Up until around 9 p.m. central time on Sunday night, the storyline would have been about Northwestern field hockey’s victorious run through the Big Ten tournament, and rightfully so.
Northwestern overcame
its conference Achilles heel in the semi-finals, defeating Michigan 5-3 and snapping a five-game postseason losing streak to the Wolverines. Although its defensive performance left much to be desired, as it let its opponents tie the game twice after starting with a 2-0 lead, it returned every punch it was given with goal after goal. After falling to Michigan in the 2021, 2022 and 2024 Big Ten Tournaments, the Wildcats pulled off the ultimate revenge performance.
Whatever errors that appeared in the Michigan game were resolved when Northwestern faced No. 9 Iowa in the finals, shutting out the Hawkeyes 3-0. Throughout the entire game, Iowa — which rosters the nation’s leading scorer in Dionne van Aalsum — was held to three shots by the Wildcats’ back line and rarely got in the goal circle. While the Hawkeye defense did enough to force a tie at halftime, NU dominated possession throughout the game. Eventually, the dam broke open as Grace Schulze, Ilse Tromp and Ashley Sessa initiated a second-half scoring run to clinch Northwestern’s second conference tournament title in three years.
Much can be said about Schulze and Sessa’s offensive masterclass. After being named second-team All-Big Ten, Schulze was the best player on the field this past weekend, recording three goals, an assist and a defensive save to earn Most Outstanding Player honors. Sessa is somehow raising her level even further to play her best field hockey of 2025 — she was all over the field against the Hawkeyes, generating looks everywhere and making absurd moves with her stick.
Maddie Zimmer did two-time Big Ten Player of the Year things in the midfield, controlling key possessions against both Michigan and Iowa, in addition to recording four assists. Olivia Bent-Cole’s ball movement was critical for Northwestern’s attack despite not recording any stats. On penalty corners, Ilse Tromp scored her first goals in over a month to complement her elite defense.
The point being, Northwestern field hockey did many things well en route to overcoming a historically difficult matchup and a top-ten RPI team in three days. However, just hours after hoisting its second trophy of 2025, it learned during the NCAA selection show that those things weren’t enough.
Despite its 18-1 record and consistent top-two ranking in the NFHCA coaches’ poll, Northwestern was not awarded a top-four seed in the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2021. Instead, it will travel to Charlottesville to face Yale in the opening round on Friday afternoon, before playing either Miami-Ohio or No. 4 Virginia on Nov. 16 for a trip to the Final Four.
The NCAA Tournament draw was seemingly based entirely on RPI rankings, which had No. 1 North Carolina, No. 2 Princeton, No. 3 Harvard and the Cavaliers all ahead of Northwestern. Those rankings have merit — Northwestern’s strength of schedule tanked after the Big Ten had a historically weak year, with its best win being a 1-0 road victory against No. 7 Duke (the top four seeds all have wins against top-five RPI teams). However, RPI isn’t supposed to be the only factor the selection committee considers (at least according to the 2024-25 NCAA manual), and many arguments can be made for Northwestern over other hosts.
Virginia is 16-2 with two losses to North Carolina, including a 4-1 blowout in the ACC tournament title game. Aside from Princeton, which it later fell to in the Ivy League tournament, 17-1 Harvard’s best wins are against No. 11 RPI Yale and No. 14 RPI Massachusetts. The Crimson were also taken to overtime by non-NCAA tournament teams California, Stanford and Ohio State, the latter of which Northwestern beat 7-0. Princeton has a good case to make over Northwestern, as it did defeat the Wildcats and later Harvard on their respective home turfs, but it still has three losses on the year and one to No. 13 RPI Syracuse (the lowest-ranking loss out of all the top five RPI teams).
Beyond that, Northwestern is the defending national champion. Besides a 3-2 loss to the No. 2 seed, where a whistle and card-filled fourth quarter took the ‘Cats out of the game, it has played like that all season. It’s now apparent that the NCAA selection committee didn’t feel the same. To feel slighted is reasonable — home-field advantage is massive in field hockey, and Northwestern’s seniors now have retroactively played their last game on Lakeside Field.
However, turn back the clock to 2021, the last time Northwestern didn’t host. Entering the NCAA Tournament as the ninth-ranked team in the Coaches’ Poll, it went on a run of snapping UNC’s three-year tournament win streak, upsetting No. 2 Iowa, beating Harvard in the semis and then taking down Liberty for the national title. With a stronger roster than it had four years ago, there’s no doubt that ‘Cats can go on this type of run once more. And now they’ve got just the motivation to do it.
After all, the best way that Northwestern can prove that it’s better than the seeded teams is by beating them. If it gets past Yale in the opening round, it has the perfect opportunity to do so against Virginia in a rematch of last year’s quarterfinals. Possibly facing North Carolina, the last team to beat NU in the NCAA Tournament, before the title game isn’t ideal. But getting past the winningest program in college field hockey is something the Wildcats eventually have to deal with.
Northwestern field hockey has completed an already very successful sequel to its 2024 title run, with Big Ten regular-season and Tournament titles on its docket. But the Wildcats must still attend to unfinished business — business that now must be taken care of regardless of its geographical location.
