With a swift swing and confident stroke, senior forward Erin Matson lifted her penalty shot into the bottom left corner of the goal.
Matson turned and pumped her first, running towards midfield. Her teammates surrounded her to celebrate the breakthrough goal after what had been a painstaking, scoreless 33 minutes in the ACC Championship semifinal against Syracuse.
What the highlights won’t show, however, is that senior midfielder Meredith Sholder drew the penalty stroke on the previous play — controlling the ball and earning the foul call after Matson's shot on goal.
“She’s so skillful,” Matson said of Sholder. “So she was able to settle it, put it on cage, and we were lucky to put that one away.”
It is no surprise that Matson, the five-time ACC Offensive Player of the Year and all-time leading scorer in conference history, scored UNC’s first goal in its 2-1 win. What came as a shock was that this matchup between the conference’s two most potent offenses was a defensive standoff for most of the game.
While UNC field hockey has a reputation for its high-powered offense that leads the nation in a myriad of categories, it was the Tar Heels' defense — anchored by veterans like Sholder — that came through on Wednesday.
Head coach Karen Shelton pointed to multiple defensive highlights as positives from the close win that the team “needed at this moment in time."
“(We needed) to play somebody hard that competed for every ball, that stressed us to every minute,” Shelton said. “That’s what happened, and I think our kids handled it well. We defended so beautifully at times."
In particular, Shelton and Matson both highlighted the play of first-year back Sietske Brüning and senior back Madison Orobono.
