Notre Dame Motivated Like Never Before — and Northwestern Win Proves It

Notre Dame made headlines Friday night when it became the first team to beat Northwestern since Syracuse on Feb. 11, 2023 — a span of 22 games that included a confetti-angel NCAA championship celebration in May. The Irish respect Northwestern, but they didn’t welcome the Wildcats to South Bend to kiss any rings.

“They're absolutely the defending national champions,” Notre Dame head coach Christine Halfpenny said, “but at the same time, we're a different team. They're a different team. So, first of all, I am more focused on 2024 than I am on 2023.”

That means any mention of Notre Dame’s previous takedown of a defending national champion — North Carolina in 2023, a win that snapped the Tar Heels’ home and ACC winning streaks — also had nothing to do with what happened at Loftus on Friday night. It might be a nice nugget for a broadcast or journalist (guilty), but it’s not on a bulletin board.

“I don’t like that narrative,” Halfpenny said. “We're a team that has been consistently in the top 10. We're also a team that has consistently continued to achieve that. Success was not overnight. It wasn’t for UNC. I have crazy respect for Kelly Amonte Hiller. [Her run at Northwestern] took years and years of work … we’re not coming in and playing spoiler. We believe in ourselves. We believe in ourselves more than anybody.”

Notre Dame isn’t an overnight success, either. The current core group includes six graduate students and 14 seniors. Some, like Kasey Choma, Madison Ahern and Jackie Wolak, arrived in 2020 to much fanfare. Choma and Ahern were two of the top recruits in their class, according to Inside Lacrosse. But it was Wolak who led the Irish in scoring last year and on Friday night with four goals and two assists.

Notre Dame was 7-0 and set to take on UNC before COVID-19 canceled what could have been. The 2021 season saw the Irish have a weeks-long layoff due to COVID restrictions, so 2022 was the first “real” season for the veteran group, which evolved to include players like Kelly Denes and Mary Kelly Doherty.

The latter two were crucial for the Irish on the draw, giving Notre Dame a dominating 20-8 edge in the category overall, including taking each of the last six. The Irish pushed UNC in a one-goal ACC championship semifinal loss before bowing out in the first round of the NCAA tournament against Michigan.

“2022 was a was a wild rollercoaster, but they were all babies,” Halfpenny said.

Last year saw the Irish return to the quarterfinals as the only unseeded team to do so. Returning for one more ride — especially after a season-ending 20-6 loss to Boston College — was a no-brainer for Wolak.

“We definitely have that mentality of unfinished business. I've got one more year of eligibility, and we wanted to take advantage of it,” Wolak said.

“We” applies to the fellow members of the three-headed monster of an offense Notre Dame has trotted out since 2020 in Choma and Ahern. To limit the offense to three is something of a misnomer these days. Doherty and Richmond transfer Arden Tierney also have double-digit points through five games.

The rollercoasters — of the pandemic, of growing together — are fueling the original three in their final year in South Bend.

“Just being able to say I've played with Kasey and Madison for the past five years is all the confidence I really need,” Wolak said. “We trust each other, and whoever is feeling hot or has that opportunity to make that big play. Playing for so long together has built that trust.”

“Hot” wouldn’t really begin to describe how the Irish’s draw unit looked Friday night. Denes had the hottest hand with eight draws with Doherty winning six. Freshman Megan O’Hare chipped in three draws. Winning the last six draws was pivotal in allowing the Irish to limit Northwestern’s high-powered offense that returns a pair of Tewaaraton Award finalists in Izzy Scane (the 2023 Tewaaraton winner) and Erin Coykendall to without so much as a shot for the final 9:01.

“Kelly [Denes] is really smart, driven and honed her craft,” Halfpenny said. “She got hot [against Northwestern]. She has incredible skill with placement and variation and was able to read the circle.”

On one side, she had Doherty, a player Halfpenny feels has flown under the radar as a true two-way midfielder with a knack on the draw.

“She uses her wingspan and her speed,” Halfpenny said. “She has that deep determination to win the battle and then get to the next play.”

Like Choma, Wolak and Ahern, Denes and Doherty have established a chemistry over the years.

“This is their third season in a row,” Halfpenny said. “Experience plays into it. Reading each other plays into a little bit more. They’re able to make adjustments that they've been making for now.”

And they’re bringing a freshman in O’Hare along, too. But even the veterans got inspired by Denes and Doherty’s draw prowess on Friday.

“Kelly was like, ‘We win the draw. We score a goal,’” Wolak said. “They put us in that position, and we wanted to convert on those opportunities for them after seeing them work so hard on the draw.”

The defensive performance, too, sparked Wolak and the attack.

“We talked about how lacrosse was a game of game of runs, and we're going to score and going to score,” Wolak said. “I think the defense had an amazing response attitude and they were really united. We really all felt connected throughout the whole field. The defense played absolutely insane, and I'm really proud of every single one of them.”

Of course, the win wasn’t the NCAA championship — something the Irish want. It’s a dream that helped bring Wolak, Choma and Ahern back for season five. That narrative is nothing more than stating the obvious for Halfpenny.

“By no means are we doing Irish jigs and kicking up our heels on February 16,” Halfpenny said. “But that win was not luck. It was hard work. It was not a fluke. It had everything to do with the way we played the game.”

The Irish won’t be banking on luck this weekend in their ACC opener against Syracuse, though they are asking fans to wear green a few weeks ahead of St. Patrick’s Day.

“It’s another great rivalry,” Halfpenny said. “They share the ball extremely well, and they have a fair amount of superstars down there that can make individual plays. They return a very mature goalkeeper [in Delaney Sweitzer].”

But the Irish have maturity, too.

“We have the majority of our starters back and are seniors and fifth years,” Wolak said. “I think just knowing that having those people to come back shows Notre Dame is a special place. It's been home for five years now, and I wanted to stick around for one more special year.”

A special year Wolak hopes ends with confetti angels in a different color scheme.