University of North Carolina Athletics
Carolina Women's Soccer 2000
July 31, 2000 | Women's Soccer
July 31, 2000
Director of Media Relations for Olympic Sports
After capturing the school's 16th national championship in the past 19 years in what was considered a rebuilding year in 1999, the University of North Carolina women's soccer team looks forward to the 2000 campaign with eager anticipation. The Tar Heels return 19 letter winners overall and seven starters from last year's team which finished 24-2-0 and won the school's 16th national championship and the University's 12th Atlantic Coast Conference title in women's soccer.
"Coaching last year's team was a thrill," says Tar Heel coach Anson Dorrance, who with a record of 466-19-11 is the winningest coach in collegiate soccer history. "We were a young team and we lost two matches in September but we learned from those losses and down the stretch we were very good. The difference was our defense. In the last 11 games of the season we gave up only one goal and that was in the 90th minute of an NCAA third round game which we won 5-1.
"Obviously the main jobs this year are to retool our center midfield presence where we lost both Beth Sheppard and Rebekah McDowell to graduation and find replacements for Lindsay Stoecker and Lorrie Fair in the defensive backfield. Neither of those tasks will be easy but they must be accomplished if we are to be in the hunt for another ring."
Last year's championship win was one of the sweetest in Carolina lore as the Tar Heels rebounded from a pair of losses in the month of September to close the season with 18 successive wins. Carolina allowed opponents to score only five goals in those 18 wins as National Player of the Year Lorrie Fair anchored a Tar Heel defense which was tenacious. Meanwhile, the youthful offense was trying to gel without the likes of graduated National Player of the Year Cindy Parlow and the injured Laurie Schwoy, a three-time All-America. Led by a myriad of heroines, the offense eventually become a productive if not spectacular unit with a new star emerging every game to lift the Tar Heels to victory.
"I have great respect for last year's team because for the first time in a while we were not the favorite to win the national championship, especially after we lost the two games in September," Dorrance says. "But our team had great chemistry. It took a while to develop it because of the injury problems we had the the inexperience of so many of our key players. We had great senior leaders with players like Lorrie Fair, Rebekah McDowell, Lindsay Stoecker and Beth Sheppard. But it was a Carolina team that really didn't have a star player and it was a thrill as a coach to see so many different players step up and contribute in different ways to the process of winning."
FORWARDS: The Tar Heels find themselves in a situation in which they are talented rich at the front runner positions in the year 2000. The entire forward line returns from last year and one of the top attacking recruits in the nation signed with the Tar Heels this past spring.
Carolina returns starters Meredith Florance, Kim Patrick and Susan Bush to the front line while adding Alyssa Ramsey, one of the country's most sought-after new players in 2000.
A two-year starter, Florance, a senior from Dallas, has quietly gone about having a great career at Carolina. She has 33 goals and 24 assists in three years and last year she was the team's third-leading scorer with 13 goals and nine assists, including the game-winning goal in the national championship game win over Notre Dame. Patrick and Bush were both sensational as freshmen last year. Bush came to Chapel Hill as the more heralded of the two but she was hampered the entire year by a string of injuries. "No one ever saw the real Susan Bush last season," Dorrance says.
Folks did see the real Kim Patrick and the Pleasanton, Calif. native was spectacular, leading the Tar Heels in scoring as a freshman with 42 points on 18 goals and six assists while earning starts in only 14 of the 26 games. Bush was limited to appearances in 21 games and starts in only eight. She finished with 17 points on four goals and nine assists. Despite not starting either game in the NCAA final four and non scoring a goal in either contest she was chosen the offensive Most Valuable Player of the event for assisting on three of the Tar Heels' four goals and displaying her incredible playmaking skills while playing at 75 percent capacity because of her injuries. Add to this mix incoming freshman Alyssa Ramsey, a Cornelius, N.C. native. Ramsey is so well respected that she was invited by National Team coach April Heinrichs to train with the U.S. squad in San Diego beginning last January. She joined current Tar Heels Susan Bush, Jena Kluegel and Jenni Branam in training camp as the team prepared for the Sydney Olympic Games this summer. The 30-player camp squad was to be cut to 18 for the Olympics which are in September.
Regardless of whether any of the current UNC players make the Olympic Team or not, the experience they gained in the residency camp can do nothing but help the Tar Heel squad.
