Winning 31-straight games from the start of the 2005 season until half-way through this season. Blowing out two top-10 teams this past weekend after returning home from a grueling six-game road trip. Oh, and doing a little thing like becoming the first school outside the Eastern Time Zone to win a national championship last spring.
One would think all of these things would earn Northwestern some respect and dismantle the long-standing East Coast bias in the world of lacrosse.
Nope.
“I still think we have some doubters and some skeptics, so we’re working hard to prove them wrong again,” junior forward Aly Josephs said.
Look no farther than down the sideline from the No. 2 Wildcats on Sunday, as Johns Hopkins coach Janine Tucker was a little less than laudatory after her No. 8 Blue Jays were routed 17-5.
Tucker called this year’s NU squad a “good” team, despite currently holding a three-game losing streak to NU.
She also declined to prognosticate on the future success of the Cats’ program because for Tucker and the rest of the teams on the East Coast, they would rather have NU fall right into Lake Michigan.
Coaches can say all the right things about “parity” doing great things for the game, but at the end of the day, it’s good to be on top of your sport.
When people think about lacrosse, they think about the East Coast. And with that comes a sort of ownership on the part of the Duke’s, Hopkins’ and North Carolina’s of the world.
“(NU) has done a nice job of showing us that all over the country there can be strong teams,” Tucker said.
Us? As in the great, almighty rulers of the game?
That domineering attitude is what’s at the heart of the East Coast bias. It shone through brightest when NU junior Kristen Kjellman was robbed of the Tewaaraton Trophy last June as the nation’s top player. The travesty of giving the award to Duke’s Katie Chrest cannot even begin to be explained any other way than those in control on the East Coast thinking the Cats were more fluke than powerhouse.
None of that really matters to NU coach Kelly Amonte Hiller, however. Even though she knows all about this inherent bias in the sport, having won two national championships as a two-time Player of the Year at Maryland, Amonte Hiller chooses to ignore the so-called experts who said the same level of success can’t be done in the West.
“If we would have focused on (the bias) last year, we would’ve never believed in ourselves enough to win a championship,” Amonte Hiller said. “That’s been our motto ever since I’ve gotten here, and that will continue. We focus on what we’re doing to be successful.”
While Amonte Hiller said she has noticed a difference in the way opponents approach the Cats this season – mostly in terms of aggressiveness to stem the Cats’ patented early rush – it may work out better if the East Coast continues to neglect the other half of the country.
Maybe people will finally begin to take notice if the Cats pick up title No. 2 in Boston over Memorial Day weekend.
But I’m not holding my breath, and neither will anyone else at NU.
Sports editor Zach Silka is a Medill junior. He can be reached at [email protected].
