With the Spring 2026 lacrosse season just a month away, our Notre Dame Fighting Irish (preseason #7) are set to face arguably the hardest schedule in lacrosse (again). 

Warming up the engine

After late-January exhibitions against Utah and Air Force, the schedule starts with the only truly manageable part of the season. The Irish start on the road at Marquette followed by the now typical early February middle-of-the-week game, this time hosting Bellarmine. Marquette is coming off a 7-7 season which included a 22-7 loss to the Irish. Bellarmine finished their 2025 slate with a record of 8-9.

Notably, this year marks the first season since the 2018-2019 season without Cleveland State in our 2 games in a week stretch. While not our most prominent or challenging “rivalry” the early season game against the Vikings has always given us a good view into how the season will go. It is sad to see this series end. Hopefully, this is only a temporary departure.

After those two games, for lack of a better description, the boys enter the gauntlet of doom and destruction that is the rest of the season. Nine straight ranked opponents. Notre Dame has always chosen a difficult schedule, but to our recollection, this may be by some margin the most difficult ever.

Frodo and Sam had an easier trip

The out-of-conference section opens with #4 Georgetown at home. Georgetown as a program has been very back and forth with the Irish, having played 4 times in the past two seasons. The most notable of those being the only Irish loss (in overtime) during the dominant 2024 season, and the most recent 2025 playoff game where we are all heart broken by a late and huge Georgetown comeback in the quarterfinals. 

In recent years, the early Georgetown game has been a pulse check, and this season will be no different. If this team wants to go all the way this season, this game will be the way they can put themselves out there as contenders. It will be an unusual match with the Irish as the underdogs for the first time in quite a while.

Following Georgetown is the traditional stretch of Big Ten games starting with #1 Maryland. 

Not much needs to be said about how good Maryland is. Notre Dame vs Maryland is arguably one of the biggest, best, and most challenging rivalries in college lacrosse. There has been heartbreak on both sides in recent years. It will have an extra slice of interest for us as our close Atlanta friend, Oli Skeean, will be playing his first game in South Bend as one of the Terps’ new LSMs.

With both teams always at the top of the rankings, the regular season game between the two is often looked at as one of the biggest deciders of how the season will play out.

If there is any specific game to set the tempo for the season, this is it. 

The Irish’s stretch of Big Ten then continues on with a visit to #11 Ohio State and then hosting #20 Michigan. Our Irish have remained dominant over both of these teams in recent years and we expect this season to be no different. The Michigan game will be a reunion of sorts with Notre Dame alumni Will Corrigan and Liam Entenmann on the Wolverine coaching staff.

Coming after the Maryland game, the most important factor of these games is to not let the emotions of Maryland carry on, for both results. The boys can’t get over confident from a win and thinking they will steam roll them because plain and simple they won’t. Ohio State and Michigan are good programs and will catch the boys off guard if they aren’t ready.

On the flip side, if the Maryland game doesn’t go in our favor we can’t let one loss get morale low and turn into 2 or 3. A loss to the #1 team in the nation is recoverable from. 3 losses in a row is a troubling situation and takes the playoffs out of our hands. As we learned from 2022, we can’t leave anything to chance. 

A shift in the ACC

This moves us to ACC play. The ACC remains the best conference in Lacrosse once again, though there has been a shake up within it. 

Through the previous few years, the top of the ACC has consisted of Notre Dame, Virginia, and Duke. However, this year changed that with Syracuse and North Carolina bouncing back and topping the ACC in the preseason rankings after both teams had a few down years. 

The Irish open up their ACC play with #14 Virginia. While the Cavaliers sit at the bottom of the ACC to start the season, this is a must win game to get some momentum going to finish out the schedule and make the ACC and NCAA tournaments. 

After Virginia is a quick pitstop outside of the ACC for special game against #9 Richmond in Chicago. The boys haven’t played Richmond since the 2020 covid season, where they won. Needless to say the Richmond program has continued to improve and has established itself as a top program. This is another must win game to keep the boys hot at the end of the season, especially with the difficulty they end the regular season with. 

Finally, the team ends the season with what may be the hardest stretch of games possible, #6 North Carolina, then at #11 Duke, and finally hosting #3 Syracuse. 

All of these games are winnable for the Irish, and there is a good chance they become must win games. Some strong out of conference performances early in the season make these games a fight for tournament seeding.  A few bumps in the road and these games become a real problem. At a minimum, the boys need to finish among the ACC top-4 and earn a spot in the ACC Tournament in Charlotte.

Thoughts

This season will be an interesting one for the team. While by no means is it a true “rebuilding year” with their existing talent stockpile, this team isn’t necessarily the same established super-team level of years past. For the first time in literally 7 years, we will not have a Kavanagh on the team. 

This year’s team will function differently, there is no hiding that. But we don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. This team has potential, and we truly believe they can win another national championship. The only question is the path it will take to get there.

#GoIrish

ND-ATL 2.0