Women's Lacrosse | September 10, 2026
Celebrate the entire Class XIV at the Penn Athletics Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony and Dinner on Friday, September 25. Tickets are still available. to register and learn more.
ON THE PLAQUE: A two-time First-Team All-American and Tewaaraton Award finalist, she helped lead Penn to three Ivy League Championships and two Ivy League Tournament titles. The Quakers qualified for four NCAA Championships and reached the Second Round in 2014 and 2015. She was twice named Ivy League Defender of the Year and earned three First-Team All-Ivy and three First-Team IWLCA All-Region selections. Penn went 25-3 in Ivy League play during her four-year career. She received the University's Association of Alumnae Fathers' Trophy in 2015 and graduated as the program record holder for caused turnovers in a season (46), leading the Ivy League and ranking fourth nationally as a senior. In 2018, she was drafted by the New York Fight of the Women's Professional Lacrosse League.
By Terry Toohey
Although Meghan Markham Porter C'15 grew up in the lacrosse hotbed of Manhasset on Long Island in New York and began playing the sport in the sixth grade, she likes to say that she was late to the game.
Let's explain.
Even though club lacrosse was a big part of the community in Nassau County, Porter's family didn't want her to get into that aspect of the sport until she was in middle school. It was the same with soccer, the other sport that Porter played.
Juggling two sports, Porter really didn't get serious about lacrosse until she went out for the team in her freshman year at Manhasset High School.
That's also when she started to concentrate on defense. "At that time you're either making varsity or JV," Porter said. "I remember being so nervous at the tryouts for the team because of how competitive the sport was at my school. Everyone is really good at lacrosse.
"It meant so much to me to make varsity even though I wasn't as good as some of the other girls stick-skill-wise. Our coach, Danielle Gallagher, was kind of a legend in the women's lacrosse world. She played on the U.S. women's team. She held several records and started her own travel program, Liberty Lacrosse, which I played on.
"I really wasn't on her radar until I tried out for the varsity team and she saw something in me that I didn't know that I had and I ended up making varsity as one of four freshmen that year. I think she saw my footwork and my determination. I just took it from there."
Took off is more like it.
Porter was a four-time letterwinner and captain of the team as a senior. She led Manhasset to three straight Nassau County championships (2008-10). She was a two-time First Team All-American, two-time all-county and earned a spot on the Under Armour All-America team in 2010. Porter received the PAL/Baugher Annual Scholarship Award, which is given to the Manhasset senior lacrosse player whose qualities include sportsmanship, leadership, teamwork, team spirit, tenacity, sacrifice, and love of the game.
She also was a three-time letterwinner in soccer and track. Porter earned all-conference honors in soccer in 2010 and also led the Indians to a pair of league titles.
However it was on the lacrosse field where she really stood out. She developed into a player who was recruited by many of the top women's programs in the country: Penn, Princeton, Yale, North Carolina, Boston College and Duke. Those teams have reached the NCAA Tournament a combined 104 times and won 11 national championships. She chose Penn because she always wanted to go to an Ivy League school and there was just something about the team and the program that really piqued her interest.
"I remember going to a fall ball tournament run by the Penn team," Porter said. "They were dancing in the middle of the field together to blasting music and laughing. They were clearly all best friends, and I wanted to be part of that."
That wasn't quite her reaction when she and her father visited Penn following a tournament in Pennsylvania in the summer after her sophomore year in high school. That was in 2008, the year Penn made it to the NCAA championship game. Her father had her walk onto the field at historic Franklin Field, which she called a coliseum, and imagine playing there.
"I remember telling him there's no way I'd ever go there," Porter said. "They were too good and walking on the field felt stupid, but begrudgingly I did and I tried to picture it. It's a funny full circle moment that I always go back to. I'm so proud to have ended up in that very same coliseum years later making a bigger impact than I ever would have imagined."
Porter developed into one of the best players in program history. She was a two-time nominee for the Tewaaraton Award, given annually to the top female and male players in college lacrosse. Porter received the University's Association of Alumnae Fathers' Trophy in 2015, which is awarded annually to the top female senior scholar-athlete at Penn.
On the field, Porter was the first two-time Defender of the Year in the Ivy League, a two-time first-team Intercollegiate Women's Lacrosse Coaches Association (IWLCA) All-American and a three-time first-team All-Ivy League selection, two of which were unanimous.
Statistically, Porter still has the top two Penn marks for caused turnovers in a season (46 as a senior and 43 as a junior). She led the Ivy and was fourth nationally in caused turnovers as a senior and tops in the league and third among Ivy League players in draw controls (51).
She was just as impressive in the classroom. Porter was named to the Philadelphia Inquirer Academic All-Area team three times and the Co-Performer of the Year as a senior. She also earned Academic All-Ivy honors as a junior.
"At the time I won all of those honors I was kind of in shock," Porter said. "I wasn't really looking for the recognition. It just came about. It was never a goal of mine. All I wanted to do was win the Ivy Tournament and be competitive with the teams that were ranked ahead of us. The honors just came along."
The Quakers won the Ivy League regular season title three times and the Ivy League Tournament title twice during Porter's career. Penn played in the Ivy Tournament title game and appeared in the NCAA Tournament every year of her career and compiled a 47-24 overall record and a 25-3 mark in the league.
"I feel I thrived in high pressure situations," Porter said. "I feel I stepped up in the big moments."
That impressive resume earned her a spot in the Penn Athletics Hall of Fame Class XIV. The announcement of that honor came a few weeks after she was inducted into the Manhasset Lacrosse Hall of Fame.
"To be honest I'm pretty shocked and honored," Porter said of her Penn Hall of Fame selection. "It's been so long since I graduated that (the selection) brings me right back to the Penn glory days when being an athlete was a huge part of my life. I'm very, very honored to be considered a Penn Hall of Famer."
Karin Brower, the Lois S. Leitner Head Coach at Penn, isn't surprised that Porter has earned a spot in the Hall of Fame. She watched as Porter developed into one of the best defenders in the Ivy League.
"She just had a defensive mind," Brower said. "She was a great takeaway defender. She wasn't just a good matchup defender; she always wanted the ball. She was also good on the draw. There were times when we would put her up in man-up situations. We tried to make her a middie but she didn't want anything to do with that. She just really loved defense and you don't find a lot of kids like that.
"Her angles were so great. She really understood on-ball defense. She wreaked havoc on a lot of players because she was able to take the ball away from them. She didn't have to run a ton to get things done. She didn't have to cover a lot of ground."
Part of that takeaway mentality was the way she treated her position. She thought of herself more as a midfielder. She felt her job was not just to stop the opposition but to get the ball to the attack.
Porter credits her coaches, Gallagher and Brower, who were college teammates at William & Mary, for helping her become the player she became. Gallagher taught Porter the nuances of playing defense and Porter soaked up every bit of information that Gallagher dished out.
Brower showed Porter how to be more offensive minded on the defensive end. She also taught Porter how to space and check without fouling to be able to get those takeaways.
"I was lucky to have two amazing coaches," Porter said. "They played a big role in my success."
These days Porter lives in New York with her husband, Toby, and one-year-old son, Teddy. She works as a certified cyber insurance specialist and yes, she has already placed a mini lacrosse stick in Teddy's hands.
"It's like a rattle," she said.
