Covering Carolina athletics beyond men’s basketball and football, with dedicated reporting on women’s basketball and baseball, in addition to covering other sports that rarely draw media attention
CHAPEL HILL — Carolina’s missed chances in regulation and consequential whistle proved costly. After nine consecutive trips to the ACC field hockey tournament championship game, all of them ending in titles, the top-seeded Tar Heels made a rare early exit. A video review wiped out a goal from star fifth-year forward Ryleigh Heck, whose penalty stroke in the 58th minute went high.
CHAPEL HILL — The route here may not have been familiar to a Carolina field hockey program with a rich history, but expectations didn’t change as the postseason began. The No. 1 seed in the ACC tournament for the fifth consecutive season, the No. 10-ranked Tar Heels led 34 seconds in and rolled. Five players scored in a 6–0 first-round victory over Stanford at Karen Shelton Stadium.
DURHAM — Seventy days after Duke dominated North Carolina in an August field hockey scrimmage at Williams Field, the roles were reversed for one half. A young Tar Heels team that has endured plenty of adversity since then looked more like a championship team. Sensational fifth-year forward Ryleigh Heck scored two goals, and Carolina held on for a 2–1 victory to earn the top seed in next week’s ACC tournament in Chapel Hill.
Aside from the surging football team, every other Carolina fall team sport is now ranked, with the men’s soccer team debuting at No. 16 in the United Soccer Coaches poll. The Tar Heels fell off the top spot in the women’s soccer poll but only to No. 2, while the field hockey team moved up one spot to No. 9 and the volleyball team held at No. 23.
The three fifth-year stars continued to make a huge impact on North Carolina’s field hockey team. Ryleigh Heck and Sietske Bruning each outshot Louisville by themselves, and Heck notched a goal as the No. 12 Tar Heels gave the No. 16 Cardinals their first ACC loss of the season, winning at Trager Stadium in Louisville on Friday, 3–0.
After one week as an unranked team for the first time in program history, North Carolina is back in the NFCA Top 20 poll this week. The Tar Heels (5–4, 2–1 ACC) are No. 12 in the poll released Tuesday morning. UNC was No. 11 two weeks ago, but was unranked last week after being No. 11 the week before because the poll requires teams to have at least a .500 record.
North Carolina used a suffocating defense to finish off a weekend sweep in the Bay Area. The Tar Heels continued their dominance of California with a 4–0 field hockey victory Sunday over the No. 17 Bears at Underhill Field in Berkeley, Calif., allowing only one shot, which wasn’t on goal.
Star forward Ryleigh Heck had not played for Carolina in 308 days, but there was no evidence of rust. Heck, the 2023 National Player of the Year, scored two goals and assisted on another while Coco Courtright (top photo) notched a pair of goals in North Carolina’s 8–1 victory Friday night over Stanford at Varsity Field in Palo Alto, Calif.
After a Wednesday court ruling, Sietske Brüning, Ryleigh Heck and Dani Mendez will play in North Carolina’s field hockey games this weekend in the Bay Area.
North Carolina football kicker Rece Verhoff and three field hockey stars can return to competition after an Indiana judge granted an injunction Wednesday that restores their fifth season of eligibility.
CHAPEL HILL — As a young North Carolina field hockey team works to improve, it’s going through a process that’s not common for the program: learning from losses. That has sometimes meant taking risks to create some momentum. On Sunday at Karen Shelton Stadium, one of those risks was Coach Erin Matson pulling goaltender Merritt Skubisz with seven minutes left for an extra attacker, trailing by a goal.
It’s a wait-and-hope situation for the No. 11 North Carolina field hockey team, which could get a big boost if three stars from last year can play a fifth season.
North Carolina stayed at No. 7 in the women’s soccer poll ahead of Thursday’s clash with No. 2 Duke while the Tar Heels fell in the field hockey and volleyball polls. The field hockey team (3–3), No. 2 in the preseason poll, dropped six spots to a season-low No. 11, and the volleyball team (4–2) fell seven spots to No. 15.
Football kicker Rece Verhoff and former field hockey stars Ryleigh Heck, Dani Mendez and Sietske Brüning have all joined an amended complaint filed in Monroe Circuit Court in Indiana seeking a court order that would grant each of them a fifth season of eligibility for this school year.
Tar Heels fans have long known how to celebrate a win, a rivalry, and pretty much anything involving the color Carolina blue. Now, for the first time, they can toast to it with something that shows their school spirit via official spirits. UNC Athletics has teamed up with North Carolina-based Cape Fear Distillery to launch the Spirit of Carolina Collection, the university’s first officially licensed line of Tar Heels-branded spirits.
