NORWALK—The timing couldn’t have been much worse.
Just 10 minutes remained in a 2025 winter workout, and Alexa Lacomis had a choice: throw a bullpen or join the conditioning drills.
She chose conditioning.
Moments later, while hopping sideways over a series of small hurdles, she landed awkwardly, heard a loud pop, and crumpled to the ground.
“Everyone else heard the pop too,” Lacomis recalled. “I couldn’t get up and I was freaking out.”
A quick internet search only confirmed what she already feared.
“I Googled ‘pop in your knee,’ and the first thing that came up was ACL,” she said. “I’ve had friends it happened to, but I never thought it would happen to me.”
It did.
And with one awkward landing, Lacomis lost the very season college coaches typically rely on most.
The Norwalk High standout missed her entire junior high school season, the summer travel circuit with her Newtown-based CT Thunder softball program and the fall showcase season, forcing her to watch from the dugout while wondering if the college softball dream she’d been chasing since she was 10 years old had slipped away.
Fate—and a lot of hard work—would lead to her committing to play at Lasell University in the fall, but not before thoughts of giving up on that dream started popping into her head.
“There was a point where I actually considered not playing in college anymore,” she admitted. “Junior year is the year for recruiting, so that made me lose a lot of hope.”
Watching her teammates compete wasn’t always easy.
“I would go to all the games, but sometimes I’d even have to leave the dugout because I couldn’t handle watching. I wanted to be out there so bad,” she said.
Instead of giving up, Lacomis attacked her rehabilitation.
Every physical therapy session became another step toward returning. Every new exercise built confidence.
By January of 2026, she was finally cleared to return, just in time to prepare for her senior season.
Even then, trusting the repaired knee wasn’t automatic.
“The first game back, I don’t think I’ve ever been so scared to play in my life,” she said. “I felt like I forgot how to play.”
She committed three errors during an early jamboree at Trumbull High School.
The next game was different.
“I made a play and thought, ‘Okay, I just need to calm down and trust it,’” she said. “After that, it became effortless.”
That confidence continued to grow throughout the spring as Lacomis turned in what she calls the best season of her career.
“I wasn’t expecting to have such an amazing season,” she said. “Making First Team (All-FCIAC), playing in the Senior Select Game … I worked so hard for that between PT and doing all my exercises at home.”
Ironically, the injury that nearly ended her college aspirations also helped shape her future.
Lacomis plans to study exercise science at Lasell with hopes of becoming a physical therapist.
“Yeah, it definitely comes from what I went through,” she said.
Her appreciation for physical therapists grew throughout the recovery process as she experienced firsthand what they helped her accomplish.
The recruiting process didn’t truly begin until this spring.
Lacomis reached out to schools herself, finding which schools were still looking for Class of 2026 players, then sending video highlights from her sophomore and senior seasons before hearing back from Lasell, which is located in Newton, Mass.
After weeks of conversations, she made the trip to Massachusetts.
She immediately knew.
“I love the Boston area,” Lacomis said. “There’s so much to do there. But the biggest thing was the coaching staff. Coach Vani (Patel) had great goals for the team, and all of the girls I met were so welcoming. I could tell that’s where I wanted to be.”
Lacomis committed to the Lasers and will head there this fall to begin her college career.
The versatile infielder expects to compete primarily around the infield, with first base also a possibility.
Softball has been part of Lacomis’ life almost from the beginning.
Her father, Rit, a former Southern Connecticut pitcher and longtime youth and high school baseball coach, had both Alexa and her sister, Audra, swinging bats in the backyard before they were old enough to understand where the game might someday take them.
“Since I was around three years old, my dad had us hitting off a tee,” Lacomis said. “Around 10U, I knew I wanted to play in college. That’s when I really started taking it seriously.”
Today, she’ll head to Lasell with a story that’s about far more than statistics.
It’s about resilience.
It’s about refusing to let one injury define a dream.
And after spending nearly a year wondering if she’d ever play meaningful softball again, Lacomis is finally headed to the next level, proving that sometimes the longest road still leads exactly where it was supposed to.
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