NINEWESTERN
The 'Cats are back on top; plus, recaps from the softball world
BACK ON TOP!
The legendary Northwestern women’s lacrosse team won its NINTH program championship. They won it on their home field.
It was a fantastic game from an incredible team that deserved it so much.
So, let’s quickly recap the story of Northwestern lacrosse.
It’s a story so apocryphal, yet has been repeated enough times it seems almost certainly true.
When Kelly Amonte-Hiller took over a program that was transitioning back from club sport to varsity, lacrosse was a niche sport, almost entirely limited to the east coast. (Sunday’s was the first championship game to be played outside of the eastern time zone; the Big Ten didn’t even sponsor women’s lacrosse until 2015.) Recruiting to the midwest wasn’t easy.
Instead, Amonte-Hiller would see women jogging around campus and, if they had the right form and were fast enough, she’d recruit them to the team. Then they would become All-Americans.
From there, Northwestern enjoyed unprecedented success, winning seven national championships between 2005 and 2012.
Eventually, the rest of the country caught up. Northwestern was shut out of the Final Four between 2015 and 2018, and out of the championship game from 2013 to 2022. (Of course, this was just in time for me to be in school there; I did take my family to a home tournament game that I wasn’t covering my senior year, which was fantastic).
Amonte-Hiller had to adjust, and she did so by joining forces with Izzy Scane (🐐) and creating the highest-powered offense in the country, calling themselves The Lake Show. The ‘Cats made it to the Final Four in 2021 undefeated, but lost in an upset to longtime rival Syracuse. The following year they were in the Final Four again, but lost to North Carolina with Scane out with a knee injury.
The next year, Scane’s final, they finally returned to the mountaintop. With an absolute beatdown in the championship game (an 18-6 win over Boston College). But the next two years featured losses in the championship game.
This year, the ‘Cats threatened to fall off entirely, with three bad losses. And then they caught fire, dbeating all the top teams, entering the tournament as the #1 seed, and reaching the final.
And that brings us back to Sunday.
Northwestern started out hot, going up 3-0 in the opening minutes, but that never was going to last. Senior Lucy Munro went down with a non-contact knee injury that immediately looked horrific. The ‘Cats had to finish the game for her.
North Carolina rallied back, ending the half on a 5-2 run. They built a lead through the third quarter. The ‘Cats had to come back. They found a star in first-year Gabriella McCollester, who had just six goals in her career entering the game, but scored four in the second half alone.
Madison Taylor, Northwestern’s leading scorer, senior, three-time Tewaaraton Finalist, owner of the single-season goals record, didn’t need to score. UNC focused their defense around her, but Taylor finished the game with an incredible six assists.
In the fourth quarter, Northwestern’s incredible goalie Jenika Cuocco, the Drexel transfer, was locked in. Northwestern won the fourth quarter 5-0. With a minute left, Taylor added the exclamation mark, putting the ‘Cats up 14-11, and that was the final.
National champions.
Taylor will graduate, but Northwestern will be back. Count on it.
Softball: The Big Ten Moves On
Not a lot of negatives in this post! The Big Ten crushed it in the super regionals this weekend. Let’s go through quickly.
As #4 Nebraska faced #13 Oklahoma State, they had to contend with the elements as much as anything else.
In Game One, Jordy Frahm pitched a scoreless first, reached with a leadoff single, advanced to second, and then waited until the following day as the rains pushed the game.
The next day, by the time that inning ended, a Jesse Farrell homer put the Huskers up 3-0. They added four from there, Frahm cruised in the circle, and Nebraska won 8-1. Throughout the weekend, Nebraska had no trouble with Ruby Meylan, one of the nation’s best pitchers (and an Omaha native).
In Game Two, the Cowgirls went up 1-0 early, but Alexis Jensen was in control from the stripe (7 Ks, 1 BB). Nebraska broke through for a pair in the third inning. Then they exploded in the fifth. A Lauren Camenzind bomb capped a 7-run inning. Frahm went back to the circle in the bottom of the inning to close out a mercy-rule win. Nebraska advances.
#8 UCLA didn’t have much more difficulty with unseeded UCF. Bri Alejandre put them up early with a solo shot. Taylor Tinsley allowed just one run, three hits and no walks. In the bottom of the fifth, Kaniya Bragg went deep, and Rylee Slimp hit another dinger for a walk-off mercy-rule win.
Tinsley went back out for game two where she struck out 11. Alexis Ramirez added to a lead with a fourth-inning homer. The offense exploded with three runs in the fifth, three in the sixth, and five in the seventh. Aleena Garcia and Alejandre hit back-to-back homers in the seventh. A 14-4 win showed how powerful the lineup is.
Both teams advance to the World Series, which starts on Thursday, and will be fantastic. UCLA starts the double-elimination tournament against top-seeded Alabama. Nebraska plays Arkansas, who is in the program’s first WCWS and has dominated every tournament game so far. Great matchups abound.
Watch these games on ESPN, and DO NOT miss out.