With a record of 18-0, the Tar Heels will enter the NCAA Tournament as the No. 1 overall seed for the second straight year. The UNC women’s lacrosse program has become one of the most dominant on campus, winning six straight ACC Tournaments and appearing in 17 straight NCAA Tournaments. Under head coach Jenny Levy, the only head coach in program history, the Tar Heels have appeared in nine of the last 12 Final Fours.
But despite that run of dominance, Carolina has come up short more often than not. The team won national titles in 2013 and 2016, but have been left frustrated in postseason play since then. Perhaps no season-ending loss stung more than last year’s, in which No. 1 overall seed Carolina entered the Final Four undefeated, only to lose to ACC foe Boston College.
The Tar Heels exacted revenge this year, defeating the Eagles on the road in the regular season and then soundly beating them in the ACC Championship this past weekend. The Tar Heels have won 45 of their last 46 games (including seven wins in the prematurely halted 2020 season), with the only loss being that Final Four defeat in 2021.
After Saturday night’s conference title win, Levy spoke on hitting the reset button for the NCAA Tournament.
“That’s really not that hard,” she said. “We’ve been in this situation quite a bit, and not that we take that for granted, but this team has fallen short on Memorial Day weekend. We always get a tough bracket. We always know our first round, our second round game and our quarterfinal game. All the games are hard.”
Star attacker Jamie Ortega won ACC Tournament MVP, and during the championship against Boston College, she broke the all-time conference record for career points, previously held by Jen Adams of Maryland.
“It’s such an honor to even be in the same sentence as Jen Adams,” said Ortega. “I remember growing up watching her play… she’s always been such a huge role model for me.”
Ortega is still searching for her first NCAA title, but acknowledged that for a younger generation of college lacrosse fans, Jamie Ortega is Jen Adams. Ortega noted that her impact off the field may even be more consequential than her play on it.
“I hope the young generation of girls and boys who watch women’s lacrosse can just see how we play and see how much fun we have, and how huge being a good teammate is,” she said. “I’m so happy that I can just impact even… if it’s five people or 100 people, it doesn’t matter to me. I really just want to leave my mark in Carolina [and] with the people watching the games.”
Ortega is certainly leaving her mark on the record books at Carolina and nationwide. On Thursday she and teammate Ally Mastroianni were named as two of five finalists for the Tewaaraton Award, given annually to the most outstanding player in collegiate lacrosse. No Tar Heel has ever won the award since it was first given out in 2001. Ironically enough, Adams was the first-ever winner of the honor.
Ortega and Mastroianni, each in their final collegiate seasons, would only grow their legends in Chapel Hill by taking home some big-time hardware, but it’s safe to say a national championship outweighs any individual accolade.
The hunger for a banner was also evident in fifth-year attacker Scottie Rose Growney. Growney scored 14 goals across UNC’s three ACC Tournament games and was named to the All-Tournament team. That run gave her a career-high 50 goals in 2022. After the game Saturday night, Growney, whose goal totals have steadily increased during her five years in Chapel Hill, explained what was behind her hot streak.
“It’s my last year. I don’t get another do-over,” she said. “So I’m really putting my heart on the field and making sure that I don’t have any regrets. And everything that I’m doing is for the team, [to] make sure that we can go far and get to championship weekend.”
Carolina’s road to championship weekend will begin this Sunday at Dorrance Field. The Tar Heels have a bye into the second round of the tournament, where they will face the winner of Virginia and USC. That game will begin at 12 p.m. The winner will advance to the NCAA quarterfinals, held at the home site of the higher-seeded team, before the tournament moves to the Final Four in Baltimore.
Featured image via UNC Women’s Lacrosse on Twitter
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