It took the Wildcats three years to go from a club team to the national quarterfinals. Northwestern lost a tight game to Virginia to close out that 2004 season, but it has not dropped a playoff game since.
To begin its pursuit of a fifth straight national title, NU faces a team with an arc very similar to its own: Massachusetts. Two seasons ago, a rookie head coach took the reins of the struggling program. She has her team in the NCAA tournament this year for the first time in a quarter-century – an impressive turnaround considering that the new coach still has players on the squad that she did not recruit.
It should not come as a shock that the coach of the Minutewomen, Alexis Venechanos, also served as a Cats’ assistant for the early part of their rise to greatness.
“She’s a serious competitor,” coach Kelly Amonte Hiller said. “It’s not surprising to me that she’s having this success.”
Venechanos spent three years under Amonte Hiller, coming aboard right after graduating from Maryland and being named the National Goalie of the Year as a senior. The Cats won national titles in each of Venechanos’ final two seasons before she moved on to Amherst, Mass.
NU boasts one of the country’s most talented and decorated senior classes, and Venechanos was key in bringing that group to Evanston. Now she has to figure out a way for her new players to beat her old ones, who comprise the top-seeded team in the tournament.
“It’s always great to play the best,” Venechanos said. “Coming from that program, I have tons of respect for them. The reason why I’m here is the success we had at Northwestern.”
Massachusetts won 15 games in Venechanos’ first two campaigns, just short of the team’s combined win total during the three seasons prior to her arrival. To compare, Amonte Hiller won 13 games in her first two years.
Venechanos still looks up to Amonte Hiller and, like most of college lacrosse, wants to follow the Cats’ blueprint for success.
“Kelly continues to be my mentor,” Venechanos said. “She really cares about the process of every little detail – in terms of the players, development, recruiting. Those are the things that are priceless and that I’m taking to my program.”
Though Venechanos coached NU’s current seniors for only one season, she still had a major effect on their development.
The former standout goalie was particularly helpful in tutoring Morgan Lathrop, at the time a raw talent. Now, Lathrop is one of the top netminders in the nation.
“She was definitely my first goalie mentor,” Lathrop said. “I came in without a lot of technique, and immediately she taught me that so I had a good base.”
The Minutewomen hosted the Cats earlier this season and lost resoundingly, 22-5. But Massachusetts has been a much different team since then, winning eight of its last nine games and capturing the Atlantic 10 crown. The Minutewomen’s only loss in the past six weeks was in double overtime.
Despite the final margin of the first matchup, Venechanos said she believes it was a beneficial experience for her squad.
“We’re familiar with each other,” she said. “We handled the intensity of the game the first time we played, but not so much the execution.”
And in the playoffs, regular season history is not always the best indicator of what will happen.
“Tournament time is so different,” Lathrop said. “Every game, it’s win or go home, so it just has a completely different vibe.”
