For Carolina, Postseason Silence Is First In 15 Years

University of North Carolina women’s head coach Jenny Levy grew up in northern Baltimore, near the crossroads of two perennial lacrosse powers, Johns Hopkins and Loyola University Maryland.

As a child, along with her sisters, she would wend her way from Cold Spring Lane, not far from Loyola’s Evergreen campus, along the city’s narrow Stony Run Park until it emptied into Wyman Park, sitting just below Johns Hopkins University. From there they climbed up from the park and made the short walk up University Parkway to Homewood Field — college lacrosse’s most hallowed ground — to watch her favorite game.

In the intervening years of lacrosse since those earliest days, Levy has made a formidable climb of her own in the sport. As a player in 1991 she won a national championship while attending Virginia. In 1994, she was named UNC’s first — and still only — head coach. She added a national title to her coaching resumé in 2013, and a second in 2016. In late 2017, she was named the head coach of the US Women’s National Team.

None of those seasons saw a stranger conclusion than this one, when on March 12 the NCAA cancelled all of its spring sports championships due to the COVID-19 outbreak. Had the season not ended prematurely, in all likelihood the Tar Heels would have played in the NCAA quarterfinals this weekend, as heading into the 2020 season UNC had advanced to the quarterfinals or beyond 15-straight times. At the time of this year’s play stoppage, the 2020 Tar Heels were a perfect 7-0.

“We played Monday [March 9] night out at Northwestern – a really good game, a really high-end game for both teams,” said Levy, in describing how the season ended. “We flew back on Tuesday, with a win. It’s spring break, so we’re pretty happy.”

Prior to facing Northwestern, the team was concerned that the game would get cancelled on news of a widening COVID-19 pandemic. Once UNC arrived in Chicago, there was both excitement and relief that the game would go on, but also some noticeable departures from the norm as the nation began to face an increasingly troubled outlook for the weeks and months ahead.

The game was held at Northwestern’s lakefront Ryan Fieldhouse and had its capacity limited to 1,000 people. As the teams played, game-day staffers moved along the sidelines providing hand sanitizer to onlookers. Following the game, the team traveled back to Chapel Hill, where there was an increased awareness of the extra handwashing and distancing precautions that have quickly become the norm across the country since then.

The team took an extra day off on Wednesday of that week as they had a game the upcoming Sunday, March 15, against another 7-0 team, Notre Dame. “Wednesday night I remember just sitting and listening to the news,” said Levy. “That’s when the NBA announced that they were postponing their season.” Earlier that same day, the Ivy League cancelled its spring sports season and the next morning, the Patriot League announced plans to halt play the following Monday.

“It was spring break, and we practiced so we met the team down on the field,” said Levy. It was known by the 11:30 a.m. practice that the Ivy and Patriot League had shuttered their seasons. “It was right smack in the middle of the day and we were really concerned; they were very emotional,” said Levy. “I said, ‘Look, listen. I don’t have any answers, but let’s just go out and have fun. Let’s have a celebration of our team and our sport today. If we get lucky, we get to play on Sunday. If we don’t get lucky, we’re going to walk away from this day and we’ll never forget it.’ We did, and we won’t.”

The team held an intrasquad scrimmage, departing from the typical first-team versus scout team structure in the week preceding a game and mixing up the talent on both teams. The Tar Heels had an audience that day, the Delaware State Hornets, who were between two games and came to watch one of the nation’s top teams practice. “So they’re watching us practice in this joyful celebration of the sport, and I’m sure they just wanted to get out and play, too. So that was our last practice,” said Levy. “I know we all walked away feeling a lot better being together.”

Later that afternoon, Levy met with the Tar Heels’ head coach, Joe Breschi. The two have a long working relationship, with Breschi leading the men’s team at Chapel Hill since 2008. In 2016, the tandem captured national championships on the same weekend, the first time both sides of a lacrosse program accomplished the feat since 1994. Breschi’s squad had moved to an identical 7-0 mark that week as well when they defeated an upset-minded Bryant squad, 18-16, in what would also prove their final game of the year.

Levy was wondered what Breschi was going to tell his team, which was meeting at four on Thursday, just before Levy’s planned meeting at five. At that point, spring break was extended by an additional week by UNC, so they were handling rapidly changing information simultaneously and the two coaches were working to send a unified message to their teams. During Breschi’s meeting the NCAA cancelled its 2020 spring season championships. By the point of the women’s meeting, both teams knew the season was done.

Since then, challenges have only persisted for UNC and all collegiate sports programs as they try to navigate the thick mist of uncertainty hanging over the 2020-2021 season.

“There’s so much unknown. You’re leading but you don’t have answers. You’re trying to plan, but things are changing,” said Levy. Ascertaining which seniors will utilize the the additional year of eligibility granted by the NCAA for 2020-2021 is just one subset of the larger unknowns that the Tar Heels and college programs across the country are facing.

Fortunately, Levy’s success in the postseason has made the Tar Heels well-practiced in one aspect of life changed by the pandemic — senior graduation. For the past 15 years, the Tar Heels have still been active in their season during graduation weekend in Chapel Hill, requiring that the squad go through their own unique adaptations of the traditional ceremony.

While some aspects of even their atypical graduation traditions won’t be feasible this year, others were rendered virtual, including a favorite aspect of Levy’s — selected juniors delivering speeches to departing seniors. Perhaps this year’s perfect 7-0 team, that defeated recent champions and perennial powers JMU and Maryland by a combined score of 34-13, was more capable than most in handling the unwelcome and unexpected change brought on by the pandemic.

“You go through many trials and tribulations. Chemistry is always important and we always have good chemistry,” said Levy. “But sometimes you’re putting out fires and they’re distractions…there were no distractions this year.”