Northwestern University Athletics
2005 Season In Review
6/15/2005 12:00:00 AM | Women's Lacrosse
June 15, 2005
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EVANSTON, Ill. - Things have finally started to settle down, but the glow and the euphoria still remain.
If you were involved in the 2005 Northwestern women's lacrosse season, you know you still find yourself re-living recent history. Every now and then, you pop in a tape of the CSTV broadcast from that May 22 championship game against Virginia. Maybe you have replayed the final seconds of the WNUR broadcast from the NUsports.com website. Or perhaps it is a glance at the numerous articles and columns written about this team and what it has done for the sport of lacrosse.
There is no harm in doing all this stuff, of course, because every time the result is the same -- Northwestern wins.
That was the theme in 2005: Northwestern wins. The Wildcats played 21 games, and won all 21. In the NCAA Championship, NU met four foes and vanquished all of them. It was that kind of year.
Not bad for a program that was only in its fourth year as a varsity program. For the first time, head coach Kelly Amonte Hiller will say goodbye in June to women to whom she sold her dream of what Northwestern women's lacrosse could be. It is safe to say they graduate having realized that dream -- and maybe even adding on to it.
"Knowing how great it is to win as a player, you want to help your players feel that way," said Amonte Hiller, who won two championships at Maryland and is the first woman to win NCAA Division I titles as a player and a coach. "From my perspective, I think we had a national title in our minds the last couple of years -- every year, it seemed to become more realistic.
"We had great seniors," she acknowledged. "To be honest, I still get emotional just talking about how great it is that they were able to win it. They had always believed that it could happen, from the moment they got here, but it seemed only this season that as things went on others began to believe it could happen."
The Wildcat bandwagon undoubtedly grew as the season progressed. Northwestern lacrosse was a story that grabbed headlines across the country in April and May, from USA Today to Sports Illustrated, from The New York Times to The Chicago Tribune and the numerous Chicagoland TV stations that latched onto this group of precocious young women and the improbable chapter they were penning for the sport's annals -- this fourth-year program that became the first team outside the Eastern Time Zone to be ranked No. 1 and, later, win an NCAA lacrosse title (male or female, any Division).
"The entire community at Northwestern and in Chicago was so supportive and appreciative," said Amonte Hiller. "I felt like we had a lot of people rooting for us, both in the area and at the national level, fans who love the game of lacrosse."
Coming off a 15-3 season in 2004, the `Cats were ranked third in the preseason behind Virginia and Princeton, and they made an immediate statement in the season opener. Down, 5-1, at No. 8 North Carolina, NU was able to shut the Tar Heels down in the second half and come back for a 6-5 victory that would end up being the closest game of 2005.
"I knew after that game how huge a win it was, but I don't think our players understood the magnitude of what they had done," said Amonte Hiller. "That was a pivotal win for us, it was the season opener and we were still getting Kristen (Kjellman) back into the fold from her mono so she was not nearly at 100 percent.
"That game was indicative of how our players acted all season -- they never got caught up in what people around them were saying," she continued. "They just went out and played and stayed focused on the things they needed to do to win."
A few weeks later, another test came in the form of an early-season meeting with regional rival Notre Dame. With last year's NCAA first-round win still fresh in the minds of many, the Wildcats gained the upper hand early, allowed the Irish to climb back into a tie, but then rattled off five straight goals en route to an 18-11 win.
"Our rivalry with Notre Dame is so strong, you know each team is going to give a great effort and it will be a tough game," said Amonte Hiller. "They played us hard and really came after us. I felt like that game was where we started to mesh offensively."
Wins against Ohio, Pennsylvania and California followed over the next few weeks. Meanwhile, Virginia and then Princeton were both losing for the first time this season -- in both cases to Northwestern's American Lacrosse Conference rival Penn State. Those losses led to March 21, a date that will live in infamy (if you're an NU lax fan) as the date the Wildcats took over the top spot in the IWLCA poll for the first time in history.
It was a position Northwestern would not relinquish.
To be honest, the team's first game at No. 1 was a shaky one. Playing a fired-up New Hampshire squad on the road, NU got off to a quick start (4-0) but allowed UNH to not only come back, but take a second-half lead. It was not until the `Cats were down 8-6 that they settled down, scoring eight of the game's last nine goals to win, 14-9.
Amazingly, it would be the last time the entire season Northwestern would trail in the second half of a game.
"UNH was a huge game for us," said Amonte Hiller. "A lot of the UNH women work camps with our players, so they all know each other, and they came out and played their hearts out against us. I was pleased to see us weather the storm; that is what great teams are about."
