Erin Matson: Field hockey’s 23-year-old Championship-winning head coach

It makes sense for coaches to be at least a little bit older than the players they coach, considering that their experience over many years stands to translate into proper guidance. However, the University of North Carolina women’s field hockey team went in a different direction. They named 23-year-old Erin Matson as head coach, and she’s proven that age truly is just a number.

The Tar Heels named Matson head coach of the women’s field hockey team in January 2023, which made her only the fifth person in school history to have the position.

This comes after North Carolina field hockey was presided over by Karen Shelton, who spent 42 years leading the team. Shelton is the winningest coach in women’s field hockey history, taking home 10 titles in her career.

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Despite North Carolina’s move from an experienced leader to a younger one, Matson was very familiar with Shelton’s impact on the program. Matson starred for the team under Shelton as a player, and Shelton told WRAL Sports that Matson took hard work to another level.

After the Tar Heels won the field hockey title in 2022, Shelton’s 10th and final championship, she said that it was going to be difficult for the program to lose their seniors. Matson was one of those valuable players, but as it turned out, she wasn’t “gone” for long.

Matson wasn’t afraid to step into a large role at such a young age. She told the Daily Tar Heel: “I know I’m the best person for this role. I know the ins and outs of the program. I have experience, and I know how to coach to win.”

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Before her leap into coaching, Matson was one of the best field hockey players in history. According to the Daily Tar Heel, she’s the ACC’s all-time leader in goals and points. Matson also won four national titles with the Tar Heels as a player.

Since she’s just 23, it stood to reason that Matson had many great years of hockey ahead of her as a player. She was on the United States national field hockey team since she was 16, but her decision to get into coaching seemingly puts dreams of participating in the Olympics to bed.

Matson told the Olympics website that she thought about staying fit for the Olympics while coaching, but decided that she needed to fully focus on her new role. She said: “Just at this point in time, Carolina is where my energy needs to go. It’s where I want it to go. I think it deserves all of my attention and energy.”

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Matson also told the Olympics website that it was tough to forgo a chance to play on the world stage. She said: “That’s why this decision to kind of hit pause for a little bit wasn’t made hastily, and it wasn’t easy, but it just made sense.”

One of the more obvious themes of this story involves how a 23-year-old can successfully coach players she’s very close in age to. That didn’t seem to be a problem during the 2023 for Matson, as her former teammate Romea Riccardo told AP News that “Right away she did a great job of kind of separating herself from us. We respected her right away.”

Matson’s rookie year as a coach came in 2023, but you wouldn't know it given the way the team finished. The Tar Heels won the national championship, which made Matson the youngest head coach in NCAA history to achieve that feat.

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Matson’s Tar Heels really had to dig deep to overcome a talented Northwestern team in the championship match. Matson told CNN: “I don’t know what more you’d want in a national championship matchup than tied at the end of regulation, two overtimes, sudden death shootout, just a phenomenal atmosphere.”

Given their success, the University of North Carolina field hockey team is used to playing on big stages. However, their title game victory against Northwestern set an attendance record of 3,200, showing that interest in Matson and her team has captured the hearts of the fan base.

Matson originally hails from Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. It’s fair to say field hockey runs in her blood, as her mother was a goaltender for Yale University. Erin started playing at the age of six, according to The Guardian.

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It’s going to be interesting to see whether Matson attempts to have a coaching career similar to the one Shelton had for over four decades. She’s off to as good a start as she possibly could have.

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