University of North Carolina Athletics
From Fetzer To Finley: An Inside Look At UNC's Olympic Sports Program
March 7, 2001 | Men's Lacrosse
March 7, 2001
Associate Athletics Communications Director
When I called John Haus Monday morning to congratulate him on the team's big win over Navy this past weekend I knew he would do his best to pooh-pooh the accomplishment. As I suspected, John quickly said, "Hopfeully in a couple of years winning at Navy won't be such a big deal for us."
With no offense to Richie Meade's Midshipmen I understand completely what John was saying. North Carolina's once proud men's lacrosse program finds itself currently at a point where winning a game at Navy on a goal with one second left in regulation is a big deal. "That was a big win for us," legendary Tar Heel coach Willie Scroggs would say to me later Monday morning.
It's ironic that Saturday's win would come at the expense of the Naval Academy, a program whose lacrosse tradition essentially dwarfs Carolina's. In the old days, even dating to the 19th century, the powers in lacrosse were teams like Johns Hopkins, Navy, Army and Maryland with Ivy League entries thrown in for good measure. The sport of baggataway, as the Native Americans called it, began to change with the advent of an NCAA Tournament in 1971. And change has been constant since then.
When Scroggs arrived in Chapel Hill in 1978 he made Haus a key part of his first recruiting class as Carolina's head coach. Over the 12 seasons that Scroggs mentored the Tar Heel program, Carolina won a troika of NCAA titles. Haus played on two of those title-winning teams. When Scroggs retired as the Tar Heels' head coach in 1990 he left the program in great shape. New head coach Dave Klarmann squired the 1991 Tar Heels to a perfect 16-0 record and the school's fourth national championship in 11 seasons. Carolina would return to the NCAA Final Four each of the next two years, losing a 13-12 heartbreaker to Syracuse in the 1993 NCAA championship game on a goal in the final 10 seconds.
But that essentially would be the end of the glory days for the Tar Heel lacrosse program. Although the Tar Heels won ACC titles in 1994 and 1996 and earned NCAA Tournament bids in 1994, 1995, 1996 and 1998 that loss to Syracuse marked an end to Carolina's field of dreams mentality.
In June of 1999 Klarmann announced that he would coach Carolina only one more season after the Tar Heels had posted three successive losing seasons, going 6-7 in 1997, 7-8 in 1998 and 6-9 in 1999. That 1997 team was the first one since 1979 which had not made the NCAA Tournament field. To the players' credit the 2000 Tar Heels sent Klarmann out with a winning record as Carolina went 8-6 last year.
Enter Haus last June 1 with the understanding that Carolina would like to return to the heady days of the 1980s. Haus inherited a team which had a very good 2000 senior class. Two of the top three attackmen graduated as did an outstanding midfielder. Two of the three starting defensemen graduated and the third starter was lost last month to academic woes. There is only one defenseman on the entire roster who has played any amount of significant time in the previous three seasons.
Haus also inherited a program which is just used to losing big games too much. The last time Carolina won an NCAA Tournament game was 1993 in the semifinals against Johns Hopkins. The last time Carolina won an ACC Tournament was 1996 in the finals against Virginia. Going into this year the Tar Heels were 1-16 in their last 17 games against ACC opponents.
After beating Fairfield 12-7 in the season opener the Tar Heels were wretched in their second game, losing 9-4 to Bucknell. As sophomore midfielder Austin Garrison told me the day after that game, "Any good high school team could have beaten us yesterday."
Two days before the Navy game things got worse for Carolina as goalkeeper Kris Blindenbacher suffered a mild concussion in practice. He could not even make the trip to Navy after starting 16 games in a row for the Tar Heels in goal. Goalkeeper Robert D'Urso, a senior, who had played 65:37 in goal for Carolina in his first three years combined, was asked to play 60 minutes against the Midshipmen.
Even moreso there was the Tar Heels' road bugga-boo. UNC went into the game having lost seven straight road games since winning at Duke on April 14, 1999. It had been since March 14, 1999 since the Tar Heels had won a game outside of the borders of the state of North Carolina. It had been since April 11, 1998 since UNC had beaten someone outside of the state of North Carolina on the East Coast.
"But Saturday the difference was that our guys really wanted to compete. They wanted to win. They wanted to play hard," Haus told me on Monday.
In a game in which neither team ever led by more than two goals, the Tar Heels frittered away a 10-8 lead by letting Navy score at 1:33 and 0:39 of the fourth quarter. As Yogi Berra might have said, "It's deja vu all over again."
But on this day, senior attackman Jeff Sonke, who a year earlier had beaten Navy with a sudden victory overtime goal on Fetzer Field, whipped a bounce shot from 40 feet away that found the back of the net with one second to play. Result--an 11-10 Tar Heel win.
Does Saturday's win exorcise all the demons? Hardly. But it's a start. There is a lot of work still to be done to restore this once proud program to the status it craves so desperately.
Nevertheless, in 2001, it was a big win for the Tar Heels. A big win.
