It’s an exciting time for lacrosse in Kentucky. The Kentucky High School Athletics Association (KHSAA) officially sanctioned the sport just last year. There are pockets of interest in Louisville, Covington, and Lexington, but many lacrosse programs across the state are just taking root.
And here at Transy, the Pios have the makings of twin dynasties: For the last two seasons, both the women’s and men’s lacrosse teams went undefeated in conference play in the regular season and took back-to-back Heartland Collegiate Lacrosse Conference titles.
Logan Otto, head coach of the men’s team, first learned about the sport as an eight-year old wanting to follow in the footsteps of his older brother, who learned the game when he went to a boarding school in Indiana. Watching elite high-school lacrosse, Otto was hooked, and he wound up playing on on Lexington Catholic’s first lacrosse team in the early aughts. His playing career ended there, but after a stint teaching high school, Otto landed an assistant coaching gig at Transy in 2014, and eventually was named head coach in 2021 (altogether, this is Otto’s thirteenth season with the program).
The Pioneers have won eight conference tournament championships while Otto has been on campus, including two as head coach. For Otto, the key has been steady improvements every season. “The ceiling is raising and that’s really fun,” he said. “The metaphor we use is that our program is a lot like a skyscraper, and so we’re building the levels up as we go from the foundation.”
The women’s team is led by Transy alumna Brianna McCulley ’20. Having played throughout her college years as a Pioneer, McCulley noted how meaningful it was for her to give back to the program. After graduating in the initial peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, McCulley earned her master’s degree in teaching and worked as a physical education and health educator, before she became Transy head coach in January 2025.
“I am super happy to be back,” she said. “I love this program. I love this school. I wouldn’t trade my experiences for anything. It truly does feel like I’m back home.”
Contact Sport
If you are aching for the ferocity of American football—without the commercial breaks, clock stoppages, and pauses in action for huddles—lacrosse is where to find it.
“It’s definitely pretty electric, and I don’t think a lot of people understand how physical and how fast we go out there,” said sophomore attacker Huck Campbell. “I mean, every play you’re seeing, you’re getting hit, you’re spinning off someone.”
Campbell came to Transy from Trinity High School in Louisville, a tight-knit lacrosse community. He has experienced a lot of “hard coaching,” which has taught him the importance of maintaining a positive attitude even when his team is behind.
“Coaches are gonna be hard on you because they want you to be the best,” he said. “So I’ve learned that in every circumstance you can have a smile on your face and do it with pleasure.”
Lany many Pios, Campbell has been playing since elementary school, when he first picked up a stick in fourth grade. Likewise for Sofie Garrett, a junior attacker who hails from Stone Mountain, Georgia. Garrett’s mom put her in different sports growing up but none gave her the same rush that lacrosse did.
The intensity of the sport doesn’t phase Garrett. “I think that makes me like it more,” she said. “I’m very competitive. I just like to get in there and fight.” She laughed, and looked like she was ready to grab her stick and hit the field. “Sometimes it’s just fun to be out there and troll.”
“Lacrosse,” Cambell said, “is constant contact.”
“Knowing the field”
“Everything I had thought about this sport before was probably completely wrong,” said senior and captain of the women’s team Jayden Otto, who started playing as a sophomore at Transy after originally coming here to play soccer (no relation to Logan Otto, though the Pios head coach affectionately calls her “cous”).
“Men’s and women’s lacrosse, even though they share the same name, they’re very different. Men’s lacrosse, I like to say, is football with a stick. They just, they go ham on each other. Women’s, it’s so much more technical-driven than I think people realize.”
The mental aspect of the sport, referred to as LAX IQ, is something sophomore attacker Kaelin Truman noted as an area of growth for any team. Players have to see plays ahead of time before they happen, develop a feel for the speed and angles of their opponents, and learn the nuances of spacing as their teammates race down the field.
“It’s just knowing the field, and being a little bit more aware of your space and your timing,” she said.
Truman noted that in high school or outside of the school year she used to shoot around with the men’s team in Louisville, but once a scrimmage started, “they’re kind of two different sports.”
Connection
Outside of their love for the game, Transy lacrosse players take pride in their team culture.
“The strengths of our team right now would probably be our connection,” Truman said. “These girls are just amazing. When it works, it works so well.”
Truman came to Transy after her freshman year at The University of Alabama in Huntsville, where she was playing on their Division II lacrosse team. Transferring was mainly about being closer to family and still getting to play the sport she loved.
“The environment between us is just amazing, especially coming from a team that wasn’t the best at being the most supportive teammates,” Truman said. “Coming here has been so refreshing.”
For others, the transition to Lexington can be more challenging at first. Senior midfielder and San Diego-native Sam Archer considered leaving Transy a couple years ago.
“There was a time where I was kind of just like, ‘what am I doing here?’” Archer recalled. “You know, it’s cold, it’s far away. But having to leave Transy, and everything that I’ve done here, making friends and meeting people, just throwing that away—I feel like it would have been silly to leave all that behind.” (While he’s glad he stayed with the Pios, Archer intends to go back home to California after graduation and become a firefighter.)
These ideas of connection and community were echoed by coaches and players alike.
“I’m really proud of the buy-in, how much they want to take care of one another,” McCulley said.
“Our bond together is really just like no other,” Archer said. “I’m really close with my teammates, and I have their backs. I know that they have mine, too. That’s just been very special throughout my time here.”
Watching Transy LAX is Worth the Hype
Lacrosse may be relatively new to Kentucky, but the Pios don’t lack for online attention. The men’s lacrosse team Instagram is the third-most followed official Transy account, currently with more than 3,600 followers, behind Transy Sports and the official university account (that’s right, more follows for “football with a stick” than the National Champion women’s basketball team!).
“I think lacrosse in the mainstream media sometimes can come off as kind of a bro-type sport or kind of elitist,” Logan Otto said. “I definitely see where those perceptions come from; you know, that it’s a big boarding-school sport like in the Northeast. But with the growth of the game, it’s become so different. We’ve had so many different athletes from different areas and different backgrounds that have been really successful for us. It’s pretty diverse.”
When asked what might attract fans to the games this season, coaches and players said it’s all about the speed: Lacrosse is fast.
“It’s a really fun watch,” Garrett said. “If it’s a close game, it’s intense. It’s definitely something worth watching at least once in your life.”
“It’s fast paced,” said Coach McCulley. “We play good music every time, you know, somebody scores, they have their own goal song. I love that. We’ve got some hip hop, we’ve got some pop, we’ve got some heavy metal. So you get a sense of their personality, too.”
“With the constant action of it, there’s really a big mental thing with it, too, which is like IQ, seeing the play before it happens,” Archer said. “That on top of the physical nature of it, makes it just such a great sport to watch.”
The men’s team lost their season opener against Kenyon College on February 8 before winning the following two against Piedmont and Illinois Tech. Over the weekend, they dropped to 2-2 with a 14-6 loss against Sewanee. Junior Andrew Welch and sophomore Charlie Horner are currently leading the team in goals with four each.
The women’s team started with a win against Oglethorpe, but dropped to 1-2 with losses against Berry and Otterbein. The team suffered a potentially devastating injury when star freshman Layla Hobbs-Powell had to leave the game with an apparent hamstring injury. She is still awaiting news on how much time she will have to miss.
Fans can witness the fast times, LAX IQ, and constant contact at Pat Deacon Stadium for the team’s first home games on March 4 at 7:00 pm against Centre (women’s) and March 11 at 1:00 pm (men’s). Students can reserve free tickets through My Transy Events.
