July 28, 2025 – Story by Joshua Ross
You can add Charlie Packard to the list of Hingham athletes who will put on the red, white, and blue jersey to represent the USA in international competition. Packard joins Matty Beniers (hockey) and Lilly Reale (soccer) to make a U.S. national team in recent years. Packard was officially announced on Monday as one of 22 players on the U20 lacrosse team going to Seoguipo, South Korea on August 12th to compete in the World Championships.
Packard’s national team journey started last summer when he was invited to a three-day tryout of some of the best high school and college players in the country. He was then chosen to participate in the 42-man training camp last August. Over the next 10 months, coaches and scouts followed the players’ seasons trying to determine who would make the 32-man roster for this past June’s training camp. Packard, who is entering his junior year at the University of Richmond, had a great season and even better NCAA tournament. The team’s better than expected tourney run gave Packard the opportunity to get some nationally televised coverage against elite competition, including two goals in :39 seconds against North Carolina helping the Spiders win their first ever NCAA tournament win.
Packard was invited to the June camp and made the cut to the final 24-man camp this past week, where it was announced he made the final roster.
“I’m super excited,” Packard says about the next step in this journey. “It’s obviously such an honor and a great opportunity and just a very kind of surreal experience going to South Korea. Something I never really thought I’d never do in my lifetime, especially playing the sport that I love so much is just so unbelievable and such a great experience. I’m really excited for it.”
Now that he’s officially part of the team, one of the challenges is getting to know his fellow teammates, which is something he started working on this past week.
“I didn’t know many of them,” he explains. “I didn’t have much of a relationship, so that’s why the last four days so good because we became really close. We spent like all day every day together just hanging out. We did team bonding stuff and all stayed lake house, which is super fun and was great. Now I feel I have a really close relationship with everyone.”
The pressure will not only come from being a part of a national team that hasn’t lost this tournament since it started back in 1988 (9-0), but following in the footsteps of Beniers and Reale representing Hingham on the national stage.
“I have been following both of them,” he goes on to say. “It’s super cool to see other people from Hingham representing America. It’s kind of surreal knowing that this small town south of Boston is producing athletes that are playing at the Olympic and international levels with Lilly and Matty and I guess I’m just kind of lucky to be thrown into that conversation a litte bit. They’re obviously on a greater scale than I am but it’s really cool to see that.”
Packard will now have a few weeks to relax before heading to San Diego on August 8th for a mini three-day training camp. The team will then head over to South Korea for the two and a half week tournament. The 20 nations competing are broken into five pools of four teams. USA is in Pool A and have their first game on Saturday, August 16th against Canada. Full tournament schedule can be found here.
“I think the pressure comes representing your country. This is obviously something that no one on his team has done before since it’s our first opportunity to represent USA lacrosse. So I think it’s more of knowing that you’re wearing that jersey and representing America and stuff like that. Also, knowing that this particular team has never not won this tournament, there’s definitely a high expectation of going over there and performing well. But I think it’s also something that everyone is ready and confident for and we feel really good about competing.”