North Carolina's women make their case as best in college history, roaring through a tough, controversial NCAA draw to win the Tar Heels' 18th national title.
In the end, it really didn't matter how badly the NCAA had screwed up the seedings and brackets for its 22nd women's soccer championship. They could have made North Carolina play every one of the other 63 tournament teams – at the same time, if need be – and things wouldn't have turned out any differently.
The Tar Heels' dynasty, tarnished by losses the previous two years at the Women's College Cup, is back on track following a 6-0 dismantling of Connecticut in the NCAA Division I title game, a triumph that completed the most astonishing postseason in the history of college women's soccer.
Carolina smothered six playoff foes – including the nation's second- and third-ranked teams, who popped up early on the schedule because of controversial seeding decisions by the NCAA Women's Soccer Committee that, among other offenses, placed the Tar Heels in the same bracket as Santa Clara and Portland – by a 32-0 margin to claim its 17th NCAA title (and 18th national championship, one an AIAW crown) and post a 27-0-0 record, the best the sport ever has seen.
We'll likely not see another team as amazing until, oh … next year?
''We're a pretty good team,'' Anson Dorrance noted a few hours before his Tar Heels dominated No. 2 UCLA, 3-0, in a semifinal at SAS Stadium, a venue perhaps 25 minutes from North Carolina's Chapel Hill campus. ''But you know what? We might be better next year. And we might be better the year after.''
The more pressing question is how this group stacks up against the legendary 1992 Carolina team, one featuring Mia Hamm, Kristine Lilly, Tisha Venturini and another half-dozen or so players of superior quality, one that went 25-0-0 and routed Duke, 9-1, in the title tilt. It's always difficult to compare eras, and the aura surrounding that team – especially the presence of Hamm and Lilly – demands an amount of respect that can never be approached.
Dorrance, who has lost only 25 times in 599 outings at North Carolina, suggested as much during the run-up to the championship. Once the trophy was in hand, he offered another take.
''I rank [this team] right up there with '92 …,'' he said. ''I think if this team played the '92 team, it might win, but the only reason it might win is the kids play at a higher level now. The game has evolved, and those teams aren't as good as these teams.
''But the talent [in '92] – if you put that team and that collection of players, [and they were] growing up now, it would be an unbelievable game.''
'HELLO, MR. BUSH.' There were enough former Tar Heels at SAS, and later at the post-title gathering at a Chapel Hill nightspot, to throw down a showdown, and even Hamm, honeymooning in Hawaii with hubby Nomar Garciaparra, made an appearance of sorts.
With four minutes on the clock and only the margin of victory in doubt, Dorrance's cell phone rang.
''Hello, Mr. Bush?'' he answered. Hamm laughed.
''Enjoy this one,'' she told him. ''You deserve it.''
It was a long time in coming. The Tar Heels had never failed in successive seasons to win the championship until Santa Clara ousted them en route to its first title two years ago in Dallas, then turned the trick again in last year's semifinals in Austin, where Portland captured its first crown. The Broncos and Pilots were special teams then, but Carolina wasn't, and the failures wore heavily on this year's senior class.
Catherine Reddick, whose phenomenal performance in the 2000 final, her freshman year, had secured the last piece of meaningful hardware, talked before the final four about recurring nightmares.
''I wake up in the morning sometimes sweating because I thought we had just lost,'' she said.
There's a debt, she acknowledged, to Tar Heels who came before her, the ones with two or three or four championship rings on their fingers.
''It's definitely a burden,'' said Reddick, the College Cup's defensive MVP. ''You see alumni coming back, and they make comments like, 'Keep the tradition alive, keep the dynasty [going],' that kind of thing.''
''Right now,'' noted forward Alyssa Ramsey on the eve of the UConn rout, ''my class is the only class [on the current team] that has a national championship under their belt. I think there's a sense of responsibility, not only because of the legacy of the program – we don't want to be the class that lets that crumble – but, in addition, we're the only group that knows what it feels like [to win a title]. We don't want to leave without having [the juniors, sophomores and freshmen] experience that, too. So that when the next class comes in, they can'' pass on that knowledge.
This year's group had far superior chemistry than the previous two teams, which ''sometimes had a bitter attitude,'' Reddick admitted.
This year, winning – always the goal, of course – became secondary to having fun. ''I think that's why we're playing so well and scoring so many goals,'' Reddick said. ''We just want to play for each other because we are having so much fun out there.''
'JOE SOCCER.' The notion that North Carolina is a soccer factory, with taskmaster Dorrance churning out ''soccer robots'' who eat, drink and live nothing but the sport, is a common misconception. Truth be told, the Tar Heels are a silly team.
''Our program is, as we like to say, just chaos,'' captain Jordan Walker offered. ''We're always late to things, and we get lost going to games. No one knows what time the schedule is.''
''There's this girl from Massachusetts [Parade All-American J'aime Gilbert] who just committed,'' reported Reddick, who missed half the season while starting for the U.S. Women's World Cup team, ''and she was afraid of the North Carolina total mystique, the myth and the dynasty, and she came and thought all we cared about was soccer, that we didn't care about life.''
