Northwestern field hockey has now reached championship weekend in five consecutive seasons. However, the NCAA quarterfinal game that sends it there has never been for the faint of heart.
It took until the
final minute of regulation for either team to score in 2021, when Lauren Wadas somehow got through four Iowa defenders to score the game-winner, upsetting the No. 3-ranked Hawkeyes in Iowa City. In 2022, the Wildcats and Hawkeyes met at Lakeside Field in a rematch decided by a penalty shootout. Wadas was the hero once more in 2023, when Northwestern spent 58 minutes either tied against or trailing Louisville before she finally put the ‘Cats up 3-2. Last season, Northwestern fell 1-0 to Virginia at halftime and Olivia Bent-Cole’s regulation game-winner was wiped off before Wadas once again put the ‘Cats through with an overtime goal.
This season, Northwestern faced a seemingly less-daunting opponent in its quarterfinal matchup. Despite a nine-game win streak and an upset of No. 4 regional hosts Virginia, the Miami (OH) RedHawks haven’t fared well against the Wildcats — before Sunday, their last three matchups were 3-1, 9-2 and 5-1 in NU’s favor. But those expecting another easy victory for the purple and white were instead treated to the exact opposite.
On Virginia’s Turf Field Sunday morning, the now-graduated Wadas wasn’t present to be Northwestern’s fourth-quarter maestro. But with 1:48 left in the fourth quarter and the score deadlocked at 2-2 since the start of the second, the Wildcats’ late-game magic came through once more. After inserting a penalty corner, Northwestern’s Grace Schulze fielded a pass from Ilse Tromp and sent a shot past three diving RedHawks, which rolled past the goal line by inches. It was all the ‘Cats needed to win 3-2 and book their ticket to the Final Four.
“That kid is as scrappy as you get. She’s one of our feistiest players in the circle,” Northwestern head coach Tracey Fuchs said of Schulze in October. “If she’s around the ball, good things are going to happen.”
The journey to Schulze’s goal wasn’t easy. After spending the majority of its season staving off opponents through dominating possession, Northwestern struggled early to keep the ball in the goal circle for long, as Miami’s nation-leading offense came out of the gates with an explosive press and transition game. Unable to hit connections early, the Wildcats relied on penalty corners to score goals. And while the strategy was successful for the most part, it wasn’t enough to stave off the RedHawks.
Northwestern opened scoring with a Laura Salamanca strike just over seven minutes in. Miami responded immediately with its own corner attempt and then a second one just three minutes after, which resulted in a deflected goal from Kylie Coughlin. Ella Kokinis gave the Wildcats a lead again with 29 seconds in the first, but it wouldn’t last long as Miami’s Malena Sabez scored on a penalty stroke, making the score 2-2 to open the second quarter.
If the first half was about Miami returning all of the punches Northwestern threw, the second half was an endless tug-of-war between the two teams. The Wildcats got better at controlling the game — their total shot count doubled Miami’s after the third quarter — but the RedHawks didn’t go away. Big runs from Miami’s midfield had Northwestern defenders like Tromp and Maja Zivojnovic fighting tirelessly on the backline, doing everything they could to push the ball out of Miami territory and into the midfield.
But as the game reached its closing stages, it was time for Northwestern’s postseason hot hand to have her moment.
First, Schulze generated the closest thing Northwestern had to an open play goal, intercepting Miami’s Coughlin with around four minutes remaining. She passed the ball to Bent-Cole, who faced a wide-open cage but missed just wide on her shot. On her game-winning corner, she could position herself by the right post as the inserter, allowing her to take balls from the center circle and put them in the back of the cage.
Schulze made the entry pass on five of Northwestern’s seven penalty corner attempts against Miami — a marked change from the majority of the 2025 and 2024 seasons, when NU’s leading scorer, Ashley Sessa, was the team’s main inserter on corners. But in hindsight, it was that change that set the stage for Schulze’s crowning moment.
After the regular season, Schulze was named second-team All-Big Ten, but not one of Northwestern’s five first-team honorees. But in elimination games, she’s slowly emerged as one of the Wildcats’ most reliable weapons. After winning the Big Ten Tournament’s Most Outstanding Player award, her late-game performance against the RedHawks only adds to her monumental playoff run.
But for a program as storied as Northwestern’s, the postseason is far from over. Its competition will only get harder as it heads to Durham to play No. 1 North Carolina in the NCAA semi-finals on Friday. The Tar Heels are the only team to defeat the Wildcats in the NCAA Tournament since 2020, and have pulled off several overtime and comeback victories against top-ten teams this season. If NU wants to take down the top seed, it must raise itself to a whole other level of play.
One characteristic of that level showed on Sunday though, one that is all too familiar to the team. That is, if all else fails, the Cardiac ‘Cats will get the job done.
