This past weekend started the season for the Northern Michigan women’s lacrosse team. The ‘Cats started the season with a huge win over Aquinas 24-5 at home in the Superior Dome. 

“A really great day [of] lacrosse, everybody leaves happy when you win by 21,” Head Coach Lindsey Majkrzak said. 

The Wildcats will have a record number of nine home games this year including those hosted last weekend. The team will not play their first away game until March 4 on their spring break trip through Missouri. 

“The game day atmosphere is really fun, they can get their friends out to games, we had a ton of parents here last weekend,” Coach Majkrzak said. “It’s the most home games we’ve ever had as a program and it’s the most we’ve ever had in a row this year. So the team’s really looking forward to it, especially coming off a year where we only had five home games.” 

Many players had goals in the win over Aquinas on Saturday, including Senior Minnie Bittell who had six goals, which helped her reach her 150th career goal. Freshman Josie Lakosky had three goals including her first college career goal. Several other players on the team came up with one or two goals pushing the ‘Cats to a strong lead over the Saints.

“I thought this game was important, that even though we did have a lot of people score, [we] played almost everybody—played everyone that was eligible. We still didn’t have a lot of unassisted goals, at least not traditionally unassisted. They weren’t ISO drives, and I think that’s the way you want to start your season if you are going to play in a game like this, you want to move the ball,” Coach Majkrzak said. 

This upcoming weekend, NMU is hosting two teams, first Lewis then Quincy. The ‘Cats have played both of these teams in past seasons. Last year, the Wildcats beat both teams, first taking down Lewis 15-8, then Quincy 15-4. Both games were away games for NMU. 

“It’ll definitely be a different level of competition. I expect to make some adjustments just because we’re going to see more pressure.  It’ll be a good test that way to kind of raise our intensity to what we need to be at for the rest of the season. It’s two relevant Midwest opponents that will set the tone kind of for how we can carry into that coming week. We must be able to execute the way that we need to early. We need to show up this weekend,”  Coach Majkrzak said. 

The Wildcats will start the weekend by hosting Lewis on Friday at 5 p.m. in the Superior Dome, followed by the game against Quincy on Saturday at 12 p.m.

“I really want to hammer home to them like ‘this is what we do now, this is the minimum expectation of effort and intensity,’” Coach Majkrzak said. “I think this is a good opportunity for them to do that this weekend.”