Who were the best maestros to lead the Wildcats?
Team 2 scraped out a narrow win in the “Mount Rushmore of Northwestern lacrosse national championships” last week to take a 2-1 lead in the series. However, Team 1 has not yet conceded and will be following up on some very worrying allegations of voter fraud. Please reach out to insidenu@gmail.com if you have any information.
As a refresher, there are two teams made up of four writers each, and the goal is to select the best four-pick squad for each category. You can vote on which team you think is best on @InsideNU on X and in a poll at the bottom of this article until the next Mount Rushmore piece gets introduced next Tuesday.
Team 1: Harris Horowitz, Brendan Preisman, Matt Campbell and Calvin Kaplan
Team 2: Miguel Muñoz, Yanyan Li, Sai Trivedi and Charlie Jacobs
This week’s category is: Northwestern head coaches
1.01: Team 2 selects Kelly Amonte Hiller
This was arguably the biggest no-brainer first pick out of all the drafts we’ve done so far. Amonte Hiller is undoubtedly the greatest Northwestern coach of all-time and one of the most important figures in NU athletics history.
When Amonte Hiller, who hails from Massachusetts and played for Maryland, first got the call to coach Northwestern lacrosse, she had never heard of the school. She resurrected the program from the dead in 2002 after it had initially been cut, recruiting players through unconventional means (like after seeing them jogging on campus) to build her team. Just three years after she first took over, Northwestern won its first national championship. Then its second. Then its third. Currently, Amonte Hiller and the Wildcats sit with eight titles, tied for the most out of any coach in women’s Division I college lacrosse (and more than the rest of the coaches in this draft combined).
But Amonte Hiller’s legacy extends beyond titles, as she completely changed the landscape of her sport. She put Midwestern lacrosse on the map, as Northwestern is still the only women’s program outside of the Eastern Time Zone to win a national title. Her recruiting strategy of finding “diamonds in the rough” players who weren’t highly ranked out of high school or from non-traditional areas also developed some all-time program greats. Her influence is also clear within the university as she was the only coach on Northwestern’s last two search committees to hire an athletic director.
Most coaches are merely leaders or contributors to their programs. Not Amonte Hiller though — she is Northwestern lacrosse.
-Yanyan Li
1.02: Team 1 selects Tracey Fuchs
A field hockey legend, Fuchs is the obvious No. 2 choice here. Her tutelage is largely responsible for two field hockey national championships and eight NCAA Tournament berths, with the latest national title coming in 2024. A former player and field hockey legend, Fuchs has taken her NU program to heights many never could’ve imagined, with just one sub-.500 season in 16 years. Combine her ability as a recruiter with her coaching prowess, and you’ve got a standout leader who could eventually rival Amonte Hiller in Northwestern lore.
— Calvin Kaplan
2.01: Team 1 selects Kate Drohan
It’s safe to say ‘Cats softball hit some turbulence mid-2025 season, but Kate Drohan deserves her credit for turning the program around and taking it to the NCAA tournament amidst all the chaos of February — a month where Northwestern consisted two games below .500 after being ranked the 20th best team in the nation in the preseason coaches poll.
Anyone who follows Northwestern diamond sports shouldn’t expect anything less from the veteran who has been with the team since 2002. A six time Big Ten Coach of the Year and a seven time NCAA Regional champ, Drohan has a strong case to be one of the Northwestern coaching greats. She led the Wildcats to five Big Ten regular season and two tournament championships, including a three-peat in the former. The Wildcats also made 17 tournaments out of her 23 years in Evanston, including three Women’s College World Series appearances and an NCAA Championship final in 2006.
– Matt Campbell
2.02: Team 2 selects Chris Collins
Northwestern Men’s Basketball would not be in the place it’s in now without Collins. In just his fourth year as the program’s coach, he took the ‘Cats dancing for the first time ever after a program-changing 2016-17 season. A first-round win added the cherry on top too. While there was a bit of a lull in the next few years, Collins found his Wildcats dancing again in the 2022-23 and 2023-24 seasons, including an upset victory over No. 1 Purdue plus tournament wins in both years. Collins has etched himself into the Northwestern history books and into the hearts of the fans. Northwestern basketball is a thing now and it’s not going away thanks to him.
-Charlie Jacobs
3.01: Team 2 selects Pat Fitzgerald
Fitzgerald’s reputation took a huge hit following the 2023 hazing scandal, which ended his time with Northwestern football. While he undoubtedly left behind a complicated legacy, from an objective standpoint it’s hard to discount the accolades he achieved as the longest-tenured head coach in NU football history.
At the helm, Fitzgerald led the ‘Cats to unprecedented success — school records in overall and Big Ten wins, three straight bowl game wins (along with the most overall of any NU coach), four consecutive winning seasons and the highest winning percentage since Dick Hanley, who coached the ‘Cats before World War II even happened. Nine of Fitzgerald’s 13 seasons ended with a winning record, and he finished with the most victories of any coach in NU history.
