The Marquette Women’s Lacrosse Single Season Assists Chart

By now, you should be more than familiar with our series of regularly updating leaderboards for various Marquette Golden Eagles sports accomplishments. Keep checking back to that link in the previous sentence for our charts as the seasons continue to churn through history and MU’s various teams continue to create new memories and accomplishments.

Here, we take a look at the women’s lacrosse program’s single season record for assists.

Mary Schumar was a passing machine in 2022, tacking on two helpers in the final game of the season finish with 43 for the year. That’s just barely under 2.4 per game even while getting completely shut out on that front in five games! To put it another way: With the NCAA tournament still going on as I write this in mid-May of 2022 and thus things still being in flux, Mary Schumar has the eighth most assists in the country with only four women clearing the 50 assist barrier. Switch it to assists per game? Schumar ranks seventh in the country. Almost no one was doing what she was doing in 2022.

However, one person did what she was doing in MU’s history. That’s Cate Soccodato, the first Golden Eagle to ever record 40 assists in a season. Soccodato had exactly 43 assists back in 2019, and thus Schumar merely tied the program record for assists in a season. Imagine what would have happened if she had found one more stick in those five games that she was held without an assist, huh?

Mary Schumar’s 2022 was even more impressive than that, even from a purely Marquette perspective. Soccodato is the only Golden Eagle to ever record 35 assists in a season before Schumar did it this year, as she had 39 in 2018. Past that, there have only been three other 30 assist seasons since MU started their program in 2013, as Riley Hill got to 34 in 2018 and both Amanda Bochniak and Claire Costanza did it in 2017. That’s just five 30 assist seasons in program history, with two pairs each coming in back-to-back years in 2017 and 2018. Schumar didn’t have a partner here keeping defenses honest as Shea Garcia and Lydia Foust tied for the #2 spot on the team with 18 assists each. 43 times Mary Schumar found a stick for a goal, 43 times on the 234 goals that MU put up that Schumar didn’t score herself. That’s an 18% assist rate for Schumar this season, and that’s just raw assist rate, the number of goals that she assisted on, who knows how high the number is if she wasn’t on the field for a few of those strikes.

The question is whether or not she can do the same thing as a senior in 2023. With five games without an assist, it seems pretty clear that Schumar’s capable of 50 assists in a season. Of course, that’s going to depend on the shooters around her, and that might be a slight problem. MU does appear to be losing all three of their 40 goal scorers from the 2022 campaign, as Kyra LaMotte was a grad transfer on her COVID bonus season and both Garcia and Foust were honored on Senior Day. Familiarity is crucially important to turning passes into goals and assists, and if Garcia and Foust do not return for their own extra years of eligibility, then Schumar is going to be starting from scratch to a certain degree with her top shooters.

UPDATE (3/23/23): Yep, Mary Schumar is pretty good. At the midway point of the 2023 season, she’s tied with Claire Costanza for the 6th most assists in a season and needs just 14 more for the single season record. We’ll also keep an eye on Meg Bireley as the season goes along here, as she’s up to 10 assists on the year.

UPDATE (4/5/23): Mary Schumar recorded three assists against Ohio State to get to 44 on the year and thus breaking Cate Soccodato’s record of 43 set in 2019 and tied in 2022 by Schumar. She added the helper to a pair of goals just over a minute apart at the end of the first quarter and beginning of the second, both scored by Tess Osburn. The record breaking assist came, once again from Osburn, at the 2:09 mark of the third quarter to give Marquette an 11-8 lead in their eventual 13-12 victory.

UPDATE (4/8/23): Mary Schumar recorded six assists against Xavier, with each successive helper continuing to re-break the single season assists record. However, her sixth and final assist of the game — on Lily Dietrich’s goal with 10:19 left in the fourth quarter — made Schumar the first player in Marquette history to record 50 assists in a season.

UPDATE (4/19/23): Mary Schumar’s assist on Hannah Greving’s goal with 5:36 remaining against Butler not only gave Marquette a 19-15 lead, but it was also her 60th assist of the season. She is, of course, the first Marquette player to record 60 assists in a season.

Here’s the chart as it looks at the end of the historic 2023 season.