Three more wins followed, against Rutgers, UConn and Stanford. With the No. 1 ranking still intact, Northwestern entered arguably the key stretch of the season -- a two-week period that had them facing off with No. 2 Duke, No. 8 Penn State, and at No. 11 Johns Hopkins.
"Prior to the Duke game, we talked a lot about playing hard and being competitive," said Amonte Hiller. "We felt like if we did those things, the results would take care of themselves."
Mission accomplished. On a gorgeous day at the Thomas Athletic Complex, in front of a huge crowd, Northwestern sent a message to the lacrosse-playing nation that it was for real with a 16-11 win over Duke. Five days later, the `Cats scored the first six goals of the game and led by as many as 11 in dismantling the Nittany Lions (14-6). The final salvo was sent a week after that, when Northwestern arrived in Baltimore -- the heart of lacrosse country -- and impressed the locals by shutting out Hopkins for the game's final 46 minutes in a 12-3 win.
"I look back at the Duke game, and that was the first complete game we played," said Amonte Hiller. "I think after that game the women were like, `wow, this stuff really does work.' They really bought in after that, and it gave us a lot of momentum going into the Penn State and Johns Hopkins games."
Northwestern followed up the Hopkins game with an 18-8 win at Vanderbilt and an 18-5 shelling of Ohio State, which closed out the regular season and clinched the ALC title and the conference's automatic bid into the NCAA Championship. Despite receiving extremely bad news just the day before its first-round game -- that All-America attacker Laura Glassanos was injured and likely done for the season -- NU had little trouble with Mount St. Mary's, 16-3.
That set up a quarterfinal showdown with Princeton, who arrived in Evanston boasting arguably the best women's lacrosse resume of the 21st century -- the Tigers had won NCAA titles in 2002 and 2003, and played in the 2004 championship game. However, in a game that was atypical for its deliberate player, Northwestern emerged victorious, 8-6, in front of more than 1,200 fans.
"That was the biggest game of the year as far as I am concerned," said Amonte Hiller. "We had worked hard all year to gain that advantage, so to be able to get a game like that at home was huge. We had to make a big adjustment playing a team of Princeton's caliber without Laura, but Sarah Albrecht came up huge and we had a great team effort. Our resilience as a team really showed up in that game."
Having cleared that hurdle, NU made its way to Annapolis and this year's NCAA Championship. The rest, of course, is well-documented -- an 8-4 win over Dartmouth in the semifinal, followed by a 13-10 win over defending champion Virginia that left the `Cats on top of the lacrosse world.
"Being at the Naval Academy and playing in that stadium for the semifinal and final was just awesome," said Amonte Hiller, who will play there later this month for the U.S. Team at the IFWLA World Cup. "The Navy men's coach talked to the team about the honor of playing in that stadium, and that was pretty special. Then, at the games, it felt like we were the home team, we had so many fans and so much support. It was an incredible weekend."
It was not until the season was over that people had a chance to look back and sift through the wreckage Northwestern had left in its wake:
*The Wildcats led the nation in scoring offense (15.10), more than a goal-per-game better than the second-place team in that category (Le Moyne at 13.94).
*The Wildcats led the nation in scoring defense (5.90), nearly a goal better than the second-place team in that category (Dartmouth at 6.89).
*The Wildcats led the nation in scoring margin (+9.19), a full 2.54 goals ahead of the second-place team in that category (Boston University at 6.65).
*The Wildcats led the nation in draw controls per game (15.14), a full 1.33 better than the second-place team in that category (William & Mary at 13.81).
*The Wildcats shattered the school records for goals (317), assists (158) and points (475) in a season.
Given the success the team had, it was no surprise to see Amonte Hiller and her players recognized at the national level. Amonte Hiller was named National Coach of the Year by both the IWLCA and womenslacrosse.com, while sophomore midfielder Kjellman was honored with the Honda Award as the nation's top player (in a vote of NCAA member schools) and also finished as a finalist for the Tewaaraton Trophy (lacrosse's version of the Heisman Trophy).
Kjellman also was named the IWLCA Midfielder of the Year, while senior Courtney Koester was the IWLCA Defender of the Year. Both also received consensus first-team All-America, along with junior Lindsey Munday who finished the season just .02 points-per-game shy of leading the nation in scoring. Munday shattered the NU record for assists in a season (54, well ahead of the previous record of 32) and also set the mark for points in a season with 107.
Sarah Albrecht, Ashley Koester and Glassanos were bestowed All-America honors in 2005, as well, while senior goalkeeper Ashley Gersuk established the NU mark for saves in a career (526) en route to being named ALC Goalie of the Year. At the conference level, five Northwestern players were first-team All-ALC, a program best, while Kjellman was ALC Player of the Year and Amonte Hiller was ALC Coach of the Year for the second-straight season.
