Lacrosse Seeks to Uphold Championship Standard in 2025; Opens Season Sunday at No. 13 Notre Dame

MOUNT PLEASANT, Mich. — "This is a program that, every year, wants to make the conference tournament and have an opportunity to win that conference championship."

The 2025 Central Michigan Lacrosse season opens at No. 13 Notre Dame Sunday (Feb. 9, 1 p.m. ET), a familiar refrain as the Fighting Irish will host CMU's third season-opener in the last six seasons.

The program returns 26 of 34 players from the 2024 Mid-American Conference regular season championship squad, led by three first-team all-conference selections in 2024 MAC Goalie of the Year Alexa Martel (Rochester, N.Y. / Greece Olympia), leading attacker Skye DePrado (Pittsburgh, Pa. / North Allegheny) and defensive anchor Jozy Allen (Cincinnati, Ohio / Sycamore).

The first-team trio highlights a well-decorated senior class that has earned four total MAC Championships between regular season and tournaments. For this group, excellence has become the standard.

"Our seniors now, it's not a pressure put on them," Head Coach Emilia Ward said, "it's just that expectation they have every day to come in, get better, work hard and work toward that end goal."

The well of returners also includes All-MAC second-team attacker Sadie Hinkle (Medina, Ohio / Medina) and 2024 MAC All-Freshman selection Ava Regitz (Marietta, Ga. / Blessed Trinity).

Another key returner is 2024 graduate Avery Wagnon, an All-MAC second-teamer last season, now on the coaching staff in support of Coach Ward.

With so much returning for CMU, the program was able to stay out of transfer portal transactions in the offseason, in either direction, which leads to a better foundation for growth and development.

"We don't have a lot of players coming in and out of the program through the transfer portal, so it makes it a lot easier as a coaching staff to build and develop that young talent."

Notre Dame is the first of three 2024 NCAA tournament qualifiers on the 2025 docket, the others being No. 3 Michigan (Feb. 19) and Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference Champion Niagara (March 9). The nonconference home schedule features Marquette (Feb. 12), Cincinnati (March 2) and Butler (April 16).

"Thankfully, we've done that for the last couple years: Notre Dame on opening weekend, Michigan's always on our schedule … We see some of those teams in the fall, which gives us a taste of what we need to work toward coming into January and gives our freshmen the opportunity to get their feet wet against those opponents."

The eight-member freshmen class stands to make an immediate impact around the field as well.

"We have multiple freshmen that will get time early, and we're excited to see what this class can do. They've developed really well already in preseason alongside our seniors."

A specific goal for the Chippewas early on: establish their offensive identity.

"We felt like, last year, we didn't know our offensive identity as much going into conference season. That's a big goal for us this season: knowing what we have on both sides of the ball heading into the middle of March."

Central Michigan still ranked second in league play last season in goals, shots on goal and shot percentage last season.

Martel, DePrado, Hinkle and senior midfielder Hanna Wenger (Loveland, Ohio / Loveland) were announced as the 2024-25 team captains back in the fall and led by example for the Chippewas in spring preparation.

"Our leadership core is really leading the way for us in all aspects, whether its off the field or on the field. Just setting that tone and standard for what it's going to take to go play a top 20 opponent to start off the season."

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Lacrosse Seeks to Uphold Championship Standard in 2025; Opens Season Sunday at No. 13 Notre Dame

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Players Mentioned

Jozy Allen

Skye DePrado

Sadie Hinkle

Alexa Martel

Ava Regitz

Hanna Wenger