In sports, unpredictability often reigns supreme, and that certainly applied to Notre Dame women’s lacrosse in 2024. Coming off a thrilling run to the Elite Eight, the Irish reached remarkable heights, achieving the program’s first No. 1 ranking, scoring three top-10 wins and hosting the first two rounds of the NCAA Tournament.
But Notre Dame also dropped three games at home, finishing the season with a last-second loss to rival Michigan in the NCAA Second Round. Still, head coach Christine Halfpenny and the Irish finished a program-best 16-4 with a 7-2 mark in Atlantic Coast Conference play.
“We again took another step forward in the program's trajectory,” Halfpenny assessed. “ ... And I think that there's a piece of fuel to the way our season ended last year, obviously for returners, but there's also the very clear understanding of we don't graduate our tradition. We are a very determined group.”
Notre Dame now enters 2025 ranked 13th nationally and with wild cards aplenty. The Irish lost the legendary offensive trio of Madison Ahern, Kasey Choma and Jackie Wolak, who combined to post 964 points across five seasons in blue and gold. They’re bringing into the mix a handful of players coming off redshirt years, and throughout the offseason, Halfpenny enjoyed what she saw.
“It was great to just start to see the same brand of gritty, fast, exciting, determined lacrosse [and] just a whole bunch of new faces,” she recalled.
Two of those new faces have arrived on the coaching staff for 2025. Ellie Masera, a Tewaaraton Award finalist last year at Stony Brook, and 2023 Villanova graduate Caroline Curnal now occupy assistant roles. Curnal worked in the same capacity at Penn last season, helping the Quakers reach the Elite Eight.
“They’ve been a great addition to the program in that offseason, developing really strong relationships with the players,” Halfpenny said.
Notre Dame’s roster, like its new assistant coaches, is young. The Irish graduated 17 players at the end of last season and enter this one with just six seniors and one graduate student. Halfpenny approaches her squad’s relative inexperience with optimism.
“It's a fact, right? It's a figure, it's a number,” Halfpenny said about the youth. “But we certainly don't feel as though that is a negative for us. We feel as though it's a positive.”
“We're able to recover and rebound from one game to the next due to our youth … There is an enthusiasm that might fill the void of the experience, and there's some really great chemistry amongst these young players, and all they know so far is coming out, working hard and seeing some successful opportunities in front of them.”
The top order of business, replacing the big three, is a two-pronged task. First, the Irish must figure out where the 174 total goals the trio scored last year will come from. Look out for sophomore midfielder Kathryn Morrissey, who led Notre Dame freshmen in points with 26 a year ago. She played her best lacrosse at the end of the spring, recording a hat trick in the NCAA Tournament against Coastal Carolina.
“She's a leader by example as well as a leader by her intensity of play, so we're really excited to see what she can do this year,” Halfpenny said of Morrissey.
Morrissey’s one of five core returners, who will help the Irish search for the type of stability that the big three once provided. Senior Grace Weigand and junior Abigail Lyons are back to anchor the Notre Dame defense, while junior Franny O’Brien and sophomore Meghan O’Hare will operate with Morrissey in the midfield. Halfpenny used a specific phrase — “experiential knowledge” — to outline how those five players can transfer their role on last year’s team to leadership in 2025.
“When you have those five convictive and extremely successful players that are in practice every single day that know what it feels like, know what they're working for [and] have that conviction — and they can verbalize that,” Halfpenny described, “That has helped us to again make quick adjustments, respond and keep things pretty black-and-white.”
With 11 freshmen and several more players freshmen in terms of playing experience, Notre Dame may need an individual breakout season or two to compete with the nation’s best. The Irish could have just that coming with freshman midfielder Madison Rassas. A premier recruit whose bloodlines run deep with Notre Dame tradition, Rassas brings enormous potential with her to South Bend.
“I think she has that opportunity to be a really special player for us,” Halfpenny said. “She's always smiling [and] always has that strong balance of her intensity, but also how much she loves Notre Dame and loves playing the sport and loves competing.”
Then, there are the returning redshirt players. Graduate midfielder Kristen Shanahan missed all of 2024 with an injury after playing a critical role on the 2023 Elite Eight team with 25 goals. Junior midfielder Emma Murphy has not played since March 19, 2023, but remains one of the greatest recruits to hail from Michigan. Sophomore attacker Wynter Jock will also make her debut this season as an offensive threat to watch.
Notre Dame might also pull from its former redshirts to inherit the role of draw specialist. Kelly Denes, the team leader in draw controls, graduated last year, giving senior Ava Kristynik a chance to step up in her place.
“Ava’s worked really hard on that skill of the draw. I think that her natural hand speed, her quickness is really something else,” Halfpenny described. “Her hand-eye is extremely quick, and it's very strong … last year she was able every day to be training with Kelly and with Arden Tierney — strong drawers. And so naturally I think she has some athletic gifts that put her in this great position, and she continues to learn.”
Halfpenny also noted that adding Curnal, whom she described as a “savant” of a draw coach, will strengthen Notre Dame’s ability in the draw circle.
Finally, in goal, the Irish lost full-time starter Lilly Callahan in the offseason and have two seniors competing to claim the crease. Isabel Pithie enters the campaign with 10 career appearances, while Malie Follet comes in with seven. Whichever goalie plays, she’ll have to understand and perform well within Notre Dame’s zone defense.
“Our goal is to really limit our opponent's shots on cage, and them being able to continuously elevate their IQ within our defense and also just be that ball stopper,” Halfpenny said. “We're looking for as high of a percentage in that area, and then taking care of the ball to be a catalyst to our fast break.”
With the Irish aiming to play with speed up the field, the goaltender must also possess a good feel for the outlet game.
“Our entire goalie unit has worked really hard on their stick work over the years to put them in a place where they are very confident and convictive and ready to be that quarterback that starts us off and turns defense into offense,” Halfpenny added.
For now, Notre Dame is making its final preparations for the regular season, which will begin on Friday, Feb. 7 with a visit to No. 2 Northwestern. The Irish upset the Wildcats at home last February to claim the top spot in the national rankings. Elsewhere in non-conference play, the Irish will host Central Michigan, Eastern Michigan and Harvard while traveling to Elon and UC Davis.
ACC play will begin with No. 21 Clemson making a primetime trip to South Bend on Feb. 22. The Irish will bookend the March portion of the conference schedule by hosting No. 1 Boston College and No. 4 North Carolina, with a road clash at No. 6 Syracuse in between. April will have the Irish face No. 20 Stanford before traveling to Pittsburgh and hosting Louisville at the regular season’s end.
“Iron sharpens iron,” Halfpenny said of the schedule. “...We get a lot of tastes of different manipulations in different game plans against us, which just makes us stronger every single week so that we basically have no stone left unturned.”
