Three years ago, senior midfielder Maddie Zimmer hoisted the national championship trophy on Phyllis Ocker Field in Ann Arbor, Michigan, after guiding Northwestern to its first-ever national title.
She’ll walk with her teammates onto that same field Friday when the Wildcats (21-1, 8-0 Big Ten) take on UMass in the NCAA tournament semifinal.
Those three years in between have been nothing short of monumental for Zimmer. The two-time NFHCA All-American and Big Ten Player of the Year spent her summer in Paris competing with Team USA Field Hockey in the 2024 Summer Olympics.
She has played a key role in building NU into a perennial national title contender.
“We’re feeling pretty confident. We’ve been in this position a couple of times before, so I think that experience will be good for us,” Zimmer said. “It’s do or die at this point.”
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Long before Zimmer walked onto the Parisian cornflower blue turf as an Olympian and before she starred for the ’Cats as a freshman, she nearly gave up the sport.
“I hated field hockey when I first started,” Zimmer said. “At the time I was really into soccer and lacrosse, so I thought field hockey was too slow because we were playing it on grass and I was like, ‘I just want to run.’”
The daughter of two collegiate athletes, Zimmer began playing sports at an early age. She started with soccer, which her father, Scott Zimmer, played at Richmond.
Maddie Zimmer’s mother Erin Zimmer said her daughter demonstrated a fighter’s instinct from the first time she stepped onto an athletic field.
“She would cry when you took her off the field,” Erin Zimmer, said. “She was always really competitive and always wanted to do her best when she was out there.”
When the Zimmer family moved to Pennsylvania from Minnesota, Erin Zimmer, who played field hockey and lacrosse at William and Mary, encouraged her daughter to pick up a stick in the hockey-rich Keystone State.
Maddie Zimmer was on the precipice of quitting field hockey before she tried playing in an indoor facility with a turf surface, Erin Zimmer said. Once the speed of play accelerated from the slow-moving grass fields, the midfielder never looked back.
The Hershey, Pennsylvania, native excelled in field hockey in the fall and lacrosse in the spring, earning All-American honors in both sports in high school.
Her parents realized she had the talent to play Division I field hockey by the time she was in middle school.
Maddie Zimmer’s search narrowed down to Princeton, Duke and NU, Scott Zimmer said. The midfielder cited team culture as the deciding factor in her commitment.
“I made a couple of other visits … Northwestern was just the one that instantly felt like, ‘I could belong here,’” Zimmer said. “I 100 percent made the right decision. That feeling is still with me now, six years later.”
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Maddie Zimmer burst onto the scene in her first year with the ’Cats, earning Big Ten Freshman of the Year and first-team All-Big Ten honors. She scored four goals and logged an assist, the most among first-years that season.
She doubled her production in NU’s national title-winning season, scoring nine goals and tallying three assists. Her performance was critical in the tournament’s first round when she scored on a fast break to take down North Carolina.
Maddie Zimmer garnered Most Outstanding Player honors in the NCAA Tournament after scoring one of the two ’Cats’ national championship goals.
After the 2022 season ended with a disappointing loss to North Carolina in the national championship, Maddie Zimmer was faced with a decision: play for NU in 2023 or take an Olympic redshirt to train for the 2024 Paris Games.
She chose to redshirt with the full support of her parents, teammates and coaches.
“Once she told her Northwestern teammates, the support that she got from them, that made her feel really confident in her decision,” Scott Zimmer said.
Maddie Zimmer dedicated most of her days to training and recovery while cheering on her teammates as they made another national championship run in 2023.
Heading into the 2024 FIH Olympic Qualifiers in Ranchi, India, most field hockey fans gave the United States just a 15 percent chance of qualifying for the Olympics, Scott Zimmer said.
But backed by Maddie Zimmer earning two Player of the Match awards and three upset wins, the United Eagles finished in second place, earning a place in Paris.
In June, Maddie Zimmer was officially named to Team USA’s Olympic roster alongside teammate and sophomore forward Ashley Sessa.
“To actually see the team qualify, and make the roster, and then finally stand there listening to the national anthem, I get chills talking about it,” Maddie Zimmer said. “It’s really just indescribable, knowing that you’re there with the best athletes in the world and you belong there. Just being able to compete at that level is a surreal, overwhelming experience.”
As the blazing Parisian sun beat down on Yves-du-Manoir Stadium, Team USA earned a win and a draw but lost three of its five matches. The team placed fifth in its pool, one spot away from advancing to the next round.
Scott and Erin Zimmer stood in the stands, watching their daughter compete amongst elite athletes in the game.
“When we saw her in Paris, when she lined up against Argentina, the Star Spangled Banner was playing, I didn’t necessarily shed a tear, but you definitely feel the emotion of the event,” Scott Zimmer said.
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This year, back with the ’Cats, Maddie Zimmer took home Big Ten Player of the Year honors.
Although she plays a position that doesn’t always show up on the stat sheet, the senior has tallied eight goals and 10 assists during the 2024 campaign. She flies across the field, creating opportunities on offense through tenacious defense.
“I get the opportunity to help the team out on both ends, which is really exciting,” Maddie Zimmer said. “It makes it all worth it when I see Ashley Sessa putting the ball in the back of the net.”
There is a thin black-and-white striped band taped around Maddie Zimmer’s shin guards that signifies she — along with graduate student goalkeeper Annabel Skubisz and graduate student midfielder Lauren Wadas — is a captain of the squad.
Maddie Zimmer said it was an honor to be named captain and credits the NU team chemistry as a reason why the squad is so successful.
Her recruiting class, the group that joined the team in 2020, is taking the field together for the final time this weekend.
NU coach Tracey Fuchs said earlier this week that her class is “probably the best class to ever play and leave Northwestern.”
The slate is set for the ’Cats, starting with a semifinal bout against UMass on Friday. With a win, NU will play the winner of No. 1 North Carolina and No. 4 St. Joseph’s on Sunday.
“This is gonna be the last time that I’ll be playing with some of my best friends that I came in with,” Zimmer said. “I just really want to play for them and make them proud.”
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