SUNY Cortland women’s lacrosse returns to action this spring on February 22, with the team looking to repeat as SUNYAC champions in the 2025 season.
The team enters the 2025 season No. 1 in the SUNYAC preseason rankings, and as defending champions following last year’s victory over SUNY Geneseo. Cortland won 14-7 in the 2024 final, before having their season ended by Tufts University in the second round of the NCAA tournament. They finished the season with a 15-5 record, and an undefeated SUNYAC record.
Cortland and Geneseo have been the two top dogs in recent years when it comes to women’s lacrosse in the SUNYAC, with the two teams meeting each other in the final the last four years, with Cortland winning three of them. With Geneseo athletics leaving the SUNYAC and joining the Empire 8 conference, Cortland has a real opportunity to stamp their claim on not only this season, but the near future as well.
Cortland has won 24 of 27 SUNYAC championships since women’s lacrosse was introduced to the conference, including 20 in a row between 1999-2018. They will certainly be hoping to return to that level of success in the coming years, with this season being the priority.
Cortland is returning three All-SUNYAC players from last season, including the 2024 SUNYAC offensive player of the year, and IWLCA third-team All-American, attacker Toni Cashman, who returns as a graduate student looking to improve on her stellar senior season, where she scored a team high 75 goals, and added 13 assists on top of that.
“I always just try to be better than the year before,” Cashman said. “I want to really help out this already extremely talented group and leave this program with a good structure for the future years to come as best as I can.”
Also returning to the squad are 2024 third-team All-SUNYAC members Isabel Adams, a senior midfielder, and defender Holly Wright, who is also returning as a graduate student. All three will be representing Cortland as captains this season, along with senior attacker Nicole Iapoce, and junior midfielder Rachel Rempe.
By all measures, the team had a great season last year, winning their third SUNYAC title in 4 years, but senior captain Nicole Iapoce wants to get to the next level, and knows what it will take to get there.
“We have a super young team with so much potential so we want to get them experience and build their confidence,” said Iapoce.
Iapoce started all 20 games for the Red Dragons last season, and registered 28 points for the season. Cortland will face a very difficult non-conference schedule this season, and Iapoce thinks that will help them later in the season.
“We want to improve how we respond when the game is on the line”, she said.
Last season Cortland outscored opponents 287-171, and led opponents in nearly every single offensive category. On the defensive side, Cortland lost two All-SUNYAC defenders from last year, including the 2024 SUNYAC goalkeeper of the year, Margaret Morgan. However, the team will look to stay solid at the back, led by Wright.
Head coach Kelsey Van Alstyne returns for her 4th season in charge, and will be looking to win her third SUNYAC title in just 4 years since taking over the position. Van Alstyne has found lots of success early in her Cortland coaching career, but has increased the focus and intensity heading into this spring, with the addition of new preseason tests for the players.
“We just really dialed in this Fall to make sure we were teaching all of our systems and things that we knew we were going to need in order to be successful this Spring,” Van Alstyne said.
“We upped the expectations”, she said. Van Alstyne talked about the addition of new fitness and skills tests to make sure each player was ready. “We just kind of took what the standard was and made it harder.”
Cortland will start the season with six non-conference games, including one against last year’s national runner-ups Salisbury, and William and Smith, who appeared in the final four last season. Two of those non-conference games are home: Skidmore (Saturday, Feb. 22), and St. John Fisher (Saturday, March 15). They open up SUNYAC play away at SUNY Potsdam on Saturday, March 22.