Written by Gabe Katz
The Tennessee Wesleyan women’s lacrosse team got their first win of the 2025 AAC lacrosse season over the weekend. The Cavaliers jumped out to an early 2-1 lead, but this would be the last time during the match that the scoreline favored Montreat.
A barrage of goals came for the Bulldogs to close out the first quarter as well as the first half. They ended the first quarter up 5-2 courtesy of Kate Buchanan’s two goals and one each from Kyla Shane and Olivia Downey. Six goals were scored in the second quarter, five of them being for the Tennessee Wesleyan, extending the halftime lead to 10-3. Stephanie Rocha got her name on the scoresheet while Buchanan and Downey both secured their first half hat-tricks with Buchanan nabbing another one and Downey scoring back-to-back goals at the stroke of halftime.
Montreat opened the second half of play with a goal, but they also opened the Bulldogs’ flood gates with that goal. The next eleven goals were scored by the Bulldogs. Kylie Heinrich scored two more for her hat-trick, Downey and Buchanan took their goal tallies to four on the day, Shane got her second, and Jozlyn Long got in on the goal-scoring act as well. The lead was 16-4 at the conclusion of the third quarter.
The fourth quarter saw nine more goals, six for Tennessee Wesleyan, which gave the Bulldogs a commanding first conference win with a score of 22-7. Kate Buchanan ended the game with six goals, Olivia Downey with 5, Kyla Shane with a career-high four, and Kylie Heinrich logging three goals and 4 assists to boot.
This season “has probably been their best†from a winning streak perspective, said Senior Captain Kylie Heinrich. Heinrich noted how their team and coaching staff has “been working really hard to get offensive players higher stats†which certainly paid off in Saturday’s win. The Bulldogs are coming into their final stretch of games for the regular season, and the sole focus now is “beating Truett-McConnell to make it to conferenceâ€.
Interview by Dakota Caldwell
Social Media by Noah Lones