It’s an 18-0 season.
The 2024 Northwestern field hockey team is officially undefeated in regular season play.
On Friday, NU defeated No. 4 Ohio State 2-1, claiming an 18-0 record for the program’s first-ever perfect season. It joins the 2021, 2009 and 2005 Northwestern lacrosse teams as the only NU sports teams to not suffer a loss in the regular season.
The ‘Cats were able to pull out the win even without Northwestern’s star graduate student Lauren Wadas, who scored the overtime game-winner against Michigan last week to clinch the Big Ten regular season title.
“I was thinking about the progression that this team has taken over my four years here,” Northwestern graduate student Annabel Skubisz said. “My freshman year we lost seven games, sophomore year was five, junior year was three, last year was two. So it’s been amazing to see the development that we’ve been able to capture every year. We approach every game not as like we deserve to win, but we have a high expectation of ourselves to win.”
The Wildcats got on the board early. Sophomore Piper Borz made a pass to sophomore Ashley Sessa from just inside the goal line, and Sessa shot the ball into the net as she slid toward the goal.
Sessa said that this specific play was something that she had practiced with the team a day prior.
“That one, we actually worked on in practice yesterday,” Sessa said. “We did a couple reps, and we implemented it perfectly where Piper had a beautiful track down [and] sent it across for a diving tip. Putting that into gameplay is great — I think Tracey [Fuchs] will be happy.”
Northwestern’s lead, however, did not last long. At the start of the second quarter, Ohio State was awarded a penalty stroke, and Makenna Webster shot the ball past Skubisz. The Wildcats immediately returned to pressuring the Buckeyes’ defense and fired six shots, but none were successful.
Sessa finally tapped in a goal off a penalty corner to put the score at 2-1 at the end of the second quarter. Sophomore Greta Hinke and senior Lauren Hunter assisted the game-winner.
Textbook
Sessa ➡️ Hunter ➡️ Hinke ➡️ Sessa https://t.co/d7PPZqJn1C pic.twitter.com/v1jv088s3i
— Northwestern Field Hockey (@NUFHCats) November 1, 2024
Neither team managed to score in the second half.
“I don’t think our corner execution was very good today,” Northwestern head coach Tracey Fuchs said. “But anytime you can draw corners, you have a 20 percent, 25 percent chance to score on them.
“But to not have it be our best day performance-wise and still come out and beat a very good team is nice.”
Although the Buckeyes started the third quarter with two shots from Katie Fitchner off penalty corners, Skubisz and the NU defense successfully halted both attempted. The end of the frame was dominated by the ‘Cats, who kept possession through two consecutive penalty corners and three shots of their own.
A similar trend followed into the fourth quarter, with NU attempting two more corners.
Ohio State had its last chance to tie the score with five minutes left, when Fitchner, once again, shot the ball twice. But, once again, the Northwestern defense stopped both attempts.
Graduate student Maddie Zimmer also played a part in keeping the ball away from OSU, often single-handedly getting the ball from one side of the field to the other.
“Maddie Zimmer is the glue in the midfield,” Fuchs said. “When things were starting to unravel a little bit, she gets the ball and she can just eliminate people.”
Northwestern will next head to College Park, Maryland this week to play in the Big Ten Tournament. As the No. 1 seed, it will have a first-round bye and face either No. 4 Rutgers or No. 5 Rutgers in the semi-finals on Friday.
“Now we head into season three,” Fuchs said. “We get the bye — sometimes in that first game, it takes a while to get going because everybody else has played. But certainly we’ll be well-rested and ready to go. And we’d love to vye for another trophy on Sunday.”