This weekend may be the most exciting few days of Northwestern sports in our college careers. If you don’t know what I’m talking about (shame on you), by Monday women’s tennis and lacrosse may both be the top teams in the nation for the regular season.
Our lacrosse team, which has won the last three national championships, will host No. 17 Johns Hopkins on Friday and No. 11 North Carolina on Sunday, both at Lakeside Field.
Johns Hopkins is a conference rival, and will be back in a few weeks to play in the American Lacrosse Conference tournament, which will be played right here in Evanston after the regular season ends. Lacrosse hasn’t lost to Hopkins since it strung together the three national championships, and the Blue Jays will have to bring their best game if they want to compete with the Wildcats at home.
North Carolina is the last team to beat Northwestern, and one of two teams that has beaten Northwestern lacrosse in the last four years (Duke is the other). They beat our ‘Cats in the regular season opener last year. Since that game, Northwestern has 34 straight wins and one national title. The Tar Heels have themselves a distinguished honor after over a year of stewing over their last defeat; Northwestern is hoping to keep Carolina from having bragging rights for another season.
Northwestern lacrosse is, in short, amazing. These are the last two home games of the season before they take their show on the road against No. 8 Penn next Sunday. Go. There’s Chipotle on Friday!
Top-ranked women’s tennis (22-1) is looking to notch its 60th-straight win against a Big Ten opponent this weekend, when they face Michigan State, ranked No. 60, on Saturday at 2 p.m. More importantly, Northwestern is playing for the Big Ten regular season title, which they could wrap up at home this weekend. If they accomplish this, they will have won 10 straight conference titles. They already guaranteed themselves at least a shared title. If they win, they will surely be favorites to win the national championship. Whoa.
Freshman Maria Mosolova plays No. 1 for the ‘Cats. She’s on an eight-match win streak and is ranked No. 3 in the nation. Junior Georgia Rose is 14-3 for singles on the year and No. 9 in the country. Not bad.
So stop reading this! Go get your friends and tell them to go to the games with you this weekend — this could be the best weekend of sports we’ll ever get at Northwestern.