As you’re reading this for the first time, we are TWO WEEKS AWAY from the first Marquette women’s lacrosse game of the season! With that in mind, it’s time to get moving on some season previewing! In this installment,
we’ll talk about the players that head coach Meredith Black has returning from the 2025 campaign that ended with a record of 10-6 overall. In future installments, we’ll look at the new additions to the roster and address the big questions facing Black and her charges this spring.
As for the returning players today, we’re going to start with the attackers, move to the midfielders, then the defenders — which might be Marquette’s strongest/most reliable group heading into the year? — and close out with the goalkeepers.
Y’all ready? Let’s go!
ATTACKERS
We start the category with the woman who is tied for the most goals amongst returning players, and that’s Tess Osburn. She had 45 goals a year ago, tied for second most on the team, and her 19 assists — which is best amongst returning players as well — had her second on the team and best amongst returning players in points. She heads into the 2026 campaign at #9 all time in Marquette history in points and #7 in goals. Barring one of the best offensive seasons in the country and clearly the best in MU history, Osburn won’t be catching Meg Bireley’s career records this year, but she is going to be one of the best attackers in the Big East after finishing seventh in the league in goals per game and fifth in points per game last year. She’s probably going to be asked to do more for Marquette now that Bireley is gone, but perhaps that void has to be filled elsewhere on the roster.
And we are going to have questions about where that elsewhere is. It would seem that Isabelle Casucci and CJ Meehan are poised to take up spots as two of Marquette’s other three top attackers. Casucci is third amongst returning players in goals with 12 a year ago, and she’s fourth amongst returners in points. Meehan had five goals and five assists to end up sixth amongst returning players in points. That’s the best we can do for finding starters amongst the returning attackers though, partially because it appears that Tessa Boehm has left the team for nothing in particular, or at the very least I can’t find her on another lacrosse roster. She started all 16 games last year as a freshman, but she’s gone now and thus Casucci and Meehan are next up even though neither woman started a game last year…. and Meehan only played in 10 contests. Maybe we see Adrianna Commodari step up for her senior season after getting three goals and five assists in nine appearances last season, but that’s the closest I can get to another option amongst returning players.
There’s depth in the position group, just not experience. Nina Winter and Riley Schultz made eight and seven appearances last season when both were sophomores, but only had four shots between them. Julia Evens got into two games last season as a freshman while Shannon Murphy played one time during her sophomore campaign. McKenna Farrell, who is listed as attack/midfield, had two goals in seven appearances as a freshman last year, and Laila Johnson, MU’s other attack/midfield designee, is back after redshirting for her first season in Milwaukee. Were these women just logjammed behind Bireley and Osburn a year ago and will opportunity knock for them now, or will Meredith Black have to find a freshman to fill a void?
MIDFIELD
Hey, remember at the top of the attacker section, where I mentioned that Tess Osburn is tied for the team lead for goals amongst returning players? I didn’t mention that again, did I? That’s because the woman tied with Osburn is Hanna Bodner, the 2025 Big East Midfielder of the Year. Bodner’s scoring is definitely a reason why she got that award, especially after finishing seventh in the league in points per game after putting up 57 in 16 games last season. She’s a big figure across the league elsewhere as well, finishing third in ground balls per game, eighth in draw controls, and fifth in caused turnovers. Bodner has the best totals amongst all returning Golden Eagles in all of those last three categories, and my only question is Can She Do All Of That Again, or is Marquette going to need her to focus up in one particular area for team success reasons in 2026?
We have questions about who is going to play in the attack positions for Marquette, but the Golden Eagles have scoring options even other than Bodner in the midfield. Lauren Grady has the second most goals (or third, depending how you feel about ties) amongst returning players, although she did only have 17 last season. Her 14 assists are second on the team for returning players behind only Osburn, so her shooting/passing combination may come in handy for the Golden Eagles. Grady was a starter for the Golden Eagles in all 16 games last year, but Sarah Beth Burns came off the bench to chip in 12 goals to get to 14 points on the year. Along with Bodner and Grady, Marquette has three of their four top returning draw controllers in this position group, as Burns comes in at #4 with 19 a year ago. MU didn’t have a dominant player on the draw last year, so either A) someone will have to emerge there in 2026 or B) these three will have to play an even bigger role in getting the offense rolling.
