Reaction vs. Reality: Sorting Out Women's Lacrosse Storylines
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© 2026 USA Lacrosse. All Rights Reserved.
© 2026 USA Lacrosse. All Rights Reserved.
Each summer, the USA Lacrosse Magazine staff engages in a annual production of “Way-Early” rankings. It’s a fun way to avoid post-postseason blues and continue to ride the high of what’s usually an exciting NCAA tournament by attempting to answer the question, “Now what?”
Of course, these lists are published before freshmen step foot on campus, the transfer portal settles and (unfortunately) before players suffer injuries. But even when teams gel in the fall and then in January, and we get an actual glimpse of them in February, it begs the question: “Is it still too early to make a statement about a team?”
Coaches will tell you the only rankings that matter are the last ones, and of course that’s true, but February results matter for standings and seedings in May.
Those rankings for women’s lacrosse? Bananas. A week that saw preseason and week one Nos. 2-3-4 (Northwestern, Boston College, Florida) go down (to Colorado, Notre Dame and Michigan) basically led to a rewrite of the Top 20 after North Carolina.
Perennial semifinalist Boston College is out of the top 10; preseason not-even-considered Notre Dame is in the top five. Are we overreacting about these programs and others? Come along. Let’s process the topsy-turvy first two weeks of the season together.
Navy opened the season with a statement-making win then-No. 7 (now 0-4 and unranked) Virginia and followed it with an 18-5 drubbing of Villanova at home. The reigning Patriot League tournament champions have returned significant talent, including attacker Alyssa Chung and netminder Felicia Giglio.
Loyola’s opening-day meeting with Florida got postponed due to winter weather affecting the start of this so-called spring sport. The Greyhounds took the field for the first time in four years without program all-timers Chase Boyle and Georgia Latch on Feb. 11, a 14-8 loss to local rival Johns Hopkins. They got their win against Lehigh on Saturday.
Navy and Loyola play March 28.
Verdict: Reality
Loyola has never lost a Patriot League regular-season game since joining in 2014, a streak of 94 games including Saturday’s win over Lehigh. But even the Patriot League brass gives the on-paper edge to the Mids, voting them No. 1 in the conference’s preseason poll.
The Mids are primed to win the regular season and tournament crowns through veteran experience, including knowledge they can beat Loyola after last year’s Patriot League tournament title game.
Besides Chung (only a sophomore) and Giglio, the Mids also have Emma Kennedy (4G) and sophomore Miles Taylor, a starter and role player in 2025, seems set to have a bigger output in 2026 (4G, 6A). Ava Yovino returned from an injury last year but seems more like her rookie-season self through two games, including in the circle, where Navy is regrouping after Alyssa Daley’s graduation.
The win over Virginia feels less significant with the ‘Hoos tumbling, but the Mids have handled the competition with mid-season poise.
Meanwhile, Loyola is young. Talented, but young. The loss to Hopkins was the Greyhounds’ first since 2019. Freshman Mae Murphy is an early maestro on the draw (39DC), and Ava Kane (5G, 2A) and Mims Suares-Jury (5G, 2A) have picked up offensive slack sans Latch and Boyle.
And you can never count out Jen Adams’ ability to piece together talent. You don’t win 94 straight conference games over 12 years without the ability to weather graduation storms, but it’s hard to remember a time when Loyola asked so much of players with so little experience.
So, if there was ever a year to break Loyola’s streak, it’s this year with this Navy team.
It’s also hard to remember a time when Boston College wasn’t in the top 10. But after losses to Northwestern (20-12) and Notre Dame (12-9), here we are with the Eagles at No. 11 in our latest Top 20.
Verdict: Reaction
Boston College’s offense has certainly looked unlike recent ones. It’s hard to live up to the lineage of the Big 3 (Sam Apuzzo, Kenzie Kent and Dempsey Arsenault), Charlotte North and Rachel Clark and Emma LaPinto. But the Eagles have done so for nearly a decade, leading to eight straight final fours and seven consecutive title game appearances (until Northwestern happened last year).
It makes their 0-2 start jarring, even if Molly Driscoll (4G, 2A), Hanna Davis (2G, 3A) and Marissa White (5G) have mustered what they can.
One of the bigger issues for Boston College is that Notre Dame’s young talent is on the rise (more on that later), ditto for Clemson with its top-ranked freshman class, and Stanford’s veteran roster looks solid. Plus, UNC is UNC. So, the Eagles will need to pull it together (and quickly) to retain their place among the ACC’s elite, which essentially doubles as the NCAA’s elite (along with Big 10 teams).
