Field Hockey Opens ACC Play Friday With Top-5 Road Matchup

Friday, September 16

Louisville, Ky.

3 p.m.

North Carolina

Louisville

Katie Dixon and the Tar Heels open ACC play Friday afternoon at Louisville.

Photo by: Jeffrey A. Camarati

September 16, 2022 | Field Hockey

Game Notes Watch on ACCNX

The UNC field hockey team opens Atlantic Coast Conference play Friday afternoon with a top-five matchup at Louisville. Both the second-ranked Tar Heels and the fourth-ranked Cardinals head into the game with 6-0 records.

Game time is 3 p.m. at Louisville's Trager Stadium. The game will air on ACC Network Extra.

Heels vs. Cardinals
• Friday's game is the 17th matchup between UNC and Louisville. The Tar Heels lead the series 10-6, but the Cardinals won the most recent matchup, 3-2 in overtime on Oct. 22, 2021, in Chapel Hill.
• The Cards also won the last time the teams faced off in Louisville, 3-1 on Oct. 2, 2020. For UNC, the defeat ended a school-record 47-game winning streak that dated back to the start of the 2018 season.
• Louisville has won three of the five matchups on its home turf.
• In 2018, UNC won both the ACC Championship and the NCAA Championship at Trager Stadium. (Both were neutral-site games.)

Quick Hits
• UNC has opened the 2022 season with six wins: two at a neutral site in Winston-Salem, N.C., then two at home before hitting the road to California for the first true road games of the season. The Tar Heels beat California last Friday in Berkeley, 7-0, and won 6-0 at Stanford last Sunday.
• Although they have yet to play this season, the Tar Heels and Cardinals have spent time on the same turf. Both represented their conference in the ACC-Ivy Conference Crossover on Aug. 26 and 28th in Chapel Hill. The ACC teams each won matchups with both Princeton and Penn.
• UNC has shut out its last three opponents, outscoring Penn, Cal and Stanford 17-0.
• Carolina hit season highs in shots (24) and penalty corners (19) in the game against Cal.
• Through six games, the Tar Heels are outshooting opponents 113-30 and outscoring them 29-6.
• Eleven different players have scored at least one goal for UNC this season. After senior Erin Matson's seven goals, freshmen Ashley Sessa and Ryleigh Heck have contributed five each.
• With two goals on Friday at Cal, Matson moved into a tie for seventh place on the NCAA's all-time career goals list with 116.
• Four true freshmen have made starts for the Tar Heels. Forward Heck and midfielders Sessa and Sietske Brüning have started all six games. Goalkeeper Kylie Walbert started against Iowa, Penn and Stanford and played the second half of the Michigan, Princeton and Cal games.
• Senior Paityn Wirth had as many assists – three – in the game against Michigan as she did in the entire 2021 season. She now leads the team with five on the season.
• Sessa recorded a hat trick against Michigan in her first game as a Tar Heel.
• Matson and Meredith Sholder were voted by their teammates as the 2022 captains.
• Five members of the Carolina team are members of the 2022-23 U.S. National Team. Seniors Matson, Sholder and Wirth were named to the squad in July, along with freshmen Heck and Sessa.