Saturday marked a historic day for Point Park sports. Men’s lacrosse played for the first time in school history at home at Highmark Stadium against D’Youville, falling 12-11.
“I truthfully felt very confident in our team going into this game,” junior Tigran Ceesay said. “We had a very hard week of practice thanks to the coaches pushing us so hard and setting the standard to get ready for the speed of college lacrosse.”
That speed caught the Pioneers in the first quarter, as the Saints scored the first goal of the game around the ten-minute mark. However, their lead was short-lived when freshman Grant Huber scored an unassisted goal for Point Park not even two minutes later.
“Once the game started and D’Youville scored the first goal, we didn’t worry too much; we just came together and figured it out quickly and made the adjustments,” Ceesay said. “We trusted coach Golon, Ciotti, and Erwin, and most importantly, we trust each other as a unit.”
The Pioneers went into the second half on an even playing field, 5-5.
“We made the adjustments, we fought hard and took a lead, but once D’Youville took the lead back, we found ourselves trying to figure it out again in the fourth quarter,” Ceesay said.
As the Pioneers went into the fourth quarter, the score was 7-7.
Early on in the fourth quarter, the Saints took the lead of the quarter with five goals to Point Park’s one.
The Pioneers made a valiant effort to close the gap, as they scored three goals in the latter half of the quarter. The Pioneers fell short by one point as D’Youville took the win 12-11.
“Being a team of mostly freshmen, it is tough to battle back from being down four goals with a few minutes left, but we kept our energy high and positive, and battled back,” freshman Ian George said. “It didn’t end how we wanted, but we can still take a lot from that moment into next week.”
The team’s feelings regarding Saturday’s performance mostly related to how new the team is, and how new most of the players were to college-level play.
“I felt that being pretty much an all-freshman team, we lacked a bit of experience,” freshman Nolan Heikamp said. “But I thought we did a really good job of staying composed the whole game.”
As the Pioneers look ahead, they hope to work on their chemistry and communication as a new team, according to the players.
“I hope to work on our chemistry together as a team,” freshman Parker Bowersox said. “Since most of us are all freshmen and from all different places, we need to work on our chemistry to clean up our game.”
Amongst the freshmen are transfer students like Ceesay, who expressed a different perspective on how it’s been on the team.
“Personally, I just want to work on my communication with the offense and the team,” Ceesay said. “Being a mid-year transfer, it can be overwhelming to figure out our 40-man roster. We have a lot of different personalities and a lot of really good lacrosse players from all over the continent.”
Coach Cody Golon arrived at Point Park in June 2024 to kickstart the men’s lacrosse program. He had a full academic year to recruit a team, then official practices began in the 2025-26 year.
“The team is solely focused on doing their specific job. Playing as a unit,” Golon said. “[We hope to have] a really good week of prep in which we are getting better each day leading up to game day. We want to prove that we can learn from our mistakes and take another step forward this week as a team.”
Point Park’s next game will be at home, Friday, Feb. 20, against Malone at 6 p.m.
