Dec. 21, 2003

By Dave Lohse
Associate Athletic Communications Director

When University of North Carolina senior forward Alyssa Ramsey stole the ball from Connecticut goalkeeper Megan Jessee and scored into an open goal with 20 seconds left in the 2003 NCAA Women's College Cup championship match December 7 in Cary, N.C., it was a fitting end to an amazing season of college soccer for the Tar Heels. While some may have viewed the sixth goal in Carolina's 6-0 win over the Huskies as piling on, the way the Tar Heel bench reacted to the goal was much more indicative of what that final goal of the season meant.

You see, this was a team which played relentlessly for every minute and every second of every match it played during its amazing championship run of 2003. This team knew only one speed -- full throttle. And when you combine a rare combination of talent, a dedicated work ethic, extraordinary leadership and a relentless desire to not just win, but to dominate your opponent, you end up with a team that will clearly be designated in time as one of the best in the history of the game.

When the Tar Heels finished the campaign 27-0-0 with the dominating win over UConn in the finals, Tar Heel head coach Anson Dorrance was asked whether this was the best of his 25 teams at Carolina. It was not an unreasonable question. But it was a question that was very hard for Dorrance to answer. It's hard to compare a team going wire to wire in 2003 without a tie and a loss with the last time that was accomplished in 1993 when UNC went 25-0-0 in Mia Hamm's senior year and beat George Mason 6-0 in the championship game.

Women's soccer on the collegiate level has changed remarkably since 1993. There were only 16 teams in the 1993 tournament while 64 teams compete now, meaning teams must win two more games to win the championship in this day and age. In 1993, women's soccer was at the start of its vast expansion of the past decade with 131 varsity teams at the NCAA Division I level. This year, there were 294 teams competing at the Division I level.

The biggest change over the past 10 years has been the expansion of the game among the power conferences of Division I with the Southeastern Conference, Big East, Big Ten, Big 12 and Pac 10 schools all sponsoring the sport with full scholarship allotments. Good players have more college choices and while North Carolina has continued to play at a remarkably high level, parity has become more and more a part of the game. Witness that from 1995 through 2002 a total of 24 matches were played in the NCAA semifinal and championship game rounds and 19 had been decided by one goal and the other five by only two goals.

Then along came the Carolina team of 2003. The Tar Heels were at their best when they reached the NCAA Tournament, outscoring their six opponents by an absurd 32-0 margin. The Tar Heels broke their own record for goals scored in an NCAA Tournament by 10 goals (old record was 22 goals in 1996) and they became the first team in the history of the tournament to hold opponents scoreless through six games. During the NCAA Tournament, UNC beat four conference champions as well as the teams unanimously voted No. 2 and No. 3 in the final regular season polls. And the closest outcome was 3-0 against No. 2 UCLA and No. 3 Santa Clara.

By the time the Tar Heels reached the postseason, all the constituent parts seemed to have melded together into an overwhelming whole. Offensively, the Tar Heels were amazingly explosive, outscoring their opponents 113-11 on the season. No team in college soccer had scored over 100 goals since 1999 and the Tar Heels, as talented as they have been, had not done so since 1997. Carolina had four players in double figures in both goals and assists and 18 players on the team had at least one goal and 23 had at least one point.

Carolina was led offensively by a dynamic attacking foursome of sophomore forward Lindsay Tarpley, senior forward Alyssa Ramsey, freshman forward Heather O'Reilly and sophomore midfielder Lori Chalupny. Tarpley, the Atlantic Coast Conference Player of the Year and the ACC Tournament Most Valuable Player, was also the points leader in NCAA Division I with 73. She had 23 goals and also led the country in assists with 27. Tarpley had 11 assists in the NCAA Tournament, a new record, and her 19 points in the tournament are the most ever by a Tar Heel.

Ramsey finished with 45 points on 10 goals and 25 assists, the second highest total in the nation. The senior finished all four years as a Tar Heel in double figures in both goals and assists.

O'Reilly, a freshman phenom who likely would have played on the 2003 U.S. World Cup Team had she not suffered a broken leg while playing with the U.S. National Team last June, was a work in progress most of the season. Through the first 15 games of the season she scored three goals. Then the explosion began as her health and conditioning returned in tandem. In her final 12 games of the season, she scored 13 goals, including eight in the NCAA Tournament. Those eight goals were a new UNC record for the NCAA Tournament, breaking the mark set by Hamm in 1993 when she scored six.

Chalupny was another part of the puzzle as her 11 goals and 12 assists made her the offensive leader of the midfield. Seven more Tar Heels were in double figures in points with Kacey White with 28, Anne Morrell with 23, Maggie Tomecka with 22, Mary McDowell with 20, Catherine Reddick with 17, Elizabeth Guess with 16 and Kendall Fletcher with 15. The offensive balance was simply astounding. The Tar Heels simply had so many different weapons to use in beating their opponents. Twelve different Tar Heel players scored game-winning goals with Tarpley and Chalupny leading the team with five each.

On the other end of the field there was a dominating defense that allowed only 0.40 goals per game and a total of 11 opponent tallies in 27 matches while posting 19 shutouts. Playing defense at Carolina is a team effort that begins with the forward line and the midfield but UNC had a profoundly talented back line of Reddick, who missed the first 14 matches of the season playing with the U.S. World Cup Team, senior Carmen Watley, sophomore Kendall Fletcher and freshman Jessica Maxwell. Sophomore Aly Winget also had a superb season in goal for the Tar Heels. Her 71 saves were the second most in a season in UNC history and her 0.433 goals against average ranked third in the nation. At one point in the season the absurd assertion circulating the college soccer ranks was that Carolina had a weak defense. Where that fantasy was hatched is still to be determined.

The dominance of this team was also reflected in the fact that Carolina led the nation in every team statistic compiled by the NCAA. UNC was No. 1 in scoring offense at 4.19 goals per game, No. 1 in goals against average at 0.404 goals per game, No. 1 in shutout percentage at 0.70 of its matches and No. 1 in won-loss-tied percentage at 1.000.

It won't be easy for Carolina to duplicate these kinds of numbers next year. The Tar Heels started five seniors in 2003 with Ramsey up front, superb cerebral leader Jordan Walker and Tomecka in the midfield and Reddick and Watley on defense. But this senior-led 2003 team will take its place in the history of the dynasty as possibly the best team in the 25 years of the program. If it is not the best team it certainly is the most accomplished squad given the changes in the sport and arrival of parity in the college game. And that is a lot to say for a program that has recorded a 559-25-15 record while winning 18 national championships since 1979. It was a certainly a team worthy of this amazing dynasty.