Breaking down Northwestern field hockey’s 2025 schedule

The reigning national champions will face many familiar opponents.

Northwestern field hockey’s schedule for the upcoming 2025 season was released this past Thursday. The Wildcats, who enter as the reigning national champions, will face a mix of Big Ten and out-of-conference opponents in their 17-game regular season schedule.

The Wildcats begin play on Aug. 31, the same start date they had last season. But unlike 2024, when they started the season with four straight home games, this year they won’t play at Lakeside Field until Sept. 26 — their ninth game of the season. In fact, only five of Northwestern’s games will be true home games, compared to 11 last season.

That said, it could be beneficial for Northwestern to play the bulk of its home games toward the end of the season. For one, the final few games of the year are typically the ones deciding the Big Ten regular season title (more on those later), so it helps for the ‘Cats to have home-field advantage then. Additionally, if NU is hosting NCAA tournament matches like it has for the past three seasons, those end-of-regular-season Lakeside Field games will serve as good warm-ups.

Northwestern will face plenty of strong non-conference competition, but nothing jumps out as a blockbuster rematch. It will not play its 2024 national semi-final opponent in UMass, its national title game opponent in Saint Joseph’s, or North Carolina — its opponent in the 2022 and 2023 national title game and arguably the only other program in the nation with a similar level of success to Northwestern in the 2020s. In terms of ACC competition, the ‘Cats will face Duke, Boston College and Louisville. While all three will be strong opponents, with Duke and BC being NCAA tournament teams last season (and Duke being quarterfinalists), NU played all three teams in the 2024 regular season.

Other out-of-conference opponents for NU include Richmond, VCU, MIami (OH), Delaware, Villanova and Princeton. Princeton, another 2024 NCAA quarterfinalist, will be a test for Northwestern — the Tigers were the only team the ‘Cats trailed all of last regular season, falling down 1-0 at the half before rallying for a 3-2 victory. Meanwhile, Miami (OH) is a rematch of the 2024 NCAA tournament second round, a matchup that the ‘Cats won 9-2 and posted their highest-scoring showing of the season.

The match at Villanova will be a homecoming for several of Northwestern’s stars from the field hockey hotbed of the Philadelphia area, including probable starters like Ashley Sessa, Maddie Zimmer and Olivia Bent-Cole.

Last season, Northwestern clinched a share of the Big Ten regular season title in its third-to-last conference game against Michigan by an overtime winner from Lauren Wadas. The team’s third-to-last conference match of the 2025 regular season will also be against the Wolverines. Maryland and Ohio State are also among NU’s final four regular-season games. UM, UMD and OSU were three of the four Big Ten teams (with the other being Indiana) to hold the ‘Cats to one or fewer goals in 2024, so the team could be in for a progressively more difficult conference schedule as the season goes on barring significant roster turnover impact from those opponents.

Regardless of how Northwestern’s regular season schedule is organized, one thing is for certain — that the team will come in as favorites for every single match with a target on its back. Getting through 2024 undefeated wasn’t easy, and being able to pull off a similar feat in 2025 will be even more impressive.