Kelly Amonte Hiller coached Northwestern in 16 NCAA Final Fours before Friday, and it was always the same sprint to get to the weekend.
Amid all of the game prep and media obligations, the planning also involved travel and meals for trips to Maryland, New York, Massachusetts, North Carolina and Pennsylvania. The games were always on the East Coast, always a haul for the Midwest lacrosse power Amonte Hiller had built.
That will change this weekend when top-seeded Northwestern faces No. 4 seed Johns Hopkins at home at Martin Stadium in the first NCAA Division I women’s lacrosse semifinals hosted outside of the Eastern time zone. Northwestern was awarded the bid to be the championship-weekend host in January 2025 and 16 months later will be playing for a berth in what would be its fourth straight title game.
No. 2 North Carolina (18-1) and No. 3 Maryland (18-3) play in the first semifinal at 2 p.m. Friday, followed by Northwestern (17-3) versus Johns Hopkins (17-4) at 4:30 p.m.
At a pregame news conference Thursday at Walter Athletic Center in Evanston, Amonte Hiller said she was “speechless” when thinking about what it means to host the tournament, 21 years after she led the Wildcats to their first of eight national championships.
“As a lacrosse person, you always have to travel to the East Coast for recruiting tournaments. Everything is on the East Coast,” she said. “And just this one time to have it out here, and to see how well the sport is supported out here and how seriously it is taken and how our athletic director really got behind this. Mark (Jackson) has been just amazing.
“And then the amount of staff and people and volunteers that have really made this a special thing already. I really hope that it goes off tomorrow, and young people in this area and fans in this area really get to see how awesome this sport is.”
Amonte Hiller said the weekend is “a touch” more restful given her team’s familiarity with everything. And she and her players are hopeful they can draw a big crowd in purple.
Senior attacker Madison Taylor, who is second in Wildcats history with 468 career points behind Izzy Scane’s 483, said many NU alumni are expected to be in town for the game.
“We can’t stop smiling,” Taylor said. “We’re walking around and we can’t take the smile off our faces. It’s just incredible and incredible for the sport.”
Northwestern is the seventh team to play in a championship weekend it is hosting and looks to become the first team since Princeton in 2004 to have home-field advantage in the title game. Maryland was the last team to win a national championship at home in 1986.
It wasn’t a given the Wildcats — who lost to the Tar Heels in last year’s final — would get to this rare opportunity.
Northwestern enters the Final Four on a 12-game winning streak, a different team than the one that started the season, Taylor said.
The Wildcats lost three of their first eight games — to Colorado, Syracuse and Ohio State — and Amonte Hiller said there was a point where she wondered if they even would make the NCAA Tournament. The team had to “look deep inside and solve some things,” she said. But she thinks the players’ coachability has helped their resilience.
NU hasn’t lost since March 15, knocking off then-No. 1 North Carolina and then-No. 1 Maryland along the way and winning the Big Ten Tournament with victories over Michigan and Maryland. That resurgence solidified the top seed in the NCAA Tournament and games at home for as long as their run lasted.
“I think we really knew how special this group was but we just weren’t getting the results that we wanted,” Taylor said of the early-season bumps. “Once we had all those conversations and had that time to reflect, we were able to just go out there and just let it rip, and we saw what our potential could be. So then once we saw that, we were just like, why would we just stop there? Might as well just keep going, and we’ve had so much fun ever since.”
The Wildcats advanced to their seventh straight Final Four with a 17-5 win over James Madison in the second round and a 13-12, double-overtime victory over Colorado in a quarterfinal on Noel Cumberland’s free-position goal.
Goalie Jenika Cuocco said getting more time playing together has been a motivation.
“We have really bought into each other and done so much self-reflection that we want to play for each other and we want to play for even more time,” she said.
In the middle of this winning streak was Northwestern’s first meeting against fellow Big Ten competitor Johns Hopkins, a 16-12 NU win behind Taylor’s six goals on March 29 at Ryan Fieldhouse.
Amonte Hiller noted both teams went into that game under challenging circumstances.
Northwestern spent the previous eight days crisscrossing the country, playing at Oregon and then at North Carolina. Amid airport security delays in Baltimore in March, Johns Hopkins was forced to take a bus trip to Evanston for the game.
“So it will be cool to see a fresh Hopkins and a fresh Northwestern on a week’s rest and see us battle it out,” Amonte Hiller said. “I know they have improved a ton and found themselves. They have incredible personnel from top to bottom, and I think we’ve been finding ourselves too. I think we’re really, really battle-tested and I hope that that proves to help us tomorrow night.”
Johns Hopkins, led by Ava Angello’s 78 goals and 28 assists this season, also advanced in a nail-biter quarterfinal, topping Stony Brook 13-12.
Northwestern’s familiarity with Johns Hopkins runs deeper than sharing a conference.
Blue Jays coach Tim McCormack was an assistant under Amonte Hiller from 2014-19. They described each other as “family” on Thursday. Amonte Hiller’s children were in McCormack’s wedding.
‘Big Ten Dominance’: A look at the NCAA championships the conference has won this school year
Amonte Hiller said she was “so proud” of McCormack leading Johns Hopkins to its first Final Four. McCormack said he is “forever grateful” for the opportunity and lessons he learned from Amonte Hiller, which he said started with always learning and growing and never getting complacent.
“I got here and I was so excited to learn from the best and watch the best, just thinking, ‘This is a script, right? She’s got it. She’s got this figured out,’” McCormack said. “But that was so far from the truth. She was always seeking to be better. There was always a tweak, a change, something new that she was after. I took so much from that, still do to this day.”
One thing that hasn’t changed, however, is Northwestern’s dominance at home.
The Wildcats are 38-0 under Amonte Hiller in NCAA Tournament home games and haven’t lost at their home outdoor facility since 2019.
Blue Jays players acknowledged the challenge of facing NU on its home turf, but Angello said they heard from a lot of Johns Hopkins alums that also would be in attendance supporting them.
Amonte Hiller hopes the entire tournament shines for those in attendance this weekend in Evanston.
“My life has been changed by this sport,” Amonte Hiller said. “I feel like the luckiest person, and I feel honored to have brought myself to the Midwest and have had a little bit of an impact on spreading it this way.”
NCAA lacrosse championships
Women
Martin Stadium, Evanston
Friday’s semifinals
- (2) North Carolina vs. (3) Maryland, 2 p.m., ESPNU
- (1) Northwestern vs. (4) Johns Hopkins, 4:30 p.m., ESPNU
- Championship: 11 a.m. Sunday, ESPN
Men
Scott Stadium, Charlottesville, Va.
Saturday’s semifinals
- (1) Princeton vs. Duke, 11 a.m., ESPN2
- (2) Notre Dame vs. (6) Syracuse, 1:30 p.m., ESPN2
- Championship: noon Monday, ESPN