Simply put, Fitzgerald brought stability and success to a program that for much of its history had been overshadowed and underwhelming.
— Sai Trivedi
3.02: Team 1 selects Gary Barnett
When Barnett took the Northwestern job ahead of the 1992 football season, he told fans he was going to “take the Purple to Pasadena.” The ‘Cats had won a combined nine games in the previous five years. They hadn’t won more than five in a season since 1970. The ‘Cats were 0-11 in 1989, and they had had three other winless seasons in the last 15 years. Northwestern hadn’t been to a bowl game since Robert Voigt’s team won the Rose Bowl in 1948.
It’s hard to undersell the absurdity of Barnett’s statement. The Northwestern football program wasn’t dying when he took the job — it was already dead. You know the rest.
Barnett made good on his promise on New Year’s Day in 1996 after a 10-win season that included Northwestern’s first Big Ten title since 1936. His ‘Cats won the Big Ten again in the 1996-97 season.
Northwestern didn’t have an indoor practice facility in 1995, so Barnett and Co. had to borrow the Bears facility in Lake Forest. The team’s success overwhelmed a skimpy Wildcat ticket office that had just three full-time staffers going into the season, according to an oral-history of the season written by ESPN’s Adam Rittenberg (required reading, by the way).
Fitzgerald called the ‘95 squad “the catalyst team, to be able to say we can be a consistent winner here.” Northwestern football as we know it today doesn’t exist without Barnett. There’s no $862 million stadium, or $270 million Ryan Fieldhouse. The ‘Cats may not have remained in the Big Ten.
Barnett’s teams struggled in 1997 and 1998, and he left to take the Colorado job after the ‘98 season, where he coached previously from 1984-1991. Yet the man took the Purple to Pasadena, he came when the program was nothing and left with two Big Ten titles. Talk about leaving a place better than you found it.
–Harris Horowitz
4.01: Team 1 selects Emily Fletcher
Heading into the 2024-25 academic year, the only coaches in Northwestern history with national championship victories were Kelly Amonte Hiller and Tracey Fuchs. After the Wildcats’ women’s golf team pulled a shocking upset of Stanford in the NCAA Final, Emily Fletcher joined that exclusive club. But the shocker over Stanford wasn’t a fluke — it marked the 10th time Fletcher had led Northwestern to the NCAA Championships, and the third in a row. The Wildcats have finished in the top 15 in nine of those 10 appearances.
Fletcher’s individual trophy case is also stuffed to the gills. She’s been named Big Ten Coach of the Year six times and was named Region Coach of the Year four times by the Women’s Golf Coaches Association. The last time Northwestern missed the NCAA Tournament under Fletcher was 2009, her first season in Evanston. She’s also building stronger and stronger teams as time goes on — of Northwestern’s five leaders in career stroke average, only Hannah Kim graduated before 2018. Not coincidentally, the Wildcats have kept their team stroke average under 295 for the last five seasons.
Sure, the recent glow of the national championship (as well as the WGCA National Coach of the Year Award) tremendously boost Fletcher’s reputation. But even without that title and the accompanying accolades, Fletcher would still have eight national top-20 finishes, when no other coach in program history has ever done that. That sustained success is why Fletcher is on this list. The national title is just the icing on the cake.
-Brendan Preisman
4.02: Team 2 selects Claire Pollard
When Pollard first took the helm for Northwestern women’s tennis in 1999, she saw immediate results. That included six more match wins than the previous year and Big Ten regular season and tournament titles, the program’s first conference titles of any kind in 13 years. That would set the standard for the rest of her tenure, as the Wildcats went on a Big Ten title streak (regular season or tournament) spanning from 1999 to 2014. Talk about high-level consistency.
Not only was Pollard’s Northwestern squad dominating the Big Ten, but it also made noise nationally. She coached the team to 24 NCAA tournament appearances, including fifth-place finishes in 2006, 2008 and 2009. The Wildcats also won the 2009 and 2010 ITA National Indoor Team championships and earned their first-ever No. 1 national ranking under Pollard.
Pollard effectively transformed Northwestern into a Big Ten powerhouse and a consistent top team nationally during the 2000s. Entering her 27th season as head coach, she has the second-most wins out of any Big Ten women’s tennis head coach and is set to add more.
-Yanyan Li
Final rosters
Team 1:
- Tracey Fuchs
- Kate Drohan
- Gary Barnett
- Emily Fletcher
Team 2:
- Kelly Amonte Hiller
- Chris Collins
- Pat Fitzgerald
- Claire Pollard
Vote on X at @InsideNU, and let us know anything you think we missed in the comments. Also, please add suggestions for future categories. For next week’s Mount Rushmore, we’re going to be drafting the best Northwestern men’s basketball wins of all-time.