Jade Catlin

Spring can’t come soon enough for Jade Catlin.

An offensive juggernaut on UMass Lowell’s women’s lacrosse team, Catlin started in all 16 games in 2023 and led the River Hawks in scoring 49 points as a sophomore, good for the third-best single-season total in program history.

Now, the junior from Middletown, Maryland, is looking to improve her performance and elevate the team’s success. 

“I did have a pretty substantial season, but it's better to set higher goals because even if you miss, you miss high,” she says.

Indeed, Catlin’s aims are lofty: She hopes to win an America East championship and bring the team to the NCAA Tournament for the first time.

“By the time I graduate, my goal is to go to the NCAA Tournament,” she says. “When we get on the board there, this program is going to skyrocket, and it just takes a few small steps to get there first.”

Off the field, Catlin is majoring in political science with a pre-law concentration and a minor in legal studies. Her career goal is to become a criminal defense attorney.  She has already bolstered her résumé with internships at the Frederick County State’s Attorney’s Office in Maryland and the Middlesex County District Attorney’s Office in Woburn, Massachusetts.

“(Middlesex County) is huge and there is so much diversity, which is a very cool thing,” she says of her internship, in which she was responsible for transcriptions, redactions, compiling cases, organizing paperwork and more. “I got to see a lot of (legal proceedings play out). It was a very good experience.”

After her first semester of college at Virginia Tech, Catlin transferred to UMass Lowell. While her new lacrosse teammates were a strong factor in coming to UML, the academic quality was just as important. 

“Coming here and having the resources and the class options that we do was very eye-opening for me,” Catlin says. “I think that the political science program here at UMass Lowell is very good, and I'm very excited about my upcoming class schedule and all the things I get to do with it.”

Whether she’s in the classroom or on the field, Catlin embraces learning. 

“The lessons that I'm learning on the field translate directly into everything that I do off the field, in the classroom, in the workforce and beyond,” she says.