To S.L. Price, the emergence of Northwestern’s women’s lacrosse team as a national power can’t be overstated.
“I think it’s the most unlikely build in American sports history,” he said.
Price knows a thing or two about sports, having spent 26 years at Sports Illustrated and becoming one of the best sportswriters in the industry. His most recent book, “The American Game: History and Hope in the Country of Lacrosse,” includes the rise of Northwestern, which will host the NCAA women’s championship this weekend at Martin Stadium.
It will mark the first time that the championship will be played outside of the Eastern Time Zone. Top-seeded Northwestern will face No. 4 Johns Hopkins in the second semifinal at 4:30 p.m. Friday on ESPNU. The winner will face either No. 3 Maryland or No. 2 North Carolina at 11 a.m. Sunday on ESPN.
As part of his examination of the history of lacrosse — which Price calls America’s original sport, invented by the Iroquois, now called the Haudenosaunee, a thousand years ago — Price explains how coach Kelly Amonte Hiller, starting at age 26, built the Northwestern program from nothing, literally pulling players off the street.
“Her foundation where the Koester twins, Ashley and Courtney, who weren’t lacrosse players,” Price said. “In 2001, she saw them dodging around in a touch-football game, and then she sees them jogging. Finally, she runs out and says, ‘Excuse me, do you know what lacrosse is?’ And they had no idea. She gives them a couple sticks, and that’s the foundation.”
Hiller has led NU to eight national championships. But after winning seven from 2005 to ’12, Northwestern didn’t win again until 2023. Price said that during that gap, Hiller reevaluated her coaching style. She learned to lower the pressure on her players, and it eventually led to another title.
“So she caught the world unawares, the world caught up with her and then she adjusted,” Price said. “That’s a real sign of a great coach.”
Price spent six years reporting for the 560-page book, which was nominated for a 2026 Dan Jenkins Medal for Excellence in Sportswriting. Though he was never “a lacrosse guy,” the topic was in his wheelhouse, where sports intersect with culture.
“It’s just a unique, fascinating subculture that I think mirrors American culture like almost nothing else does,” he said.
