by Erin Matson does not express sleep. It’s been three weeks since the University of North Carolina’s most decorated field hockey player led her players to an NCAA tournament victory in her first season; the 23-year-old is believed to be the youngest college coach ever to win a national title. However, the interview requests have not stopped, even as Matson’s other coaching duties distract her. Matson isn’t complaining, though.
“Field hockey doesn’t get this kind of coverage at all,” says Matson, who led UNC’s team to four NCAA titles over five seasons as a student-athlete. USA field hockey is having a moment, and Matson isn’t holding back. Like the way she plowed through her opponents on the field, Matson only knows one direction and that’s forward.
“It’s the best thing to happen to field hockey since we won in 1984 [Olympic] bronze medal,” said former UNC coach Karen Shelton, who handed over the reins to Matson at the end of her 42-year career at the Chapel Hill school. More than anyone, Shelton has a keen understanding of the pressures and pitfalls of trying hard at such a tender age; Shelton was just 24 when she took over at UNC and eventually became the premier collegiate program in the country and home to 11 NCAA titles.
From Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, Matson was introduced to the sport when her mother, a goalie for Yale, took her, an unusually coordinated six-year-old, to a local clinic. Erin clutched the stick like it had never left her hands before, taking in the secrets quickly and confidently. She was a natural, although she also excelled at softball and basketball. Field hockey won out in the end, the crisp smack of wood connecting with hard plastic tempting the sound of surrender.
By luck, fate or a little bit of both, the Matsons lived an hour from the WC Eagles facility, the best youth club in the nation. At the age of nine, Erin made the team, joining 14 and 15 year olds without so much as a blink of an eye.
Coach Shelton watched nine-year-old Matson for the first time at the WC Eagles facility, punching above his weight. By the age of 13, Matson was introduced to international play, debating at the junior Pan American games. She was a member of the US national team at the age of 17.
At age 15, Matson and her parents took an unofficial visit to UNC. Matson always made it clear she wanted to play there under Shelton, but wisely, the trio tried to keep their options open, making appointments with other schools. But it was always going to be at UNC, that determination bolstered by Matson’s solo run across campus to clear his thoughts.
Matson thrived with Shelton and the Tar Heels, the top-scoring midfielder able to anticipate the reactions of others to create paths to the goal, quickly and fluidly like Lionel Messi. By the end of his tenure, the three-time team captain would accumulate five ACC championship victories, become a three-time recipient of the Honda Sport Award for field hockey and hold the all-time scoring records in ACC history and NCAA finals. . (She has also competed on the international stage, winning her first international cap for the US shortly after her 17th birthday and helping the Americans reach the podium at the Pan-Am Games four years ago in Peru.)
After graduating, Matson could be playing professionally overseas. Her talent would make it a lucrative endeavor.
“I didn’t want to leave Carolina,” Matson says. “And I knew I liked coaching. I knew I had a knack for him. And I knew I could help the sport, which gave me so many opportunities. I knew I helped the sport as a player, and I knew I could help even more.”
Through a convergence of circumstances, Matson mapped a path to a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Shelton would coach one more season, the fifth for Matson and others granted extra eligibility in response to the Covid pandemic. Could Matson slip into the famous job in that time?
The man who needed convincing was Bubba Cunningham, the university’s athletic director for the past decade. Matson interacted with Cunningham at games and on speaking panels, but she barely had her coaching resume to take it outside of teaching at kids’ camps and clinics.
“Dare to be great,” Shelton advised Matson and her teammates during her UNC career. With that mantra echoing in her head, Erin went into Cunningham’s office and asked for the job.
“It wasn’t like I was a stranger walking into his office asking him, but it definitely caught him off guard,” Matson said. First, Matson was about to lead the team into its final season. Would she have the focus, let alone the time, to interview for the job?
Matson entered the interview pool among other coaches with decades of experience, knowing that she would be watched and scrutinized in every step of her final season.
“[I hoped Cunningham would say,] ‘OK, she came to me in August, but she’s really leading her team and not letting it affect the atmosphere in the locker room,’” Matson said. “‘Okay, she asked for the job, but she’s still taking care of the park business.’ It was just to stay true to my word, and then he would know I’m not too crazy.”
The Tar Heels capped off an undefeated season in November in Connecticut, challenging their Northwestern rivals who knocked them out of the first round of the NCAA tournament the year before and snapped their three-year championship streak. A frenetic battle between baby blue and dark purple ended in double overtime, with Peyton Worth hooking in a shot as she returned to the goal to inch UNC’s victory.
Athletic director Cunningham had seen a lot. He offered Matson the head coaching job, graciously admitting he hadn’t even considered a 22-year-old candidate until she walked into his office and threw her hat in the ring.
Shelton met with his star player after she retired in December, not surprising to hear that Matson was already on the move, picking the brains of other Carolina coaches, asking them about their individual journeys.
“She set up meetings with different players on the team, just to let them know she was going to do this and see if she had their support, which she did,” Shelton says. “Erin was happy with the dirty work, the recovery runs and the support runs off the ball, where you’re sometimes left alone. That’s what leadership is all about, and she did that from day one.”
UNC announced Matson’s hiring last January. Twenty-three players returned for the 2023 season, many of them Matson’s friends she spent time with off the field. She lived off campus with a few of them. Speculation about that move waned as the season went on, replaced by the kind of enthusiasm that begets only college sports. But winning an NCAA title in her first year as a collegiate coach? That’s daring to be great and to make it happen.
Matson’s knack for time management and organization – skills she credits her parents for teaching her along the way – is still in full force three weeks after the season’s end. She has every opportunity to talk about the sport between her coaching duties, which goes back to recruiting. Sleep will come soon. Matson can feel it.
“Just reminding myself, you know why I do this, why we do all this,” she says. “Because we love this place. We love this sport. So, if it’s paying off for the sport and for future Tar Heels and current players, then we’re doing something right.”
