How do you overcome a dynastic mystique unrivaled in sports?
How do you beat a team that hasn’t lost or tied all
season?
How do you defeat that team in front of its home fans in its
home state?
Just how do you triumph when nearly everything seems to be
stacked against you?
Well, you believe.
Or so the UCLA women’s soccer team hopes. The Bruins face
No. 1 North Carolina on Friday in the NCAA College Cup Semifinals
in Cary, N.C., in a game where mental preparation is arguably just
as important as the physical. In fact, after the Bruins’ 4-0
quarterfinal win over Penn State last Friday, coach Jill Ellis
distributed plain blue shirts to her players with a single word on
the front: BELIEVE.
“We have to believe what we can do and what we can
achieve,” Ellis said. “We’re close, but
we’re not done.”
Not by a long shot. For the No. 4 seed Bruins (20-1-3), winning
a national championship has been a year-long goal. And now as they
stand on the doorstep of realizing their dream, the only team to
defeat them all season is staring right back.
So it goes with the Tar Heels, a program that has won 17 of 22
national titles awarded in women’s soccer; a program that has
reached the semifinals in all 22 of those seasons; a program that
has produced the likes of national stars Kristine Lilly, Carla
Overbeck and Mia Hamm.
Carolina has a soccer program synonymous with success, carrying
with it a mystique like no other.
“You can’t knock it because it’s
deserved,” Ellis said. “Anytime you’re winning
that many championships, it is a dynasty. North Carolina has
perennially been the team to beat.”
And they’re pretty good this year, too. The Tar Heels
(25-0-0) have made easy work of their playoff games, winning 8-0,
5-0, 7-0 and 3-0 in the tournament’s first four rounds,
setting the record for total goals scored in a single tournament.
On the season, they hold a 104-11 scoring advantage over their
opponents. They also boast a 5-2 win over UCLA in the Duke/adidas
Classic on Sept. 19.
But are the Bruins intimidated?
“No way,” sophomore forward Iris Mora said.
“We believe.”
That’s a word that’s being tossed around pretty
frequently by the Bruins, and a lot of the team’s confidence
likely stems from its play of late. UCLA has been nearly as
impressive as Carolina in the tournament, dispatching its opponents
2-0, 2-0, 1-0 and 4-0. The dominating win over No. 5 Penn State
certainly sent a message to the rest of the field.
“We’re excited to play,” All-American defender
Nandi Pryce said. “We’re prepared and ready.
We’re going to show this country what UCLA soccer is
about.”
The team also feels like it has come a long way from its
depressing loss in September, during which the Tar Heels scored
three unanswered goals after the game was tied at two early in the
second half.
“The biggest thing we learned against North Carolina was
that to play against good teams, every single player needs to play
well and show up,” Ellis said. “I felt that some of our
starters didn’t play as well as they can that
game.”
Something obviously clicked after the loss, as UCLA has rattled
off 16 wins and one tie since. One reason for the Bruins’
improvement is the return to health of starting sophomore
midfielder Jill Oakes. Oakes, a freshman All-American last season,
was still recovering from a posterior cruciate ligament injury
suffered in last season’s playoffs at the time of the
Carolina match. Freshman Bristyn Davis and Mora have also
established chemistry at the forward position that was lacking in
September.
“We’re playing for each other,” said Mora, the
team leader in goals and assists.
But the Tar Heels have also improved, as they were without
senior defender and team leader Cat Reddick in the first match.
Reddick was playing in the World Cup with the U.S. National
Team.
Carolina has had two and a half months to gel and find its
primary contributors. Sophomore forward Lindsay Tarpley leads the
team in scoring, with 21 goals and 25 assists. Freshman Heather
O’Reilly has tallied 13 goals and 10 assists, while Reddick
has six goals and five assists from her defender position in only
11 games with the team.
This Tar Heel squad is a virtual “Who’s who”
of the national leaders in a multitude of categories, and three
players ““ Tarpley, Reddick and sophomore Lori Chalupney
““ have been nominated as semifinalists for the prestigious
MAC Hermann Player of the Year award.
In short, this team is really, really good.
“This is definitely one of Carolina’s strongest
teams,” Ellis said. “This is one of the best teams
they’ve had in quite a while.”
They’re so good, in fact, there is little doubt that the
Bruins have assumed the role of underdog.
“You throw out the old clichés, nothing to lose,
everything to gain,” Ellis said. “I love the role of
underdog. With the year we’ve had, we haven’t really
had the opportunity to be the underdog. And now we do. It’s
great.”
The only other time the Bruins played the underdog role was in
the previous loss to the Tar Heels. Tomorrow will tell if things
really have changed.
Said Ellis: “After the last Carolina game, I told the
team, “˜You’ve just played with, and at times dominated,
the best team in the country. I think you’re the second-best
team in the country.’
Then, she paused and thought about the task at hand. “Now
we have a chance to try to be the best.”
And so they believe.