Tar Heels Set For Weekend at Princeton

Friday, September 3

Princeton, N.J.

2:30 PM

North Carolina

Princeton

The Tar Heels last met Princeton in the 2019 NCAA Championship game.

Photo by: Jeffrey A. Camarati

September 3, 2021 | Field Hockey

Game Notes

PRINCETON, N.J. – The North Carolina field hockey team returns to action on Friday in search of its first win of the season, traveling to face a pair of Ivy League rivals at Princeton. The Tar Heels face the host Tigers at 2:30 p.m. on Friday and the Penn Quakers at 11 a.m. Sunday, with both games set for Princeton's Bedford Field.

The games are part of the ACC-Ivy Conference Crossover, with Louisville the other team representing the Atlantic Coast Conference. The Cardinals face Penn on Friday at noon and Princeton on Sunday at 1:30 p.m.

The Tigers are returning to action after a 649-day absence, as the Ivy League didn't play during the 2020 season. Princeton's last game was the 2019 NCAA Championship matchup with UNC, which Carolina won 6-1. The teams met twice during the 2019 season, with the other a 4-3, come-from-behind Tar Heel win at Karen Shelton Stadium. Carolina also hosted Penn in 2019, winning 6-0 at home.

Noting the Tar Heels:
• For the second Friday in a row, UNC is meeting a team it hasn't played since meeting in an NCAA championship game. Last Friday it was Michigan, which Carolina beat in May for the 2020 title. (The Wolverines won the rematch 3-2.) This week it's Princeton, which the Tar Heels beat for the 2019 title on Nov. 24, 2019, the Tigers' most recent game.
• UNC is 0-2 for the first time since 1992. The Tar Heels fell on the road to No. 2 Michigan and No. 3 Iowa to open the season last weekend in Iowa City, Iowa. It marked the first back-to-back losses for Carolina since the 2013 season. That year, UNC lost two games in a row on two occasions. The Tar Heels haven't lost three in a row since 2006.
• 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 83 career goals, one behind all-time leader Cindy Werley's 84. Her current total of 207 career points is five behind Werley's 212.
• Matson and Cassie Sumfest were voted by their teammates as the 2021 captains. Matson serves as captain and Sumfest as vice captain.
• This is the second of three weekends UNC will spend on the road before playing at home for the first time on Sept. 19.

Tar Heels vs. Tigers
• UNC leads the series with Princeton 12-3.
• The teams last met in the 2019 NCAA Championship game, which UNC won 6-1 on Nov. 24, 2019, in Winston-Salem, N.C.
• The teams' last regular-season matchup was a thriller in Chapel Hill on Sept. 6, 2019, in this same ACC/Ivy event. In Carolina's home opener that season, the top-ranked Tar Heels scored three unanswered goals in the final 5:01 to beat No. 5 Princeton 4-3. The gamewinner came with 24 seconds to play in regulation.
• The last meeting in Princeton was on Sept. 1, 2017, when UNC won 2-0. Meredith Sholder, then a freshman and now a Carolina redshirt senior, scored the gamewinner 3:36 into the contest as she made her first career start.
• This year's Tiger coaching staff includes a face very familiar to Tar Heel fans: Caitlin Van Sickle, a three-time first-team All-America honoree at UNC, is in her first year as a Princeton assistant coach. The ACC Defensive Player of the Year in her sophomore through senior seasons, she was a member of the U.S. team that competed in the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio.
Van Sickle's mark on the UNC program continues as each year the team's top defensive player is honored with the Caitlin "Poppy" Van Sickle Defensive Player of the Year Award. Last season's winner, for the second year in a row, was All-America goalkeeper Amanda Hendry.

Tar Heels vs. Quakers
• UNC leads the series with Penn 4-0.
• The teams last met at the start of the 2019 season, when the Tar Heels hosted the ACC/Ivy Conference Crossover in Chapel Hill. UNC won 6-0 on Sept. 8, 2019. Current seniors Erin Matson and Eva Smolenaars both scored, with Matson also adding three assists for a total of five points in the game, and Smolenaars assisting on Matson's goal to finish with three points.