Will it be another three-peat for Karen Shelton’s field hockey program?
During a truncated Olympic sports season at Carolina, with multiple top-ranked teams, field hockey is going after its third straight NCAA championship beginning Friday at the stadium named for the Tar Heels’ Hall of Fame coach.
Shelton has padded her NCAA record 700-plus wins by qualifying for the COVID-delayed national tournament as the overall No. 1 seed. The tourney will be played in Chapel Hill, which is akin to the 1927 Yankees getting to host the entire World Series at Yankee Stadium.
Shelton has appeared to reinvent her program three times, winning her first four of eight NCAA titles in 1989 and then three straight from 1995-97. She won two more in 2007 and 2009 and led the Tar Heels back to the championship game in 2015 and ’16 before winning back-to-back titles in 2018 and 2019, while going 46-0.
Carolina went 8-1 in the abbreviated fall schedule before sweeping the ACC tournament championship, also in Chapel Hill. Play was suspended until the spring, with the 2020 post-season being pushed into the new year. Dominant Carolina completed the regular season with a 6-0 record, including earning the NCAA top seed with a 3-2 overtime victory over Wake Forest.
UNC will thus have a chance to win its third and fourth consecutive national championships in the 2021 calendar year with the new fall season expected to start in September. For now, the Tar Heels can accomplish a second NCAA three-peat, which has also been done twice by Old Dominion and once by Wake Forest in the sport.
They are heavily favored to win their first game against Miami of Ohio and move through the quarterfinals Sunday and the semifinals and championship game the following weekend, getting to practice on their home field and sleep in their own beds all the way.
Shelton has had so many great players over the years too long to list, but the current star is three-time ACC Player of the Year Erin Matson. Shelton also picked up her 11th ACC Coach of the Year award.
So the table is set for an incredible feat with the best team in the country playing at home. That will add some pressure, but Shelton’s program in its latest iteration seems up to the challenge.
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