Two years ago, inside Chapel Hill’s Karen Shelton stadium, North Carolina’s Ryleigh Heck stood in front of the cage, Northwestern goalie Annabel Skubisz the only person separating her from a national title.
12 minutes before, Skubisz stopped Heck’s penalty stroke shot to force the game into double overtime. But this time around, Heck got the better of Skubisz, spinning around and scoring to the roars of an overflowing Powder Blue crowd around her. North Carolina defeated Northwestern 3-2 on penalties.
The 2023 NCAA title game, the first to go into penalty shootouts since 1994, was North Carolina’s second consecutive championship victory over Northwestern. Chapel Hill’s thriller remains the last time the two teams have faced off, but they’ve remained at the top of the NCAA world since — no other team has won a national title since UConn in 2017.
Now, the Tar Heels and Wildcats will meet again on Friday in the NCAA semifinals.
“We don’t play each other that often, so that probably lends to a rivalry in the making,” Northwestern head coach Tracey Fuchs said. “It’s great for U.S. hockey. People have been waiting for this matchup for two years, and it’s great for the sport.”
After North Carolina didn’t lose an NCAA tournament game from 2018 to 2020, Northwestern broke its stronghold on the sport with a 2-0 upset over the three-time defending champs in the 2021 NCAA first round. That win, which Northwestern midfielder Maddie Zimmer said enabled the team to believe they could make a deep run, eventually led to the Wildcats’ first-ever national title.
UNC reclaimed the throne in 2022 and 2023, but Northwestern never stayed far behind. The two teams were ranked No. 1 and No. 2 in 27 of the 40 NFHCA Coaches’ Polls since the start of 2022. They were the No. 1 and No. 2 overall seeds in the 2022, 2023 and 2024 NCAA tournaments. In 2024, when Saint Joseph’s upset North Carolina in the NCAA semifinals, Northwestern went on to defeat the Hawks in the national title game.
Headed into the next chapter of this rivalry, North Carolina is the No. 1 overall seed yet again while Northwestern is in a position it hasn’t been in since 2021 — an unseeded underdog, after the NCAA selection committee didn’t award it opening round hosting rights. The ‘Cats took that title to heart.
“Obviously disappointed not to get that hosting spot, but at the end of the day, it’s about what you put out on the field. We could do that anywhere,” Zimmer said. “We kind of embraced that title of underdog, which I don’t think we expected going into the postseason. But whatever it takes to motivate us to produce on the field.”
Not only will Friday’s semifinal be a match between the two most competitive NCAA teams this decade, but there’s no shortage of individual storylines amongst them. North Carolina head coach Erin Matson made national headlines when she beat Northwestern for the 2023 NCAA title at age 23, right after she won as a player in 2022. Between the two teams are five current U.S. National Team members and the last two Honda Award winners in Heck and Zimmer.
North Carolina freshman goalie Merrit Skubisz, who splits time in the cage with graduate student Katie Wimmer, is Annabel Skubisz’s younger sister. Northwestern sophomore transfer midfielder Kate Janssen ended her last season at Delaware with a first-round NCAA Tournament loss to UNC. Northwestern graduate forward Grace Schulze played the Tar Heels four times as a Princeton Tiger, losing every single match.
But the biggest connection of them all is Northwestern junior forward Sessa, who began her career with North Carolina in 2022 but transferred to Northwestern after her freshman season. Though she was successful as a Tar Heel, starting every game, she emerged as one of the nation’s best forwards in Evanston and is on track to be the nation’s points leader in back-to-back seasons.
“I’m just excited to go out there with my teammates and play a really hard match,” Sessa said of Friday’s game. “[UNC] is a well-respected program. We’re just going to go out there and play our best, take every game we’ve played before and take that into account and show up on Friday.”
Playing North Carolina won’t be easy. The Tar Heels are more battle-tested than any other team, playing in the five-bid ACC and claiming eight top-10 RPI wins in 2025. They are manned by an attacking front that includes the likes of Heck, 2024 NCAA scoring leader Charly Bruder and ACC Tournament MVP Dani Mendez — a group that Fuchs said would be the toughest forward line they’d face. Fuchs emphasized the need to push that line outside of the goal circle, forcing them into taking “outside shots.”
That’s not to undersell Northwestern, either. Despite its unseeded status, the Wildcats are 20-1, the defending national champions and haven’t lost in over a month. Zimmer says it’d be “hard-pressed” to find a trio better than NU’s forward line of Sessa, Schulze and Bent-Cole, while the midfielder herself is the reigning NPOY. Players like Ilse Tromp will be important defensively, while Fuchs thinks redshirt freshman goalie (and Big Ten Goalie of the Year) Juliana Boon has the composure of a sophomore or junior. Despite falling to the Tar Heels in years’ past, the ‘Cats absolutely have what it takes to prevail like they did in 2021.
“UNC is obviously a talented team — we have to respect them, but so are we,” Schulze said. “Just focusing on our super strengths and what we’re good at is gonna carry us through the game.”
If Northwestern wins on Friday, the road doesn’t get easier. Sunday’s match is guaranteed to feature either No. 2 Princeton, the only team to beat the ‘Cats this season, or No. 3 Harvard, which also has just one loss. As the only unseeded Final Four team, the Wildcats won’t be favored on paper in any matchup from now on.
But like 2021, Northwestern has made this status its identity. Now, it just has to execute.
“We’re road warriors, as we like to say,” Sessa said. “We don’t complain about it. We kind of love it. We love the challenge of it, and we just build so much more of a community in our team and culture off the field because we’re stuck in a hotel room together.”
