A whistle cuts through Daniel Powter’s “Bad Day,” which is being blasted over the speaker system at Trienens Hall practice facility.
As the Northwestern women’s lacrosse team begins to sprint toward the opposite end of the field, Powter’s song couldn’t seem less fitting.
The motion of the girls in pinnies and sneakers more closely resembles a well-choreographed dance than a frantic attempt to bury the ball in the net. From the sideline, sitting cross-legged on the turf with their parents, 14-year-old girls watch with wide eyes.
This is as good as it gets.
The Wildcats are fresh off a seventh national title in their last eight tries and find themselves ranked No. 1 in the country heading into head coach Kelly Amonte Hiller’s 13th season. When the ‘Cats take the field this year, their jerseys will be adorned with seven stars, one for each NCAA championship.
But though the current accolades may seem innumerable – including seven American Lacrosse Conference titles, eight Final Four appearances and five Tewaaraton Trophy winners in the past seven seasons – it hasn’t always been this way. Just 13 years ago, this program didn’t exist.
“It’s pretty incredible,” said senior Taylor Thornton, Lacrosse Honda Sports Award winner and Tewaaraton Trophy finalist, “and you tend to forget about it.”
When the Northwestern women’s lacrosse team was first formed in 1982 under coach Cindy Timchal, the team enjoyed relative success. In the first seven years of the program’s existence, Timchal led the team to five NCAA Tournament appearances, including a quarterfinal run in 1984.
But the good fortune wouldn’t last. The team won just seven games from ‘90 to ‘92 while changing coaches three times. With a tightening budget, the decision was made to cut the program in 1993.
That might have been the end of the story.
After all, lacrosse is an East Coast sport. It’s one that takes a requires a link into the recruiting pipeline more so than most other sports. All the way out in the Midwest, there simply wasn’t enough money to keep a Northwestern lacrosse team without dipping into school funds.
Sure, Northwestern’s football team has dramatically improved over the past few seasons. Yes, the basketball team is ostensibly on its way toward an NCAA Tournament berth in the coming years despite a miserable 2012-13 campaign. Still, no one could make the argument that Northwestern would ever put athletics above academics. Even though the program was eventually renewed, a tradition of purely average lacrosse would have surprised no one.
Except there was one problem. Amonte Hiller doesn’t do “average.”
“It was gonna take a lot of work,” Amonte Hiller said, “and it was gonna take the girls believing in themselves, but I was pretty determined. I really knew that we could do it. I had a vision of what I wanted it to be. [You] just kinda put your head down ‘til it happens.”
It did not happen the first season or the second. Then again, Welsh-Ryan Arena wasn’t built in a day.
Though Amonte Hiller said she recruited largely through normal means, she did find two women on campus who had never played before. Running by the lakefill, twins Courtney and Ashley Koester were recruited in the fall of 2001, going on to become All-Americans. Ashley was even named a semi-finalist for the Tewaaraton Trophy in 2005.
Though Northwestern would fall to eventual national champion Virginia in a 2004 NCAA Tournament quarterfinal, the ‘Cats went 15-3 and proved to Amonte Hiller and the country that the Wildcats meant business.
After a strong class of freshmen recruits that Amonte Hiller calls “the icing on the cake,” the ‘Cats were ready to compete with the biggest names in college lacrosse.
“I think that [the team] realized that they were that close to the eventual national champs in Virginia, and that next year was just all determination,” Amonte Hiller said.
In 2005, Northwestern capped off a perfect 21-0 season with a 13-10 victory over the Cavaliers. Just four years after bringing women’s lacrosse back to Evanston, Northwestern was a national champion.
Then in 2006, they did it again. And again in 2007. And 2008. And 2009.
The Wildcats finally slipped up in the 2010 national title game against Amonte Hiller’s alma mater, the Maryland Terrapins.
“Anytime you have a setback, it inspires you to do better,” Amonte Hiller said, “whether it’s a regular season game or the loss against Maryland in the championship game. I think that was a tough one to take.”
For a team that improved so dramatically and so quickly, Amonte Hiller said she must ensure that the players still understand the hard work that goes into winning a title. Nothing is given to Northwestern, not with the target the team carries on its back.
“The biggest thing is that you have to really ground the players now and let them understand that it’s not just gonna happen, they have to make it happen.” she said. “In the old days, our players had a chip on their shoulder ‘cause they were trying to prove something. Sometimes, now, when the kids come in, they expect to win.”
Yet though this expectation for success may sometimes cause complacency, it is also the reason why these young girls come to watch practice, eager to someday play for the Wildcats and win a national championship of their own. The product Amonte Hiller has created allows the Wildcats to replace Tewaaraton Trophy winners like Hannah Nielsen and Shannon Smith.
But if the Wildcat coach is looking ahead to another possible title, Amonte Hiller sure isn’t showing it. She’s only worried about the next game, she said. While she may be willing to reflect on the past, the future of this team will be left on the field. The 196 wins and seven national titles as a coach aren’t what matter.
“To me, it’s about the relationships you build with the players and the mentoring that you do everyday,” she said.
For players like Thornton, it’s this mentality that helped them choose Northwestern in the first place.
“What drew me to [Northwestern] was Kelly and the team,” Thornton said. “If I didn’t like the team, I didn’t care if they’d won thousands of championships, I wasn’t coming.”
Back at practice, as the Wildcats prepare to embark on another national title chase by grooving out to Edgar Winter Group’s “Free Ride,” Amonte Hiller took time to remember just how impressive this climb to glory has been for the program.
“It’s really hard to do,” Amonte Hiller said, “I didn’t really put myself to a time table, in terms of what I wanted for this team. But I think our staff really focused in on this specific moment, and it just worked out…We were lucky that our stars were aligned.”
Now, the stars certainly are aligned. Seven of them – one for each title – horizontally on the back of every jersey.
And they’re playing for another.