Perennial underachiever Santa Clara toughens up its beautiful game and finally wins a national championship.
It all made sense, finally, two years ago. Jerry Smith, the women’s coach at Santa Clara University, had assembled the finest in a series of spectacularly talented Bronco squads, one that mowed down everything on its path toward certain coronation.
The Broncos were unbeaten, they hadn’t trailed a second of the season, and their brand of soccer was unmatched aesthetically in the history of the women’s game.
And when they got to the College Cup, the NCAA final four – played just a few miles from campus – it all meant nothing. They lost, in the semifinals, just as six previous, glorious Santa Clara teams had before them.
That was the impetus, Smith declared during the Broncos’ most recent College Cup challenge, to alter Santa Clara’s character, to install a little steel behind the beautiful exterior. It paid off with a team this season that could do things the ’99 bunch couldn’t – above all win a national championship.
There’s still plenty of art in the Broncos’ game, they just added some commerce: a grittiness, a mental toughness that enabled them in 2001 to pull out the tight, ugly battles that destroyed previous squads.
Such as the quarterfinal, against Virginia on a wet, wind-swept field, where a 3-0 lead – in a game not nearly so close – quickly turned to 3-2. The Broncos were backed into their box much of the final half-hour.
Or the semifinal, against athletic Florida, on a tight, fast field in SMU’s Ford Stadium, where a 2-0 lead – in a game not nearly so close – dissolved in the final 10 minutes, leading to overtime.
Or the championship match against No. 1 North Carolina, winner of 17 of the previous 20 national championships. The Broncos clinged to a 1-0 advantage for 49 minutes to capture a tight, ugly battle and claim their first NCAA women’s soccer title.
ACHILLES’ HEELS. “One of the real Achilles’ heels of past Santa Clara teams is not being able to grind it out,” Smith noted the day before Aly Wagner’s superb 41st-minute blast, from just beyond the box, secured the triumph over the Tar Heels. “If we weren’t totally dominating an opponent and things weren’t going our way, it was going to be tough for us.”
After ’99, Smith says Santa Clara took a very close look at every aspect of the program: “Are we, during training sessions, doing enough to emulate the intensity and pressure players will be under when it comes to the semifinal and final? Are we recruiting players who can handle that? Are they mentally and physically tough enough?”
The answer? No.
Gone were the days when playing rapturous, flowing soccer was reward enough. No longer would winning be secondary to playing well.
“We want to play beautiful and we want to win,” Smith said after the final. “We have been the, quote-unquote, best team in the country several times. We want to be the best team and the champion. I don’t know if we’re the best team this year or not, but we are the champion, and we tried to play the best type of soccer we know how.
“We’ve had enough of ‘You’re the best team, but you’re not going to win that way.’ We’re done with that. We finally got over that hurdle.”
ADDING AN EDGE. They did so by enduring a difficult 2000 season, recruiting a superb, tough-minded freshman class – six of Smith’s starters during the final four were first-years – and by “adding a little edge” to Smith’s coaching and pumping up the intensity in training.
Santa Clara lost seven games during 2000 – Smith had lost as many just once during his first 13 seasons in charge – and many of its best players – Wagner, Danielle Slaton, Anna Kraus, Veronica Zepeda – weathered injury-filled campaigns. It was, Smith says, “agonizing for us … we had to grind it out just to survive.”
The experience was galvanizing, especially for Wagner, the Broncos’ playmaker, a soccer aesthete who has suffered through myriad injuries, the worst a pair of ACL tears that halted her progress with the U.S. national team.
“She became a mentally tougher player,” her coach says, “by dealing with her injuries, by going through the season we went through last year, by playing the last three years on the national team but not making the Olympic or World Cup roster. It’s been a character-building experience. She’s a much tougher player, a much better leader because of her experiences.”
BRONCOS’ FULCRUM. Wagner, a self-described “little brat” during her youth soccer days, was the Broncos’ fulcrum. Supremely gifted with the ball, possessing great vision and savvy (might be the most creative player the U.S. has produced) and hard-working defensively, she’s part of a veteran core – with junior Devvyn Hawkins and senior Kerry Cathcart in midfield; seniors Slaton and Kraus in central defense; and sophomore Zepeda, when she isn’t sidelined with shin splints, up top – that Smith has surrounded with freshmen. The best are heady, versatile Leslie Osborne, a withdrawn forward who scored a sensational semifinal goal, and right back Jessica Ballweg, who fed the winning strikes in the semi and the final.
Slaton, a 2000 Olympian and defensive MVP of the final four, teamed with Wagner and Kraus with three-time national titlist Central Valley Mercury, from nearby San Jose, before coming to Santa Clara. She says Wagner has “definitely gained a lot of maturity over the past year or two just in regard to the game in general and all the boring aspects that you have to focus on, that are so important.”
Wagner struggled to contribute when targeted in previous years. This year she’s had few problems, even maneuvering into space or finding teammates when North Carolina surrounded her with four defenders.
Her goal, into the top-left corner after eluding Danielle Borgman on Ballweg’s pass, was “a world-class” strike, Tar Heels coach Anson Dorrance praised. “We knew she was going to get her chances, we were just hoping she would miss them all.”
Playing pretty soccer once meant more to Wagner than winning, she admits. “I didn’t value as much grinding through a game and pulling out a win. I’ve always really enjoyed playing pretty, controlled soccer – that was the whole attraction of coming to Santa Clara. But I’ve come to appreciate getting into these tough games.”
Wagner, the College Cup offensive MVP, remains the greatest proponent, and conduit, for Santa Clara’s beautiful game. She’ll have one more season at the controls.
RIPPLE EFFECT. Smith wonders what ripples the Broncos’ victory will leave in a game in which, at the college level, there is little beauty exhibited.
“I think it’s good for soccer that a team like Santa Clara wins the national championship,” he says. “We didn’t play our best [against Carolina], but over the two games [at the College Cup], I think we played good soccer, and if that helps other teams try to play soccer in a way that is aesthetically pleasing and is a demonstration of skillfulness and thoughtfulness, soccer will be a better game for it.”
by Soccer America Senior Editor Scott French in Dallas