Jenny Levy remembers the moment well.
Under a pouring rain in Pittsburgh last spring, the UNC women’s lacrosse head coach turned away from watching her team practice and looked toward the bench. On it sat 10 Tar Heels. All were injured.
Carolina would finish that grueling season with a 10-7 record. Its seven losses were more than the Tar Heels had suffered in the previous four seasons combined. They lost in the first rounds of both the ACC and the NCAA Tournaments, the first time the program had failed to win a game in either competition since 2004.
For a team just two years removed from an undefeated national championship run, it was a humbling experience.
“A lot of people had a lot of joy beating us last year,” Levy told Chapelboro. “And that’s well-earned. But it still didn’t feel very good. And we also didn’t want to make last year a habit, or let it be known that it’s OK. We wanted to put the kibosh to that.”
It started with bringing that group of 10 back into the fold. Among those injured last season were defender Brooklyn Walker-Welch and attacker Chloe Humphrey. Walker-Welch was a freshman starter on UNC’s championship team in 2022 and had been named a preseason All-American ahead of 2024 before injuring her knee playing for Team Canada. The knee would keep her out for UNC’s entire season.
Chloe Humphrey is the younger sister of two Tar Heel teammates, Ashley and Nicole Humphrey. Chloe arrived in Chapel Hill as the No. 1 overall recruit in her class, carrying all the pomp and circumstance which comes with that lofty ranking. But her season, too, ended before it began: a stress reaction in the navicular bone in her foot – an injury which quite literally came from working too hard– kept her away from the game for nine months.
The returns of Humphrey and Walker-Welch, arguably UNC’s top offensive and defensive weapons, have been as advertised. This season, Humphrey leads her team and ranks third in the country with 64 goals, while Walker-Welch’s 21 ground balls and 14 caused turnovers are both best among all Tar Heel defenders. Carolina ranks second in the nation in scoring offense, first in scoring defense and first in scoring margin.
In her redshirt freshman season, Chloe Humphrey is leading UNC with 64 goals through 15 games. (Image via UNC Athletic Communications)
UNC is a perfect 15-0 entering the ACC Tournament. Of those 15 games, 11 have been decided by double digits, including an 18-6 win against No. 8 Duke in the regular-season finale last week. The Blue Devils were the eighth ranked team to fall victim to the Tar Heel buzzsaw; others include No. 5 Florida, No. 4 Syracuse, No. 3 Northwestern and No. 1 Boston College. The win against the top-ranked Eagles, a 12-11 thriller, slingshot then-No. 2 UNC past BC in the polls and into the top spot.
The scorched-earth campaign is no accident. Chloe Humphrey said it was born out of the frustration of last year, when the Tar Heels were physically unable to field their best team. Now, the results speak for themselves.
“We have a lot of receipts we want to cash,” Humphrey told Chapelboro. “That’s driven our motivation this year. Every game, we don’t take [it] lightly. We want to make every team think that they can’t stand a chance against us, which I think we’ve done pretty well this year.”
That competitive drive isn’t lost on Levy, a former player herself. She’s the only coach the women’s lacrosse team has ever had, taking the job just two years after graduating from Virginia and building a program in Chapel Hill from scratch. Now a three-time national champion, Levy is accustomed to having a target on her back.
“A lot of people will bring their A-game against us, because we’re a measuring stick for them,” she said. “We try to be very humble but also very respectful of our opponents so we can give them our best shot, so they know what that feels like.”
So far this spring, UNC’s best shot has been all but untouchable. Only Boston College and Northwestern, the consensus No. 2 and No. 3 teams in the land, have led the Tar Heels in the second half this season. Against BC, Carolina had to dig out of a 4-0 hole in the first quarter and didn’t lead until the fourth, yet still found a way to win.
Jenny Levy celebrates her team’s ACC regular-season championship following an 18-6 win at Duke last week. (Image via UNC Athletic Communications/Anthony Sorbellini)
The Tar Heels enter the postseason as a championship favorite. Levy knows what it takes to win the big ones, and tries to preach the omnipresent sports virtue of “one game at a time” to her players. Humphrey has taken that literally.
“In the Notes app, I check off every game,” Humphrey said. “I look at my schedule, I see the next one up. After it’s over, I check it off. It’s kind of like a ‘win checklist.’ I don’t expect a loss in there.”
There’s a touch of cockiness, for sure. But as Levy would say, it’s well-earned: the Tar Heels still haven’t lost a game when Humphrey suits up. Walker-Welch, the championship veteran who is easily recognizable by the massive knee brace she wears during games, provided more of a big-picture perspective.
“It’s hard to describe this team. They’re every single word plus more,” she said, “and it’s hard to really encapsulate it into one word. We come out here and give it our all for everyone on this team, everybody who puts on the Carolina jersey, everybody who’s come in the past. It’s just indescribable.”
The return of Brooklyn Walker-Welch has elevated UNC’s defense to the best in the country. (Image via UNC Athletic Communications/Jeffrey A. Camarati)
It is difficult to boil down an undefeated regular season to just one word. Levy, ever the strategist, used “defense.” Humphrey, for her part, immediately went with “revenge.” The fiery youngster and her Hall of Fame head coach haven’t exactly captured lightning in a bottle; this is UNC’s third undefeated regular season in the last five years, after all. But that duo has helped engineer a renaissance of sorts for a program which fell well short of its incredibly lofty standards last spring.
And so, the revenge tour roars on. Since the Boston College game, UNC has been the unanimous No. 1 team in America. But the Eagles, as well as a host of other upset-minded foes, are still out there. A potential second meeting with BC in the ACC Tournament (and a third in the NCAA Tournament), looms large.
The Tar Heels will see plenty more measuring sticks in the coming weeks.
Featured image via UNC Athletic Communications/Anthony Sorbellini
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