Carolina's depth at forward beyond the four aforementioned players will be immense. Coming off the bench will be Dallas native Elizabeth Ball who definitely earned the title of "Super Sub" as a freshman last year. She had four goals and four assists for the Tar Heels, including the overtime game-winner in the semifinals of the ACC Tournament against Clemson when she scored directly off a corner kick.
Other depth on the forward line will come from junior Anne Remy, who is likely to start in the midfield but can move forward if necessary, junior Amy Whittier from Fairfield, Conn. and freshmen Carmen Watley of Greensboro, N.C. and Jane Smith of Winston-Salem, N.C.
MIDFIELDERS: Despite the loss of two starters in the midfield unit, Dorrance is confident that the 2000 Tar Heels will still have one of the top corps of halfbacks of any team in the nation. Lost to graduation are attacking center midfielder Beth Sheppard, who had a magnificent senior year after two years of nagging injury problems, and playmaking center midfielder Rebekah McDowell, a four-year starter.
The good news is that the Tar Heels return three starters from last year in senior Raven McDonald (Benson, N.C.) and juniors Jena Kluegel (Mahtomedi, Minn.) and Anne Remy (Norman, Okla.). McDonald has been nothing but steady during her career, starting all but three of 80 games and compiling 79 points. Her 10 career game-winning goals are more than any other returning Tar Heel player. Last year she had seven goals and 10 assists.
Kluegel, one of the four Tar Heels who spent January-Agust 2000 in the U.S. National Team residency camp, has started all 51 games over the past two years. She was the leading midfield scorer last year with 24 points, including 10 goals. At the end of last season Remy was playing more and more for the Tar Heels in the midfield unit and that will probably be her natural position this year. She will still be available to move up front when the Tar Heels need her to and she played most of the first two years there. Remy scored 40 points last year, the second highest total on the team. She had 13 goals and she led Carolina in both assists with 14 and game-winning goals with six.
Not to be forgotten in this formula is the much anticipated return of senior midfielder Laurie Schwoy of Baltimore, Md. to the center of the Carolina midfield. Schwoy started for Carolina for three years at the attacking center midfielder positions before taking a red-shirt year in 1999 because of a nagging hamstring injury that refused to heal. Doctors strongly suggested that she rest the hamstring completely for a period of six months. Schwoy who was a consensus freshman All-America in 1996 and a consensus first-team All-America choice in both 1997 and 1998 should be one of the premier players in the country this season and along with Bush ranks as the Tar Heels' top two candidates for potential National Player of the Year accolades.
This mix of talent and experience in the midfield is supported by two more versatile Tar Heels who can play either in the midfielder or as a defender. Kalli Kamholz, a senior from Indian Harbor Beach, Fla., and Leslie Gaston, a red-shirt sophomore from Montgomery, Ala. both played significant minutes for the Tar Heels last year. Their play was a big factor in Carolina's run to the national championship. Kamholz, who transferred to UNC last year from Vanderbilt, also found a knack for scoring with four goals and eight assists. A healthy Gaston, who has had five anterior cruciate ligament tears in the last four years, gives the Tar Heels even more superlative depth. And the versatility of these two athletes to play several positions on the field cannot be understated.
Other midfield depth will come from seniors Julia Marslender and Mandy Morrison, both from Raleigh, junior Johanna Costa of Chapel Hill and red-shirt freshman Jordan Walker of Richardson, Texas. True freshmen Watley and Smith will also seek playing time in both the midfield and at the forward spot.
DEFENDERS: Youthful is the best adjective to define the Tar Heels' on the defensive end of the field in the coming campaign. A team simply cannot lose a pair of starters like 1999 tri-captains Lorrie Fair and Lindsay Stoecker without taking a hit.
The great thing about the Tar Heels' defensive philosophy is that there is likely no team in America who could lose a pair of starters like Stoecker and Fair and still bounce back like Carolina can. But at UNC the philosophy is that all 11 players are expected to be tenacious on defense. From the time possession is lost the main responsibility of every player on the field is to regain the ball. No one gets on the field for the Tar Heels unless they buy into that philosophy. Even the most publicized superstar forward for Carolina must play defense as her foremost responsibility.
"We expect all of our players to play defense," says Dorrance. "That is our philosophy. If you don't play defense you won't get on the field."
Junior Danielle Borgman, arguably the fastest Tar Heel player, is back after starting all 52 games for Carolina over the past two campaigns. Borgman, who hails from Cincinnati, is one of the nation's most gifted defenders. Senior Tina Murphy will also be in the battle for one of the starting spots. A Putnam Valley, N.Y. native in her fifth year as a Tar Heel, she has 11 career starts, including seven in 1999.
