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Opening day of the 2026 NCAA Division I women's lacrosse season is Feb. 6.
Throughout the month of January, we'll pose three burning questions for each team ranked in the USA Lacrosse Division I Women's Preseason Top 20, presented by CWENCH Hydration, starting with No. 20 James Madison and finishing with No. 1 North Carolina.
Join the conversation on social media @USALMag (IG/X/FB). Wrong answers only.
Maryland arguably saved its best lacrosse for late in the season — ripping off five straight wins before falling in an absolute heartbreaker to Northwestern in the Big Ten championship game.
That 8-7 loss to Northwestern was quite the letdown considering the game was in College Park and the Terps held firm to a 6-2 lead midway through the third quarter. The defense was doing everything possible to stifle the Wildcats, and JJ Suriano (more on her later) had the game of her life with 18 saves.
Maryland stumbled late, though, but it’s important to recognize just how far it came from a 16-4 loss to Northwestern about five weeks earlier. That’s progress. Fast progress.
Maryland’s season ended in the second round of the NCAA tournament in a double-overtime loss to Penn, which clipped the Terps twice by one goal in 2025.
Many of Maryland’s impact players return in 2026, and even though there’s some offense to replace — namely 86 combined points between Chrissy Thomas and Katie Sites — the cupboard is never bare in College Park.
Maryland was always going to grow as the 2025 season went on. Most teams do, after all.
It’s also the preferred progression over the course of a season. Who wants to start better than they finish? Still, Maryland head coach Cathy Reese was pleased with her team’s ability to improve, both individually and as a group.
“We were really young last year with maybe seven or eight freshmen starting [at times],” Reese said. “Coming back this year, returning a group of people with a little taste of what college lacrosse is about, they’ve seen what it’s going to take to compete against the best teams in the country.”
As freshmen, both Devin Livingston (19 goals) and Emma Abbazia (15 goals) were steady off the bench. Shelby Sullivan started all 21 games on attack and produced 20 goals and 55 draw controls.
Kayla Gilmore started every game in the midfield in her first year, leading the team with 93 draw controls and chipping in 14 goals and nine assists. On the defensive side, Reileigh McEnroe saw her role grow as the season went on.
That’s a nice up-and-coming core for a team still anchored by Kori Edmondson, one of the truest two-way midfielders in the country and a USA Lacrosse preseason first-team All-American.
“I lean on Kori for a lot. Our team leans on Kori for a lot,” Reese said. “Just her experience, her confidence, her ability to control the field as a true midfielder is really something special. She’s the leader we lean on.”
Reese expects more balance on the roster than she’s had for the past few years, and with that taste from both the growth and the season-ending despair of last season, the Terps seem hungry.
They’ve seen what it’s going to take to compete against the best teams in the country.
Cathy Reese on her younger Maryland players
When Reese said, “I don’t know right now,” in regard to the question, it wasn’t flippant. It was positive.
“Coming off last year, her technically freshman season as a starting goalie for us, you could just see her get better and better,” Reese said. “The way she played in that Big Ten championship game was just phenomenal.”
Reese says “technically freshman season” because Suriano didn’t see a single minute of time during her actual freshman season in 2024. It’s hard to blame her when the goalie ahead of her on the depth chart was Emily Sterling.
Suriano’s rise was truly one to admire. She made just four saves in her first career start — a 15-9 loss to Syracuse — but came on strong in the season’s final weeks. She ended 2025 with outings of 13 saves (13-10 win vs. Michigan), 18 saves (8-7 loss vs. Northwestern), seven saves (16-7 win over Fairfield) and 16 saves (12-11 loss vs. Penn).
She’s growing as a communicator and certainly has the athletic ability to back it up. Don’t be surprised if she enters the All-American conversation come May.
“She is a great communicator in the cage,” Reese said. “She’s very quick. Quick hands and not afraid to get her body behind anything. What these keepers do when they’re in there, they’re just athletic and quick and good communicators. I think the sky’s the limit.”
Coaches are always going to hype their players, but some have breakouts that fly under the radar nationally. Lauren LaPointe’s came because of an injury to Maisy Clevenger, who went down about halfway through last season.
Clevenger was running point. Then LaPointe started running, well, point.
“We’re asking Lauren to take control out there,” Reese said. “When she can go to goal and get her hands free, she’s an excellent shooter. But when you’re a behind player, you have to have good vision and good field sense. It’s a hard role to be in as an attacker.”
LaPointe finished fourth on the team with 39 points (29 goals, 10 assists). There’s a lot more in the tank.
“There’s absolutely another level we can take it,” Reese said emphatically.
Kenny DeJohn has been the Digital Content Editor at USA Lacrosse since 2019. First introduced to lacrosse in 2016 as a Newsday Sports reporter on Long Island (yes, ON Long Island), DeJohn specializes in women's game coverage. His search for New York quality pizza in Baltimore is ongoing.