Eileen Dooley and Riley Jenkins had parts to play off the bench last season, with each woman appearing in 11 games. Jenkins had the edge in points, 4-3, and she got there on three goals as opposed to Dooley handing out two assists. Depending on how roles shift with roster changes, there could be space opening up for a bigger spot for one of these two since the coaching staff seemed to get them on the field more often than not in 2025.
The deep bench in the midfield is Sayla Lotysz and Lucy Mineo, who played in two and one games respectively last season. The book may be written on Lotysz’s role on the team, as she has 14 appearances in her first three years in Milwaukee, while Mineo was a freshman last season.
DEFENDERS
It certainly looks like Marquette is squared away on their four starters on the defensive end of the field. Addyson Graham, Sofia Santana, and Mary Velner all started all 16 games for Marquette last season, so there’s little reason to suggest that Meredith Black is going to change things up with all three back again in 2026. It’s a safe bet that Taylor Kotschevar will join them, as she started 11 times while appearing in all 16 games last year. The other reason this all seems like the obvious move? No one else in the position group appeared in more than five games last year.
Velner is #2 on the team amongst returning players in terms of ground balls and caused turnovers last year, trailing only Hanna Bodner in both. Kotschevar is actually the #3 on both of those lists even without five starts under her belt, and she’s #2 behind Bodner in draw controls for returning Golden Eagles. Santana gets the #4 spot on the GB and CT lists, so that just continues to round out the reasons why all three are getting their spots. Yes, Graham is lagging behind the rest of them, but we’re talking about two seniors (Santana and Kotschevar) and a junior (Velner), while Graham is coming off her freshman year. It’s okay that she “only” had 12 ground balls and eight caused turnovers.
If you’re looking for someone to jump out and make an impact from that group of women who appeared five or fewer times last season, we could probably start with Maeve Dooley or Riley Leversedge. Dooley’s a senior with 11 career appearances, while Leversedge is the one who had five appearances as a redshirt freshman last year. That’s three and two years with the team respectively, so if Meredith Black needs someone to step in, she has veterans who know what she’s expecting from them.
It’s also possible that someone could pop out of the group that were freshmen last year. That’s Azaria Lejuene-Woloszyn, Hannah Evens, Abby Brackett, and Taylor Alexander, sorted in order of 3 games, 2 games (x2), and 1 game played last year. Nothing wrong with only getting a handful of opportunities in your first season on campus, especially when there’s a set of starters locked in place in front of you, maybe especially when Graham had already broken out from your recruiting class in your position group.
GOALKEEPER
It’s a good thing that Meredith Black seems to have a set four playing defense in front of the net this season, not to mention the best midfielder in the league switching ends to come up with stops as well as scoring on the other end. That’s because we go into 2026 with big questions about what we’re going to see at goalkeeper from the Golden Eagles. Across the last two seasons, Mikayla Yang was unable to wrest full control of the position from Brynna Nixon. Perhaps it wasn’t that surprising that she couldn’t as Nixon had trouble repeating her 2023 season in 2024 but that was Yang’s freshman year, and then Nixon regained her form for 2025 and then Yang was clearly a step behind the veteran keeper who ended up breaking the career wins record while finishing as one of just three keepers in MU’s still young history with more than 2,700 minutes played.
In any case, Yang starts the season as Marquette’s most experienced goalie on the roster in terms of minutes played. Her 203 minutes a year ago brings her to over 393 in two seasons… and that makes her the only goalie on the roster with any Division 1 playing experience at all. Now, that doesn’t mean that Zoey Gottlieb won’t suddenly pop forward and take the job here. Gottlieb was a freshman last year and didn’t play at all behind Nixon and Yang, and there’s nothing wrong with that. She’s listed as a sophomore right now, but she is, eligibility-wise, a redshirt freshman. If Black was effectively just buying a year of Gottlieb’s eligibility after Nixon departed, that all makes sense. At 5’3”, she’d be a much different type of goalie compared to the 5’10” Nixon or the 5’7” Yang, but at the end of the day, this competition is going to have to be decided by who’s making saves for the Golden Eagles.
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