Purple confetti is still raining over Martin Stadium, and honestly? Let it pour. Because on Sunday, May 24, the Northwestern Wildcats did the thing — the thing they’d been chasing for two heartbreak-soaked seasons — and they did it at home. 14-11 over North Carolina. Title number nine. Right here in Evanston.
Soak that in for a second.
A debt, paid in full
You don’t forget a loss like 2025. North Carolina took the trophy out of our hands in Foxborough, and the year before that Boston College did the same in Cary. Two straight runner-up finishes. Two straight long flights home.
So when the bracket put No. 1 Northwestern and No. 2 North Carolina back on a collision course for the final, there was only one ending the Wildcats were willing to write. This wasn’t just a championship. It was a reckoning.
They came out swinging
Two minutes. That’s all it took for Taylor Lapointe to bury the first two goals and let the entire building know what kind of afternoon this was going to be. Aditi Foster tacked on another, and five minutes in, North Carolina was already burning a timeout just to stop the bleeding.
The Tar Heels are too good to fold that early, though, and they didn’t. It was knotted 6-6 at the half, and when UNC ripped off a 3-1 run after the break to grab their first lead, the nerves were real. Chloe Humphrey — the 2025 Tewaaraton winner — drilled her 109th goal of the season, tying the Division I single-season record. The visitors had the momentum.
And then the freshman happened.
Enter Gabriella McCollester
When veteran attacker Lucy Munro went down with an injury in the first quarter, the moment fell to a freshman. Gabriella McCollester answered with the game of her life — a career-high four goals, every single one in the second half. Her hat-trick goal tied it up at 11 in the fourth quarter, and that’s when the dam broke.
Five unanswered goals to close it out. Fifteen straight minutes of shutting North Carolina out completely. The Tar Heels didn’t score again. Not once. The Wildcats turned a one-possession nailbiter into a coronation in front of their own crowd.
The architects
You can’t tell this story without Madison Taylor, who quarterbacked the whole thing: seven points, six assists, and the dagger — the final goal of the game. The Tewaaraton finalist didn’t just score, she set the table all afternoon. Lapointe and Foster each finished with a hat trick.
And in the cage, Jenika Cuocco was a wall — 11 saves on 22 shots, turning away half of everything UNC threw at her when it mattered most.
The coach who built it twice
Kelly Amonte Hiller revived this program from a club sport back in 2002. She’s now the winningest coach in Division I women’s lacrosse championship history. Nobody has done what she’s done. Nobody’s close.
The cherry on top
Here’s the line that’ll be in the record books forever: Northwestern is the first team since 1986 to win the national championship on its home field. Forty years. The Wildcats picked the one season the title game came to Evanston to take it all back.
The East Coast still thinks it owns this sport. Northwestern remains the only program from outside the Eastern time zone to ever hoist this trophy — and now they’ve done it nine times.
Nine and counting
To the seniors, to the freshman who stepped into the fire, to the goalie, to the coach, to every fan who packed Martin Stadium and refused to sit down: this one’s yours.
The drought is over. The debt is paid. The banner goes up at home.
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