last fall, in his final year on the Saints’ football team, Owens blossomed as a defensive end and tight end. He was the Washington County defensive player of the year, finishing the season with 82 tackles, including 29 for losses and nine sacks, with three forced fumbles, two interceptions, two blocked punts and a fumble recovery. He also made the all-county first team on offense as a tight end, with 25 catches for 388 yards and five touchdowns.

“I was pretty good when I was little, and then when I picked up lacrosse, all my focus went to lacrosse,” Owens said. “These past couple years on the football team, we’ve had a lot of good players and I haven’t really been that noticeable until recently when I was a lot more noticeable. That’s when I actually started thinking about maybe playing football in college.

“I wanted to maybe play football and lacrosse at the same school and maybe get the best of both worlds. There wasn’t too many opportunities where colleges wanted me to play both.”

“There’s not a lot of athletes who could play Division 1 in three sports,” Tucker said. “The basketball coach (Kevin Breslin) believes he could be D1 in basketball if he wanted to be.”

All-County Football Defense: Saint James’ Trevor Owens leads the 2023 team

All-County Football Offense: Owens makes the first team as a tight end

A recruiting whirlwind

Owens originally thought he had his future planned in the fall of 2022, when early in his junior season he verbally committed to play lacrosse at Jacksonville, another strong Division 1 program.

“Jacksonville really stood out to me,” Owens said of that time. “After taking a trip down there, I committed early. I fell in love down there with the warm weather and I felt pretty much at home.”

But he started to have second thoughts as his senior year got rolling.

“I knew Jacksonville was a far flight, a far drive, and my parents like to go to every game, so I was thinking for their sake as well, I don’t know if I can be that far from home,” Owens said. “I went for my official visit and thought, ‘I don’t know if I can deal with this hot weather.’ It was a hot day down there, and there’s something about the snow, I don’t think I could lose that. I might as well stay in Maryland.”

Owens let the November signing day pass without putting pen to paper for Jacksonville. That weekend, he visited Towson, a Division 1 program that would let Owens play both lacrosse and football. Then everything unexpectedly changed.

“On my way back home (from Towson), I got a text from Coach Tillman,” Owens said.

That’s Maryland head lacrosse coach John Tillman. Since taking over the Terrapins prior to the 2011 season, Maryland has won two national titles (2017 and 2022) and reached the national semifinals nine times.

“When I got that text from Coach Tillman, it was like I was in a dream, like I was still sleeping,” Owens said. “I took my visit and I don’t even think I needed a visit, I just knew this was the spot I wanted to be.”