''She told us she thought we were all Joe Soccers, that there was nothing to like here except the soccer,'' Ramsey added. ''And when she got here, she started laughing at us most of the time because all we did was cut up.''
''She thought we were full of ourselves, on an ego trip …,'' Reddick said, ''and then she saw what we were like outside of soccer, and she was, 'Oh my God, I want to come here.' ''
There are few programs, successful or not, that exhibit as little arrogance as does North Carolina's. ''We've never taken ourselves that seriously,'' Dorrance said. ''I think our kids get a sense that this isn't world peace or a cancer cure, and that's a real healthy attitude.''
It's part of what's fueled the dynasty, but hardly the only ingredient. The frivolity off the field is accompanied by intense work on it – Dorrance's players receive a full soccer education, which is why so many of them are among the nation's top coaches – and that has been critical in luring top players to Chapel Hill the past couple decades.
This current group is among the most special. Sophomore Lindsay Tarpley and freshman Heather O'Reilly, who each netted a pair of goals in the romp over UConn, are being compared with Hamm, for different reasons.
O'Reilly, who scored half her 16 goals in the NCAA tournament after returning from a broken leg and ankle-ligament surgery that kept her off the World Cup team, is a speedy striker with a marvelous finishing sense. The Hamm comparisons, Dorrance admits, aren't so far-fetched, although O'Reilly – the final four's offensive MVP – calls them ''ridiculous.''
'GOD-GIVEN GIFT.' Tarpley, also a U.S. national-teamer (and the only true national-player-of-the-year candidate after a 23-goal, 27-assist campaign), is another kind of player. She's a tactical giant, a player with exceptional instincts and agility, one who does all the little things to mesmerizing degree. Her future is in midfield.
''She's amazing sometimes,'' Ramsey said. ''I'm running down the field watching her, and it's, 'Holy crap, how did she get away from that girl.' ''
Dorrance says comparisons between Hamm and Tarpley are ''right on the money, psychologically. … The issues with Mia and Tarpley are the same. Which is it's hard to build a firewall between their game and their life. It flows back and forth. The frustration they feel in the game, when they're not scoring, it carries outside the lines of the field.''
Like Hamm, Tarpley doesn't like to talk about herself, can't acknowledge her greatness, prefers to deflect the praise to teammates. She'll acknowledge a ''God-given gift where I just have this instinct'' to know where everybody is, what's going on around her, and the best way to deal with the situation. Offer praise, she blushes.
''I struggle with so many things,'' she says. ''I have so many things I need to work on. I struggle with my confidence, just to try to keep that up. Because when I look at other people's games compared tom mine, there's so many things that people do better.''
The other budding superstar is sophomore midfielder Lori Chalupny, whom Dorrance calls the ''heir apparent'' to Lilly. ''If she's not on the Olympic roster this summer,'' he says, ''I'd be surprised.''
She has ''this take-on mentality that is incredible. She gets the ball and wants to dribble through everyone. But it's one of those things I'm so tempted not to tamper with because there's so few players who want to take on everyone all the time. I don't want to stifle that quality.''
SUPPORTING CAST. They're surrounded by a superb supporting cast. Walker, the team leader, is a non-athlete whom Dorrance calls ''the greatest overachiever I've ever coached.'' Maggie Tomecka, outstanding in the final four, provides size in midfield. Carmen Watley offers speed in the back. Ramsey is expert at penetrating the restraining line, a quality Tarpley gained this season. Kendall Fletcher attacks from the back. Anne Morrell and Anne Felts provide sparks off the bench.
The two big surprises were freshman defender Jessica Maxwell and sophomore flank midfielder Kacey White, both Texans.
Maxwell was the Tar Heels' defensive backbone until a knee-ligament sprain sidelined her in late October. Her return to the field, about 15 minutes into a 3-0 quarterfinal win over No. 3 Santa Clara, closed the door on the Broncos' domination.
''Jessica reads the game better than any freshman defender I've ever coached,'' Dorrance said. ''If she goes after it, that kid can be on the full [national] team in three or four years.''
White's playing time decreased last season because she wasn't aggressive enough. When she asked why, goalie coach Chris Ducar made a videotape illustrating how, repeatedly, she shied away from confrontations.
''When I saw it,'' she said, ''I was like, 'Wow, that's pretty bad.' There's no way I can play at a Division I school, especially UNC, and do those kinds of things.''
She went home to Arlington and threw herself into battles with the boys, mostly college players, that she trained with. When she returned to the Tar Heels in the summer, she stunned everyone.
''She's an immensely gifted, technical player, and she's incredibly coachable,'' Dorrance said. ''A lot of people don't take responsibility for their weaknesses, but she latched onto every critique we gave her and just grinded it out. She's had just a phenomenal sophomore season.''
The underclassmen, especially the sophomores, are ''unfriggingbelievable,'' he said. Let that serve as a warning. The best team in women's soccer history may not be considered such for long.
by Soccer America Senior Editor Scott French