University of North Carolina Athletics
Tar Heels Receive Record 33rd NCAA Tournament Bid
November 7, 2016 | Field Hockey
CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – North Carolina has received an at-large bid into the 2016 NCAA Field Hockey Championship and will travel to College Park, Md. to open play Saturday, facing Stanford in a first-round game. In the other first round game at that site, host Maryland will face the winner of a Wednesday play-in game between Monmouth and UMass. The winners meet Sunday for a spot in the NCAA semifinals.
“We're thrilled to be in the field and look forward to beginning play on Saturday,” said UNC coach Karen Shelton. “There's no question we have an extremely challenging road ahead of us. After a tough weekend, we'll give the team a day to rest tomorrow and then get to work preparing for a very tough Stanford team.”
The Tar Heels are 17-5 overall and ranked No. 5 nationally. They fell in the Atlantic Coast Conference championship game on Sunday afternoon, 4-2 to Virginia.
The top four seeds host first and second round games, and UNC has been part of that pool in each of the past six years. The last time the Tar Heels opened NCAA Tournament play on the road was 2009, when they played opening round games at Wake Forest and then returned there to win the most recent of six national championships in program history.
UNC is making its 14th consecutive NCAA Tournament appearance and 33rd overall in Shelton's 36th season as the Tar Heel coach. Carolina has made more NCAA Tournament appearances than any other program.
