Field Hockey Set To Open Season With 1-vs-2 Matchup

Friday, August 27

Iowa City, Iowa

2 PM (ET)

North Carolina

Michigan

Senior Eva Smolenaars and the Tar Heels open the season Friday vs. MIchigan.

Photo by: Jeffrey A. Camarati

August 26, 2021 | Field Hockey

Game Notes Watch on BTN+

IOWA CITY, Iowa – The North Carolina field hockey team will kick off the 2021 season the same way the last one ended: by facing off against Michigan. The top-ranked Tar Heels and the No. 2 Wolverines, who met in the NCAA Championship game in May, meet again on Friday in Iowa City, Iowa, as part of the Big Ten/ACC Challenge. Game time at Iowa's Grant Field is 2 PM ET/1 PM CT.

No. 3 Iowa and No. 11 Wake Forest play in the second game of the Challenge on Friday at 4:30 p.m. The teams trade opponents on Sunday with Carolina taking on the host Hawkeyes at noon ET.

Both of UNC's games will be broadcast by Big Ten Network +.

UNC enters the season as the three-time defending NCAA Champion, with titles in 2018, 2019 and 2020 and a total of nine overall. The Tar Heels finished the extended 2020-21 season 19-1, playing all Atlantic Coast Conference opponents up until the NCAA Tournament. Carolina won both ACC and NCAA titles on its home turf at Karen Shelton Stadium last season.

Tar Heels vs. Wolverines
• UNC leads the series with the Wolverines 25-5.
• UNC won 4-3 in overtime in the teams' last meeting, the 2020 NCAA Championship game on May 9, 2021.
• UNC and Michigan have opened the season against each other in 16 of the past 18 years, with the exceptions 2013 (when the Tar Heels and Wolverines faced off in the second weekend of the season, in UNC's third game) and last season, when Carolina played only ACC opponents in the fall. The first season-opening meeting between the two was in 2002.
• The teams' last regular-season matchup was the 2019 season opener in Ann Arbor, Mich., as part of the Challenge. Michigan led 1-0 early, but Erin Matson scored a hat trick and Marissa Creatore added one more to power the Tar Heels to a 4-2 comeback win.

Matson in the Record Books
• Senior forward Erin Matson, the 2019 and 2020 National Player of the Year and Honda Award winner, enters the weekend within striking distance of UNC's career records for scoring and goals. She heads into Friday's game with 82 career goals, two behind all-time leader Cindy Werley's 84. Her current total of 207 career points is five behind Werley's 212.