The Northwestern Wildcats field hockey team is the intercollegiate field hockey program representing

Northwestern University Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston, Illinois. Founded in 1851, Northwestern is the oldest chartered university in Illinois and is ranked among the most prestigious academic institutions in the world. Charte ...

. The school competes in the

Big Ten Conference The Big Ten Conference (stylized B1G, formerly the Western Conference and the Big Nine Conference) is the oldest Division I collegiate athletic conference in the United States. Founded as the Intercollegiate Conference of Faculty Representati ...

in Division I of the

National Collegiate Athletic Association The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is a nonprofit organization that regulates student athletics among about 1,100 schools in the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. It also organizes the athletic programs of colleges ...

(NCAA). The Northwestern field hockey team plays its home games at Lakeside Field on the university campus in

Evanston, Illinois Evanston ( ) is a city, suburb of Chicago. Located in Cook County, Illinois, United States, it is situated on the North Shore along Lake Michigan. Evanston is north of Downtown Chicago, bordered by Chicago to the south, Skokie to the west, ...

. The Wildcats have won six regular-season conference titles, one conference tournament championship, and have appeared in the NCAA tournament 17 times, advancing to the Final Four on four occasions. In 2021, the Wildcats won their first NCAA tournament. The team is currently coached by

Tracey Fuchs Tracey Claire Fuchs (born November 3, 1966, in Centereach, New York) is a former field hockey midfielder from the United States, who was a member of the US women's team that finished fifth at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia. She a ...

History

Field hockey has been a varsity sport at Northwestern University since 1980, although the school has fielded intercollegiate teams since 1975. From 1981 to 1988 and again since 1992, the Wildcats have played in the

. Between 1989 and 1991, Northwestern was a member of the Midwestern Collegiate Field Hockey Conference (MCFHC). The university also considers its 1977 and 1978 teams to have competed in the Big Ten, although field hockey was not a varsity sport at Northwestern for either of these seasons. As a Big Ten member, the Wildcats have won six regular-season conference titles as well as one conference tournament championship. Four of these Big Ten regular-season titles were won under the guidance of head coach Nancy Stevens, who lead the team from 1981 to 1989. Northwestern qualified for the NCAA tournament every year between 1983 and 1994 except for 1992, and it has reached the Final Four on four occasions. The Wildcats are currently coached by

. Prior to her tenure, Northwestern has been coached by Mary Ann Kelling (1975), Mary DiStanislao (1976–78), Sharon Drysdale (1979–80), Stevens (1981–89), Marisa Didio (1990–94 and 2000–03), Debra Brickey (1995–97), Diane Loosbrock (1998–99), and Kelly McCollum (2004–08).

Season-by-season results

''Season-by-season results through the end of the 2022 season''

Awards and accolades

Conference championships

Northwestern has won six conference titles, all in the

. Four of their championships were won during the tenure of head coach Nancy Stevens in the 1980s.

Honda-Broderick Cup The Honda-Broderick Cup is a sports award for college-level female athletes. The awards are voted on by a national panel of more than 1000 collegiate athletic directors. It was first presented by Tom Broderick, an American owner of a women's sports ...
winners

All-Americans

Olympians

''Awards and accolades through the end of the 2014 season''

Stadium

Northwestern has played its home games at Lakeside Field since its construction in 1997. Located on the shore of

Lake Michigan Lake Michigan is one of the five Great Lakes of North America. It is the second-largest of the Great Lakes by volume () and the third-largest by surface area (), after Lake Superior and Lake Huron. To the east, its basin is conjoined with that o ...

, the field is part of the university's $3.5-million Leonard B. Thomas Athletic Complex on the north end of its main campus in Evanston. Lakeside Field features an

AstroTurf AstroTurf is an American subsidiary of SportGroup that produces artificial turf for playing surfaces in sports. The original AstroTurf product was a short-pile synthetic turf invented in 1965 by Monsanto. Since the early 2000s, AstroTurf has ...

playing field that was installed in 2015 and a seating capacity of 300, as well as a permanent scoreboard, a sound system, and lighting that allows for the playing of night games. The venue has hosted the Big Ten Field Hockey Tournament three times, in 2002, 2004, 2018. Lakeside Field is located adjacent to Lenny and Sharon Martin Stadium, previously also known as Lakeside Field, which is home to Northwestern's

women's lacrosse Women's lacrosse (or girls' lacrosse), sometimes shortened to lax, is a sport with twelve players on the field at a time (including the goalkeeper). Originally played by indigenous peoples of the Americas, the modern women's game was introduce ...

, men's soccer, and

women's soccer Women's association football, more commonly known simply as women's football or women's soccer, is a team sport of association football when played by women only. It is played at the professional level in multiple countries and 176 national te ...

teams.

References

External links

* {{Big Ten Conference field hockey navbox