University of North Carolina Athletics
Carolina Plays For NCAA Championship Sunday
November 20, 2016 | Field Hockey
NORFOLK, Va. – A season's worth of thrilling wins and disappointing losses, of early-morning conditioning and late-night bus rides, of serious film sessions and way-less-than-serious locker room dancing comes to a close Sunday, and the UNC field hockey team has the opportunity to cap it all with a celebration. The Tar Heels (20-5) meet Delaware (22-2) at 1 p.m. at Old Dominion's L.R. Hill Sports Complex and the winner will leave with the 2016 NCAA Championship trophy.
“We've prepared well,” UNC coach Karen Shelton said. “Our season and our schedule have gotten us ready for this moment. We're looking forward to it – I think our kids are loose, they're ready, they have experience. We've put ourselves in a good position to have a chance.”
The Tar Heels have made a yearly habit of putting themselves in that position – this is their eighth consecutive year in the final four. The program has won six national championships, with the most recent coming in 2009. In six years since then, UNC has finished as the NCAA runner-up four times and twice lost in the semis. Sunday, the Tar Heels get another shot at the pinnacle. They earned that opportunity with a 2-1 overtime win over Connecticut on Friday in the semifinals. Delaware, which is playing for its first NCAA title, advanced with a 3-2 win over Princeton.
UNC leads the series with Delaware 6-1, but the teams haven't met in several years. The last UNC-UD matchup was in 2014, when the Tar Heels won 5-1 in a September game on the Blue Hens' home turf. It's been two decades since Carolina and Delaware met in a neutral-site game.
“We have a great deal of respect for Delaware,” Shelton said “We've seen a lot of video on them. They're really tough and they pose a lot of problems for us – it's going to take our best effort to have a chance to beat them.”
