Notre Dame women’s lacrosse falls to Michigan on last-second goal in NCAA Tournament

Some Notre Dame women’s lacrosse players had their hands on their heads. Some had doubled over, hands on their knees. None could believe it as Michigan celebrated at the other end of the field.

Junior attacker Jill Smith worked toward the middle to find open grass and fired the ball into the back of the net, beating Irish senior goalie Lilly Callahan to the short side. It crossed the goal line with one second remaining, beating the buzzer and sending the Wolverines to the NCAA Quarterfinals.

Graduate student attacker Jackie Wolak, who gave everything she had to the Irish, tied the game at 14 with 31 seconds to go. She took the ball from a free position, deked by a defender and guided the ball inside the right goalpost. Sticks went into the air and Wolak gave a small fist pump, but she knew the job wasn’t done.

Thirty seconds later: Heartbreak.

“Crushing,” Notre Dame head coach Christine Halfpenny said. “Just crushing.”

The gut-wrenching loss ended Notre Dame’s season, one that featured the best regular-season record in the program’s 27-year history. The Irish finished 16-4 (7-2 Atlantic Coast Conference).

Halfpenny said after the game that the 2024 squad, led by the “big three” of Wolak and fellow graduate stars Madison Ahern and Kasey Choma, made “fundamental changes in how this program is viewed.” That made it hurt even more when their careers ended Sunday at Arlotta Stadium.

“My heart breaks, right now, for this group,” Halfpenny said. “I’m just so proud of them. I love them so much. And everything that they learned here, in Notre Dame women’s lacrosse, serves them for the rest of their life. And you don’t lost that in a one-goal game.”

Notre Dame came out firing, taking a 3-0 lead with 3 record-breaking points from Wolak. She dished 2 assists to Wolak and Choma, respectively. Less than 2 minutes after her second helper, Wolak did it herself.

The Tewaaraton Award finalist ducked her left shoulder and darted to her right, sprinting past a Michigan defender and into the goalmouth. When she flicked the ball past Michigan goalie Erin O’Grady, she became Notre Dame’s all-time points leader with 337.

It’s been a historic weekend for Wolak, who broke the program record for assists in a single game during Notre Dame’s first-round win over Coastal Carolina on Friday. She would later break the team record for career assists with a dish to senior Abby Maichin in the third quarter, with 152.

Choma also made history, scoring her 250th career goal in the second quarter. She’s the second Notre Dame women’s lacrosse player to do so.

For a short time, the hot start made it seem like the Irish would cruise to the quarterfinals, but the Wolverines weren’t done.

After Michigan head coach Hannah Nielsen called a timeout to settle her team down midway through the first quarter, the visitors got right back in it. The Wolverines ended the first quarter on a 3-0 run of their own, and as they started scoring, their renowned defense regained its composure.

Michigan tightened the screws on its defensive end, making everything difficult for Notre Dame.

The two teams went back and forth for nearly two whole quarters, first with dueling 3-0 runs again. After the Irish entered the second half with a 7-6 lead and the Wolverines scored early to tie it, no one scored two-straight goals until Maichin went back-to-back and gave Notre Dame an 11-9 lead.

However, Michigan scored a buzzer-beating goal to cut the lead in half at the end of the third quarter and parlayed it into a run in the fourth. The Wolverines tied it at 11 and took their first lead at 12-11 with a free position shot from junior midfielder Julia Schwabe. Maichin’s third goal less than a minute later evened the score again, this time at 12-12.

Not including 0-0, Notre Dame and Michigan found themselves in a tie game eight separate times.

“Michigan came in here with a 15-3 record, and we knew what they were capable of,” Halfpenny said. “Very evenly-matched team. It was literally inches.”

Michigan took a 14-13 on a free-position shot with 5:12 to play, and both teams’ defense took over from there. The Irish and Wolverines remained scoreless from then until 31 seconds left, when Wolak scored to tie it.

With the end of Notre Dame’s season, Wolak, Choma, Ahern and 14 other seniors and graduate students have played their final game in a Fighting Irish uniform. Despite the way they finished, the trio will end their careers as three of the greatest to don the blue and gold in women’s lacrosse.

Choma said in the locker room, Halfpenny explained, that “there wasn’t one day that she wasn’t having an absolute blast.” The Irish will remember the 2024 season and the years leading up to it as a seminole time for the women’s lacrosse program, which Choma said Friday that she wanted to leave in a better place than she found it.

She did, as did every player whose career with Notre Dame is over after Sunday’s game. Halfpenny expressed her gratitude for that.

“‘Thank you for everything you’ve done,'” Halfpenny said she told the graduate students and seniors. “Those two words will never be enough to quantify what they have done. And I think that the rest of the team will tell you that.”