Family Tradition: Izzy Brown Making Name For Herself

Izzy Brown came into 2020 with two primary objectives: to make an impact on the UNC women's soccer team and to live up to her family's athletic legacy. After a challenging transition from high school to college, Brown entered her sophomore year with a mission to be more than just another name on the roster.

She is certainly accomplishing that.

Brown's competitive fire is not surprising considering her father, Chucky Brown, had a successful NBA career, including an NBA championship with the Houston Rockets. Her father has been a dedicated supporter of hers.

"My dad has been super supportive with everything that I do," Brown said. "Even if I didn't want to play soccer, he would still be supporting me. Or even if I didn't play any sports at all, he would still be supporting me."

A collegiate athlete himself, Chucky Brown played basketball at NC State from 1985-1989, which makes for good rivalry fun in the family. Their father-daughter bond has been able to withstand even the NC State-UNC rivalry, but not without a few jokes.

"We just have the house divided," Brown said. "We make jokes, you know, UNC this, NC State that. But my dad has yet to wear a UNC soccer shirt, he actually has a red UNC hat that he bought off of Amazon. I didn't even know they made those. He is the family member that shows up in all wolfpack red to my games, but at the end of the day he might switch his hat for a picture or something like that. But it's all love and it's all jokes. He's nothing but supportive."

Being the daughter of an NBA champion naturally comes with high expectations. Brown feels these expectations and pressure, but she uses it to motivate her progress as an athlete.

"I have pretty big shoes to fill," Brown shared, "but like I said, even if I didn't fill those shoes, I know my dad would be proud of me. But I do feel like I have a lot to live up to. That's why I wore my dad's jersey number because I want people to know I'm going to fill those shoes. I'm going to work my best at it."

Not only is Brown working to live up to her family legacy, but she is trying to add to the legacy of UNC women's soccer. With 22 NCAA Championships, there are high expectations for this team. Head Coach Anson Dorrance uses a "competitive cauldron" to motivate and push his teams. He uses the cauldron to rank each player from one to 32 for every drill and activity in practice. As the rankings accumulate throughout the year, players work toward achieving top-15 status because the rankings tend to be correlated with playing time.

"It has recently been my goal to be top-15 because my freshman year I was top-15 in a couple things but not everything," Brown said. "So, it's my goal to be top-15 or top-10 so I can keep pushing myself more and more and get more playing time."

Brown spent her spring and summer training and preparing for her sophomore season and her hard work has already paid off. In the first Carolina-Duke women's soccer game this season, Brown scored her first career goal as a Tar Heel. When the rivals rematched on October 23, she had another outstanding performance. Coming off the bench in a scoreless match, Brown boosted the Tar Heel momentum with four shots in the final 12 minutes of the first half.

"My goal was just based off of hard work," Brown said. "My teammates and I all play for each other, that's something we really stress. I wouldn't have gotten my goal if my teammates weren't playing for me. I'm really excited to play for my teammates, I'm excited for my teammates to play for me. And going into the spring, I'm excited to win a national championship."

The Tar Heels finished the regular season undefeated for the 16^th time in program history and won two matches in the ACC Championship tournament because falling to top-seeded Florida State, 3-2, on Nov. 16.

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