Carolina also signed a pair of the top five freshmen in the country. Both of thesee players will get a look at earning a starting spot on defense. Both Maggie Tomecka of Shewsbury, Mass. and Catherine Reddick of Birmingham, Ala. are considered to be strong, physical and fast players.
Depth defensively will come from a quality group of letter winners which includes senior Nancy Hackett of Tracy, Calif. as well as Kamholz, Gaston and Marslender. From out of this group Dorrance must find a combination of players who work well together. Carolina was again among the national leaders in team defense last year, allowing only 0.45 goals per game and shutting out 18 of 26 opponents. The season-ending run which saw opponents score only one goals in the last 13 games was an amazing streak. It will be hard for this year's inexperienced defensive unit to equal that but that is the standard it must strive for in the Carolina philosophy.
GOALKEEPERS: A year ago the Tar Heel program was faced with the task of replacing three-year starting goalkeeper Siri Mullinix, a individual who may very well start in goal for the 2000 U.S. Olympic Team.
It was not a situation that anyone associated with the Tar Heel women's soccer program relished. Fortunately for Carolina the situation could not have worked out much better. Jenni Branam, a Placentia, Calif. native, walked in as a freshman and claimed the job in preseason practice. Despite seemingly a walking, talking injury case the entire year she played at a level which saw her invited to the U.S. National Team residency camp which convened in San Diego this past January to train for the 2000 Olympic Games.
While Branam was earning freshman All-America honors for her play in goal, sophomore Kristin DePlatchett (Harborcreek, Pa.) was earning enough experience in practice and in games to develop into one of the nation's top backup keepers. This was experience which was simply not available to DePlatchett in the year 1998 when she backed up Mullinix. Now the Tar Heels enter the 2000 campaign with sophomore Branam and junior DePlatchett as well tested veterans and the last line of defense could simply not be in better hands from a Tar Heel point of view.
ranam finished last year with a goals against average of 0.30 while playing 1,812 minutes in goal. She was credited with 14.2 shutouts. DePlatchett had an 0.92 goals against average in 585 minutes but in defense of her she was also thrown into situations where early in the season she had to face some of Carolina's most imposing opponents. She is a far better backup goalkeeper than that GAA might suggest. In almost 400 minutes of play as a freshman she allowed no goals so she is expected to improve this year as well.
Carolina also has two other very capable goalkeepers on this year's squad in senior Jamie Kinney (Dallas, Texas) and junior Katie Simmons (Wilmington, N.C.). Both players are transfers to the Carolina program with Kinney coming from Brevard Junior College two years ago and Simmons arriving this year from the University of North Florida.
SCHEDULE: As is always the case, the 2000 Tar Heel schedule reads like a who's who of the nation's Top 25 teams. As the season approaches, a look at the preseason National Soccer Coaches Association of America/adidas preseason poll confirms that the Tar Heels will be challenged once again in the regular season. The Tar Heels are the #1 pick in the NSCAA poll to successfully defend their national championship of last season. But the Atlantic Coast Conference is well represented as well. Clemson is the #6 team in the poll, Wake Forest is #12, Virginia is #16, Duke is #22 and Maryland is #23.
Carolina's non-conference opponents include in the coaches' preseason Top 25 are fourth-ranked Penn State, 11th-ranked Texas A&M, 13th-ranked William & Mary and 15th-ranked Southern Methodist. "It has always been our philosophy to play the very best," says Dorrance. "You can only get better as a team or as an orgnaization when you challenge yourself with competition from the very best. Last year I thought I might have overscheduled our team early in the season. By our standards it was a rebuilding year and with injuries and inexperience the month of September was arduous. Our fans weren't used to losing two games in one season as absurd as that may sound.
"What we discovered is that playing that difficult early-season schedule was the best thing that happened to us as a team. We were forced to come together and our kids responded well. And down the stretch our schedule played a big role in making us a battle toughened team that could overcome adversity. And the results of the tournaments we played in was the proof of that fact."
OVERVIEW: UNC suffered two losses last year in the same season for the first time since 1985. But the end product was what mattered and the Tar Heels were a battle tested and experienced team come tourney time. Despite the overwhelming success of the program everyone associated with the program knows how difficult it is to win in this day and age. And knowing that is a crucial edge in success.
