2026 NCAA WOMEN'S LACROSSE CHAMPIONSHIP

May 24, 2026

Jenny Levy

Chloe Humphrey

Sam Forrest

Martin Stadium at Northwestern

North Carolina Tar Heels

Championship Game Media Conference

Northwestern 14, UNC 11

JENNY LEVY: Congratulations to Northwestern. Certainly a good environment and a great game for our people to watch. So congrats to them on winning the National Championship.

That being said, love my team. Love the hard work they have put in all year. They have been awesome, and I wouldn't trade them for anything. So it's obviously disappointing but it was a tight game and I felt like it could have gone either way. It fell to the other side that we wanted.

Q. As teammates of Sarah, to see her really fight today, knowing that maybe she wasn't a hundred percent, obviously the result is not what you want but to see your teammate play like that, how do you guys react to her performance?

CHLOE HUMPHREY: It's extremely inspiring for all of us. I mean, the second she went down, like she was determined to still play the rest of the season, and that just goes to show how incredible of a teammate she is. She did give it everything that she had. So we are just proud of her and to be her teammate.

SAM FORREST: Couldn't be more proud of her. She's a great friend and a great player. She's like definition of truly the giving it her all until the last moment because she really had nothing left to give and she gave it all for us. I love her. (Crying).

Q. You talked a lot about giving back to the sport of lacrosse and a sport that's done so much for you. Obviously still a massive season for with you tying the NCAA single-season scoring record. What has this season -- how do you -- how do you summarize what you've done for the sport this season, and what do you hope little girls looking up to you watching this game, fans of you, take away from this?

CHLOE HUMPHREY: Obviously, I think losing stinks. I'm someone who really tries not to focus on the individual performances that I put on. I'm concerned about hoisting trophies with my team.

So today, it's obviously disappointing to not be able to provide for my team when they needed it most. I think I learned a lot about myself as a player and a person, just being surrounded by such incredible teammates every day that are willing to push me, and I do really think that, like, this will light a fire under us, and we will be back. I think we are going to take a lot away from this.

Q. What do you make of the overtime goals?

JENNY LEVY: The time that the goals go in, the win put you go up by three. Big momentum shift. Same thing with the other one. I thought it was a tying goal, exciting for the fans. Haven't looked at the video or the film but seems to me that we have a lot of work to do with our game. I think it's unfortunate. I think, yeah, I don't know what -- they didn't give us an explanation on what it was. We clearly saw on our iPads what it was.

So we probably disagreed with that. But I thought those were momentum-changing decisions and I thought our team had to kind of battle through that and we didn't do as well as we could battling through that so. Just unfortunate. I haven't really looked at the film, so I can't really comment.

Q. Seemed in the first quarter the team's struggled with the zone -- rest of the game -- what do you think happened?

JENNY LEVY: Well, it's a zone. And there's a lot of traffic and congestion inside the critical scoring area. And I thought we need to do a better job of making decisions with the ball and be more aggressive. The times we were aggressive, had a goal taken back. So congrats the zone defenses out there.

But, yeah, I think it's -- yeah. I mean, got a little tight, and I think it's hard to execute when there's a lot of congestion in the eight meter.

Q. What were your thoughts on Gresham today and how she was able to fight and can you explain what she has been battling specifically?

JENNY LEVY: I mean, Gresh was unbelievable today, the courage that she had. Her positivity. She went down with an ACL in the Stanford game and she's been fighting like crazy to get back, and really, really assured us and her teammates that she could contribute to this game today against a really good Madison Smith on the center draw X.

And so we tried. Rath is going to be good. She just didn't have as much experience going against Smith. S we knew Gresh is good against her. It's a good match for us, and she was all-in and just an incredible, fierce competitor who showed a lot of courage in the situation that she was in and we wanted to leave it out there.

Like, as Sam said, she's a great teammate and we're really proud of her and very inspirational performance from her.

Q. Your offensive depth and your passing has been a strength all season. You saw it in that first half, the way you were passing -- seemed to fall apart in the fourth quarter and led to some big turnovers, the last one specifically, to end the game. What can you say about -- how Northwestern like intercepted you guys today and how they really limited that strength of yours?

JENNY LEVY: We know they play zone and they set in lots of spaces. I think tactically, their defense just good a good job today. Also, I thought we could have moved a little bit more, yeah. We were seven down -- they did a great job.