And also? This is BC. The Eagles’ first final four appearance came as an unseeded team. They looked down-for-the-count in 2020, leading to question marks entering 2021 that they answered with a national championship on the back of North and an underrated defense. Boston College lost to UNC 16-5 in March 2023 and then won a conference crown, and it lost to Virginia and Notre Dame in 2024 before snagging a natty (it trailed Northwestern 6-0 in the championship game).
In other words? We’ll believe BC is out of the final four picture when we see it, and we don’t expect to see it.
Florida returned much of its roster from 2025’s national semifinalist team and appeared poised to make another run at Memorial Day weekend. Then, preseason first-team All-American and leading scorer Gianna Monaco (73G, 22A) was removed from Florida’s roster before the later-postponed opener against Loyola.
The Gators were still expected to beat Michigan at home, but the Wolverines prevailed 12-10.
Verdict: Reality
Yes, it’s only one game, and we’ve seen Florida undergo significant roster upheavals, sustain an early season loss or two and still go on to make championship weekend in each of the last two seasons. But the Gators have a few factors working against them this year.
For starters, unlike the previous two seasons in which Florida has used the fall to rebuild its depth chart, the Gators are essentially adjusting on the fly after Monaco’s departure.
Now, Florida will look to Frannie Hahn, Clark Hamilton and others to assume larger roles, and it needs to do it with changes to the coaching staff after Regy Thorpe and Nicole Levy flew north to Syracuse.
Florida still appears to be figuring things out in net having used three goalies — Paige Crowther, Maya Soskin and Susan Radebaugh — that have combined for six saves.
But the biggest X-factor in this equation might just be Colorado, which downed then-No. 2 Northwestern last week and could challenge Florida for a crown, as it did for years against Stanford and USC in the Pac-12. There are simply too many question marks to consider Florida a Big-12 champion shoo-in this year.
Penn State kicked off the Kayla Treanor era with a 3-0 start, earning wins over Richmond (10-9), UMass (17-9) and Bucknell (21-9). Yes, that’s a combined 48 goals.
Verdict: Reaction (for this year)
Penn State’s start shows promise. But objectively, Richmond, UMass and Bucknell are not Northwestern, Johns Hopkins, Maryland and Michigan, and those four teams have also shown their teeth this year.
(It’s fair to assume we’ll view Northwestern’s loss to Colorado as a nothingburger for the Wildcats but perhaps a catalyst for the Buffs by April.)
Long-term, you have to like what Treanor is building. Within months of bidding Syracuse farewell in favor of Happy Valley, she announced a recruiting haul that makes a suburban parent’s Costco yield look like small potatoes, getting commitments from a bevy of high school stars, including five-stars Riley Davis and Kelsey Young.
As Treanor’s vision takes shape, the Big Ten’s competition will rise, as will Penn State’s spot in the Top 20.
Unranked to start the season, Notre Dame scored wins over ranked teams in Michigan (12-10) and Boston College (12-9), a fringe Top 20 team in Harvard (10-7) and Central Michigan (25-0).
Uma Kowalski (20DC), Ceci Patterson (5.33GAA, .474 SV%), Madison Rassas (9G, 3A) and Kate Timarky (8G, 3A) have starred early for the Irish.
Verdict: Reality
USA Lacrosse and IWLCA pollsters agree: Notre Dame is a top-five team. Is it sustainable? No pun intended, but the Irish have a fighting chance. This roster had a chance to get used to one another and experience failure last year, when Notre Dame missed the ACC tournament.
“That was a wake-up call for all of us,” Rassas told Jake Epstein last week. “Just knowing all summer, all preseason, we’re putting in extra work and doing the extra things to get one percent better every single day. Everybody has bought into that, and no one wants to feel how we felt last season.”
Early signs point to that not happening. The elephant in the room (besides the calendar still reading February) is that the ACC is rough, as we’ve detailed. Yet that plays to Notre Dame’s favor.
Win, and no one will question your RPI on Selection Sunday.
All told, the Irish aren’t just back in the conversation. They are the conversation, and deservedly so.
Beth Ann Mayer is a Long Island-based writer. She joined USA Lacrosse in 2022 after freelancing for Inside Lacrosse for five years. She first began covering the game as a student at Syracuse. When she's not writing, you can find her wrangling her husband, two children and surplus of pets.
