LANCASTER, Pa. -- The Bates men's lacrosse team enters the 2025 season full of promise after a number of rookies made an immediate impact last year. This Wednesday at 4:30 p.m., Bates gets their first test as the Bobcats head to Franklin & Marshall for their season-opener.

"We saw a lot of growth last year with our team getting more competitive and finding ourselves in situations where we had a chance to win it late," head coach Dan Annino said. "And we had a very young team last season, and what I know about young groups is the challenge is less so physical, than it is mental, late in games. I think we have a more mature group this year that learned a lot of lessons, because you have to learn how to win games in college lacrosse. Talent gets you in the mix, but execution ultimately decides the outcome." 

Bates returns a lot of talent from a year ago, starting with second team All-NESCAC defenseman Benjamin Kondner '27 (Owings Mills, Md.), who led the conference with 2.23 caused turnovers per game as a rookie. 

"He's an incredible athlete and a playmaker on the defensive side, which is so rare in the game these days," Annino said. "But Benjamin is that unicorn. We're seeing a mature sophomore who has learned to be more than just a takeaway artist, but also a team-focused defender." 

Despite Kondner's excellence, Bates sophomore goalkeeper Andrew Toland (Hingham, Mass.) ended up leading the NESCAC with 14 saves per game last season as a first-year. That is not a category Annino wants him leading this go-around.

"It's a little bit of a backhanded stat because it means that he was seeing a lot of shots," Annino said. "So certainly our goal defensively is to limit some of those attempts and not ask quite as much of our goalkeepers as we did last year. But Andrew certainly kept us in a lot of those games and put us in those positions to compete in the final couple minutes."

On the offensive side of the ball, sophomore Gray Doyle (Summit, N.J.) made an immediate impact in his debut season, scoring three goals and dishing out six assists in his first collegiate game. He went on to lead the Bobcats in points with 42, scoring a team-high 24 goals and dishing out a team-high 18 assists. It was the most points tallied by a Bates men's lacrosse player since 2019.

"Gray is a competitor through and through and he doesn't care about how it looks necessarily," Annino said. "He's about getting it done and he's a gamer. He is not afraid to stick his nose in and he's not afraid to take some licks. And he led us in a lot of ways on that offensive end. Our hope is to share the wealth a little bit more this year, and I think that's going to make Gray even better."

The Bobcats do return five of their six leading goal scorers from last year, with sophomore Riley McClure (Georgetown, Mass.), junior Connor Hartman (Hingham, Mass.), sophomore TJ Underhill (Palos Verdes Estates, Calif.), and senior Javi Werner (Brookline, Mass.) joining Doyle as threats to put the ball in the back of the cage.

"We'll find the combinations as we move forward that make this car faster," Annino said. "And that's the goal. We don't want to have it all falling on one guy's shoulders. We want each guy to make the guy to the left and the guy to the right more dangerous."

In order to get the ball to the attackers, Bates will need to win face-offs. And sophomore Miles Schmidt (Seattle, Wash.) is another Bobcat who showed promise as a rookie, stabilizing the FO position by winning 48.6 percent of them, the best mark by a Bobcat in a full season since 2017. He is surrounded by talented wings who help make life easier, as Annino says senior long stick midfielder Ben Miller (Scarsdale, N.Y.) should merit All-NESCAC consideration, while sophomore Drew McClutchy (Farmington, Conn.) is another LSM who is expected to make a big impact on face-offs this year.

When it comes to getting the ball up and down the field quickly, Annino says that senior Cooper Lance (San Diego, Calif.) is "one of the best in the business" and a key member of Bates' transition midfield unit, which Annino describes as the "engine of the team."

From a leadership perspective, Bates is in good hands with senior captains Colton Curtis (Charlotte, N.C.) and Denzel Evans (Baltimore, Md.), both of whom are big contributors on and off the field.

"Denzel was a captain for us last year as a junior, even coming off of an ACL injury as a sophomore," Annino said. "I think he really grew in his servant leadership and he's been serving this team for a long time. He's a guy that everyone is looking towards. And then Colton has been a leader on our defense going back to probably his sophomore year at the very least. And he's grown and refined his abilities as a leader. He's found ways to make important connections across our team."

With all the returning talent -- as well as some more impact first-years just waiting to burst onto the scene -- Annino sees the Bobcats making significant strides this year.

"The beautiful thing about playing in the NESCAC and playing the schedule we do is we play against the best week in and week out," Annino said. "So we're really excited to see our growth and if we're able to turn some of those close games into close wins, turn some of the wins into big wins, and take another step forward. So we're incredibly optimistic. We're excited to be kicking things off, and we're so proud of the work that our team has put in to make that a possibility."