![\"Wisconsin](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/AVA.jpg\")
<\/p>\nUNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. \u2014 In a fourth-straight national championship between the Ohio State Buckeyes and the Wisconsin Badgers, featuring 10 Olympians and some of the best prospects in women\u2019s hockey, it was an unheralded senior who sealed Wisconsin\u2019s record ninth NCAA title on Sunday night.<\/p>\n
After another tight contest between the powerhouse programs, Claire Enright, a fourth-line, penalty-killing specialist, scored just her ninth goal of the season, lifting the Badgers to a 3-2 victory and a second consecutive national championship.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think a lot of (people) thought Claire Enright was going to get our game-winning goal,\u201d said legendary Badgers coach Mark Johnson after the game. \u201cBut that\u2019s how it happens. And that shows what type of team (we have).\u201d<\/p>\n
Wisconsin\u2019s roster featured a generational talent in defender Caroline Harvey, who won Olympic MVP last month and the 2026 Patty Kazmaier Award on Saturday; a dual-position unicorn in Laila Edwards; and two of the program\u2019s four 100-goal scorers in Kirsten Simms and Lacey Eden.<\/p>\n
But on Sunday, it was second-line winger Kelly Gorbatenko who opened the scoring just 78 seconds into the game. Six minutes later, second pair defender Laney Potter scored to make it 2-0 on Wisconsin\u2019s third shot of the game.<\/p>\n
Ohio State, the top-ranked team in this year\u2019s NCAA tournament, often pinned the Badgers in their own zone in the first period and matched Wisconsin\u2019s shot totals through the first two periods (23-23). But Wisconsin starter Ava McNaughton \u2014 who won a gold medal as the No. 3 goalie for Team USA at the Olympics last month \u2014 was sharp, stopping all 23 shots she faced in the first 40 minutes.<\/p>\n
After Wisconsin failed to score on a fourth power-play opportunity in the third period, Ohio State came alive, with freshman Kassidy Carmichael and Jocelyn Amos scoring in just over two minutes to tie the game 5:34 into the final period.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe expected a back-and-forth battle between two talented teams,\u201d said Ohio State coach Nadine Muzerall. \u201cMy team came out and played with their heart and gave everything they got. I think it speaks a lot for their character when you\u2019re down 2-0 and you punch back.\u201d<\/p>\n
After Enright scored, Ohio State made a final push, including in a scrum in front of McNaughton with one minute left in the game. There was so much chaos in the crease that Muzerall used a coach\u2019s challenge to review for Wisconsin covering the puck in the crease; a similar scenario played out last year when the Badgers challenged that Ohio State covered the puck with 18.9 seconds remaining in the championship game.<\/p>\n
That challenge was successful, with Simms scoring on a game-tying penalty shot then again in overtime to win the 2025 championship, stunning the Buckeyes. Muzerall\u2019s challenge wasn\u2019t as successful, as the Badgers won yet again.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe did enough to get to the finish line,\u201d said Johnson. \u201cWe\u2019re excited to bring the trophy back to Madison.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n Wisconsin goaltender Ava McNaughton was named the women\u2019s Frozen Four\u2019s Most Outstanding Player. (Mark Stewart \/ Milwaukee Journal Sentinel \/ Imagn Images)<\/p>\n
McNaughton, who made 34 saves in the win, was named the women\u2019s Frozen Four\u2019s Most Outstanding Player. Harvey, Edwards and Simms were named to the all-tournament team.<\/p>\n
Sunday night\u2019s game was the fourth consecutive national championship between Ohio State and Wisconsin, which has become one of the premier rivalries in college hockey.<\/p>\n
Since women\u2019s hockey became an NCAA championship sport, only Wisconsin and Minnesota-Duluth, and the University of Minnesota and Harvard have faced each other in consecutive finals. No two other teams \u2014 men\u2019s or women\u2019s \u2014 have ever done it four times.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt may not happen again where two teams face each other four years in a row trying to hoist the trophy,\u201d Johnson said on Saturday.<\/p>\n
The Badgers \u2014 a longtime dynasty program \u2014 have now won five of the last seven NCAA championships dating back to 2019. The generational trio of Simms, Harvey and Edwards \u2014 who all started at Wisconsin in 2022-23 \u2014 capped their senior seasons with a third championship in just four years. Eden, who had extra eligibility due to COVID-19 and also won in 2021, became the first player in NCAA women\u2019s hockey history to win four national championships.<\/p>\n
Eden was among the final cuts for the American Olympic team and led the Badgers in scoring with 17 points in eight games while the team\u2019s five Olympians \u2014 Harvey, Edwards, Simms, McNaughton and Czech forward Adela \u0160apovalivov\u00e1 \u2014 were away. After Sunday\u2019s game, Johnson told Eden, \u201cWithout your commitment in February, we\u2019re not here.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cShe took the team on her back and got us to the finish line,\u201d he said. \u201cShe\u2019s done something special, even though something hurt not too long ago. \u2026 I\u2019m so happy for her because I\u2019ve seen the work she\u2019s put in.\u201d<\/p>\n
Harvey, Edwards, Simms and McNaughton won Olympic gold with Team USA in Milan and an NCAA championship just 31 days apart.<\/p>\n
The Buckeyes, meanwhile, have been to five straight national championship games under Muzerall, who took over a perennial .500 program in 2016-17 and turned it into a national powerhouse.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I started at Ohio State, (we weren\u2019t) anyone\u2019s rival,\u201d said Muzerall. \u201cWe were the type of team you would come in and get six points, win two games and get out of Columbus.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ohio State will lose some top players this season, such as defenders Emma Peschel and Sara Swiderski, but the future is still bright for the team with Olympic gold medalist Joy Dunne, Amos and freshman Hilda Svensson, who each have eligibility remaining.<\/p>\n
The Badgers, meanwhile, will take a massive hit with Harvey, Simms, Edwards and Eden all moving on to the Professional Women\u2019s Hockey League \u2014 all five players are locks to be taken in the first round.<\/p>\n
Still, McNaughton, Gorbatenko, Potter and top-line center Cassie Hall are still juniors. Czech Olympian \u0160apovalivov\u00e1, who set up the opening goal, is a freshman.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have so much depth on this team, and we have so much talent that maybe didn\u2019t quite get as many minutes as they would have gotten somewhere else, but their time is coming,\u201d said McNaughton. \u201cI\u2019m excited to see what our group has next year because it\u2019s hopefully only up from here.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Badgers will also reload with what Johnson called \u201cone of our most skilled groups\u201d of recruits led by Slovakian teen phenom Nela Lopu\u0161anov\u00e1 next season.<\/p>\n
She\u2019s Wisconsin\u2019s next superstar. It\u2019s a fair bet that someone else will step up to provide the kind of quality depth that helped seal the deal on Sunday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. \u2014 In a fourth-straight national championship between the Ohio State Buckeyes and the Wisconsin Badgers,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":539813,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[2662,399,398,396,397,385,1776,99,7561,82958],"class_list":["post-539812","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ncaa-football","tag-college-sports","tag-football","tag-ncaa","tag-ncaa-football","tag-ncaafootball","tag-nhl","tag-ohio-state-buckeyes","tag-sports","tag-wisconsin-badgers","tag-womens-hockey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539812","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=539812"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539812\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/539813"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=539812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=539812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=539812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}