West Babylon's Smith leads Northwestern

Even before West Babylon's Shannon Smith summoned the dying-seconds goal that put Northwestern in Sunday's NCAA Division I women's lacrosse championship game at Stony Brook, the sport's most successful coaches were painting testimonial pictures along the lines of a comic book superhero.

"She's a great player, a great offensive threat," said North Carolina coach Jenny Slingfluff Levy, whose feisty team stormed back from a three-goal deficit in the final 12 minutes of Friday's semifinal before Smith swooped in to save Northwestern's night.

"She's very dynamic," Levy said. "She's big and she's tough and she's capable of getting her shot off. You really can't do one thing against her. She'll eventually figure it out."

Smith, an uncompromising 5-6 junior attack, already had 81 goals this season -- including three earlier in Friday night's game -- when she retreated behind the North Carolina goal with roughly two minutes to play and the score tied at 10.

Players from both sides jockeyed for position 10 yards in front of the goal, with Smith repeatedly offering a pump-fake as teammates attempted to break into the clear, only to be quickly covered by Carolina defenders.

At last, near the 30-second mark, Smith jab-stepped to her right and was fouled from behind. On the re-start, she burst through a double-team, sprinted around the right side of the goal and put a high shot behind Carolina goalkeeper Lauren Maksym with 18 seconds remaining.

The resulting 11-10 victory advanced Northwestern (20-2) to Sunday's 4 p.m. championship game at LaValle Stadium against Maryland (21-1), a No. 2 vs. No. 1 matchup and a replay of last year's title game, won by Maryland.

"Take the lacrosse side out of it," said Kerstin Kimel, whose Duke team was beaten by Maryland, 14-8, in the other semifinal and lost a midseason game to Northwestern. "Shannon's a kid who's focused, tough and really determined. When you see what teams throw at her, she has literally put her team on her shoulders and carried them with her tenacious play and her mentality."

In those final seconds, after Carolina appeared capable of homing in on a significant upset and the tension ratcheted up, Smith said she was "just waiting for the clock to run down. There was no Plan B. I was waiting for the clock to hit 30. I had all the confidence in myself. I want the last shot."

So Northwestern makes its seventh consecutive appearance in the NCAA title game with a shot at its sixth national championship, statistics surpassed only by a previous Maryland streak of eight straight championship games and a total of 11 titles.

It could be, Carolina's Levy said, that Smith is more of a one-woman show than Northwestern has had in the past. But Northwestern coach Kelly Amonte Hiller, with eight Long Island players on her team, isn't convinced that limiting Smith won't "create other opportunities for us.''

"I think in any championship setting, you're going to have your great players," Hiller said, "but you have to have complementing players around them, and you have to play well and play big; that's what makes champions. We've always had big performances from players who have been role players."

In the meantime, Smith is Maryland's problem now.