Field hockey falls to Syracuse in NCAAs

There was something to be felt after this, an umpteenth nail to the heart. But there’s only so much emotional capital in a field hockey locker room, only so much reason to understand a moment devoid of it.

Few minutes had passed since top-seeded North Carolina’s 3-2 loss in penalty strokes to fourth-seeded Syracuse in the NCAA semifinals. The Tar Heels trudged off the field Friday afternoon in College Park, Md., shielding themselves from the 25-degree weather, the chill of another Final Four defeat.

Senior defender Samantha Travers walked into the locker room, living an unenviable scene for the fourth-straight year. UNC lost to Maryland in overtime of the 2011 championship game. To Princeton, by a goal, in the 2012 title match. To UConn in the 2013 semifinals, again in penalty strokes. Travers looked at her teammates. They wore vacant expressions awash with knowing disbelief.

“You just get to the point where it’s hard to know what to feel,” Travers said.

It shouldn’t have ended this way, Travers said. Not a chance. UNC endured Syracuse’s steady probing in regulation, mustering a mostly fitful resistance to the Orange’s 2-1 second-half lead. Then Coach Karen Shelton pulled goalkeeper Shannon Johnson for an extra attacker with more than nine minutes remaining. The game’s complexion changed. Soon, too, did the score: Nina Notman buried a blistering wrist shot to tie the game at two with 5:20 left.

The surge coursed into overtime, during which UNC outshot Syracuse 8-2. But good fortune, even an ounce of it, remained beyond their sticks. This program has made 19 Final Four appearances in 31 years, has captured six titles, has won 88 games more than it has lost since its latest championship in 2009. But UNC couldn’t convert any of its storied past into a karmic present.

Emma Bozek hit the post on an overtime breakaway. Senior forward Loren Shealy struck the side of the net as time expired in the first overtime. Abby Frey, a senior defender, bungled a 3-on-1 rush in the second overtime.

And after UNC and Syracuse scored three goals apiece by the end of the shootout’s requisite five rounds, the specter of postseason anguish crept closer. Emily Wold, who had extended the shootout with a goal in the last frame, fired UNC’s next attempt into the pads of Syracuse goalkeeper Jess Jecko. The eulogy this time would be delivered by Orange midfielder Alyssa Manley, who tucked a backhander past Johnson to end it.

“That game was as close as it could have been,” Shelton said.

When it’s impossible to feel anything, how is it possible to say anything? Shelton summoned from the abyss a lengthy post-game address. She told them she was proud. She told them how much she enjoyed coaching this group — the most tight-knit team, several players said, that this program has seen in years. There’s little shame, Shelton said, in stumbling — as the nation’s most consistent national title contender — on the doorstep of a championship.

“At least we’re there,” Shelton said. “We’re doing our best. And I just feel so good about this team. I loved this team.”

And so this program, abandoned by luck and taunted by agony, is left to dream it up again. To find something, anything, that will get the fickle gods of this sport to smile upon them once more.

"(Thomas Jefferson is) a great believer in luck,” Shelton said. “He finds the harder he works, the more luck he has. That’s what we’ll do. We’re going to go back to the drawing board and work really hard. We’ll find our luck.”

It wasn’t to be found Friday in UNC’s locker room. Travers glanced around. “It’s just unbelievable,” she’d say hours later. She then authored the epitaph to this hard-knock epoch of UNC field hockey.

“We really thought we were going to win this one,” Travers said.

The faces of her teammates said it, too. There was nothing left to feel.

sports@dailytarheel.com