I don't know the numbers or it's publicity or what, but UNC seems to have so many knee injuries. Could it be something in their training method? Are they overworking them or focusing on something specific too often? Again, I don't know if the numbers of these are normal for a P5 team.
This topic has been thoroughly hashed out in last year's UNC page. Suffice it to say that there are lots of opinions representing multiple points of view. 1. There is the view that since UNC did not have many ACL tears over the years which coincided with their notorious fitness/training regimes, that last year's rash of ACL tears must have been due to a relaxing of all of that exhaustive training by adopting the more gentle Dutch methods as researched and promoted by Dr. Raymond Verheijen. 2. There is the view that over training is exactly what produces ACL tears and that the more benign Dutch methods will pay off in time. 3. There is the view that fitness training methods don't make a hoot of difference and it is simply a matter of female knee physiology which statistically caught up with UNC's good luck over the proir years. 4. There is the view that careful re-training of how to jump, land, cut, and accelerate/de-accelerate from a fundamental mechanical point of view is what female athletes need. (And the countering point of view of "Good luck with that!) 5. There is the point of view that as the numbers of top female soccer athletes playing at a high level increases, we will simply have more ACL tears. (...Back to the fact-of-life female knee physiology proponents.) So, at this juncture, it seems to be a "take your pick" of the various camps and wait patiently until scientific research eventually coalesces around a proven explanation.
thank you, hunter. All of that was interesting to note. My opinion is that college players are needlessly over-conditioned. They thrive in club soccer sans the seal team fanaticism. I think this has to creep into parent's minds at this point. Was it somebody here who posted the video of Jo going back into a game recently. To me, she looks challenged psychologically. I hope not, but without NFL stem cell/steroid/shrink resources, it is so much harder.
A couple of points. Taylor Otto had two ACL tears (prior to UNC) and she is definitely not psychologically challenged. I do not think that Jo has any problems. Maggie Bill was the latest ACL victim in UNC. Unfortunately, she is the victim of the false narrative (IMHO) that it is great to be a double or triple "threat ". May be 20 years ago. Currently D1 college soccer (without lacrosse) is more than enough trauma for a knee.
I agree regarding Jo. Her tears upon her first game entry since her consecutive ACL rehabs, is a normal and healthy emotional response of relief. She'll be just fine. My perception from watching a little lacrosse is that it looks tougher on knees than even soccer. Most of the time seems to be spent near the goal with the offensive stars such as Maggie Bill constantly juking, cutting, and spinning to get free for shots. Does anyone know if their ACL situation is on a par or worse than soccer for the the high level women's game?
But I have recently heard that Maggie was hoping to pursue a professional soccer career as a defender. It might be heady to be a Lacrosse All American and on the US national women's team, but she apparently sees her athletic future as a soccer player. I note that after Maggie's ACL tear week before last, UNC lost to underdog Syracuse. Not a good omen to be without one of your star scorers. Speaking of UNC soccer and lacrosse. I just noted that UNC has another one coming in in 2019. Julia Dorsey from Maryland is also a two sport athlete and will be playing both at UNC. Regarding soccer, she plays Defense for ODP, Forward for her high school, and Midfield for her ECNL club team. It seems that each coach has a different view of her?
Sort of "order of desperation" for goal scorers -- high school, then club, then ODP (and college?). My instinct is to say playing two college sports is too many. But then, who am I to criticize -- I played three, although I now would love to go through college again and just spend my time going to class, reading, and studying.
Really enjoyed watching the various Tarheel alums battle at the first home game of the new NC Courage at the Wake Med stadium at Cary last Sat. The Courage won 1-0 late with Jessica McDonald getting the assist and starring. Allie Long and Meghan Klingenberg played well for the Portland Thorns. Kling especially shut down the Courage attack repeatedly in the first half, but is coming back from an injury and didn't play in the second -- thus the goal perhaps! --I remember when many questioned p!aying her on the back line on the national team--what a terrific player--fire and ice. She got loose on an attack run herself and promptly got fouled--maybe the only way to stop her! She was not happy. The Courage are defending champs as the old Western New York franchise. Tobin Heath, for Portland, has back problems and didn't play. Meg Morris was on the bench also for Portland but didn't get in. Lindsey Horan, our first none and done player, is still incredibly young and seems on the verge of stardom. Crowd of over 6k--I'm told that at least some of UNC's matches in the fall will be played there because Fetzer won't be finished. These alum coming back to practice and hang out with the current team members is a huge part of UNC's ongoing success I'm told. IMHO the tv match commentators of the USWNT and NWSL matches should mention/promote the colleges these players come from. Women's soccer in America is not the NBA or the NFL--and anything that can be done to connect fans to college soccer and thus to pro soccer would help--if you market it, they will come. In the recent USWNT match with Russia, for example, it was UNC 4 and Russia 0. Dunn and Long got 2 goals each--and I didn't hear UNC mentioned. Okay, it was only Russia, but still...
My understanding if the Fetzer will just be in the first phase of re-construction this fall. The big push will be to see if they can get it done by the fall of 2018. If I were a betting man, I'd give even odds that it will be finished by then. (Maybe the actual field might be, but the new stands and the replacement for the current McCaskill building, I don't think so...) I'm quite interested to know if anyone has any information on how the fund raising went. Last I heard (last fall) they were in the process of canceling facilities and architectural features that they wanted for lack of funds.
My pick is some variation of 3. I don't think it has anything to do with UNC training regimes, the Dutch methods or whatever. Over training might have something to do with it and especially the compressed college schedule not allowing proper recovery between games. Females are more susceptible than males. Some females are less susceptible than others. Speed/agility training makes a difference in all females (and males too for that matter), but makes the biggest difference in the less susceptible ones to start with. It's not just mechanical and technique, it's core strength that allows the quick acceleration / deceleration with less torque on knee. And lastly, the earlier/younger you do the speed agility training the better, so good technique is learned early and no retraining is necessary or bad habits develop. By the time a player is in college, it's a little late. My two cents.
While we wait for any significant WoSo news until August...... The new stadium at Fetzer appears to be off to a bad start. The original plan was to begin renovation/construction of the 1935 era playing field just as soon as the spring home season for Lacrosse. (That was originally engineered to be March 6.) I read that the legislature has to buy of on this deal even though it's completely privately funded because there are to be temporary loan construction guarantees. Apparently, the legislature will not act on this request until June. That's a three month delay to start. I also read in a different article that the planned "awnings" (or what ever those cantilevered structures are) over the spectator seats have been canceled in order to reduce the cost. (A UNC spokeswoman said that the stadium roofs had been “value-engineered out.” ...love that term!) Looks like we fans will be sitting in the sun and rain now without any shade trees (which will all be cut down.) Clearly the Tarheels need a wealthy benefactor (kinda like OSU's Neal Patterson) if they are going to keep up with the Jonses?
A look-see into the next three years with regard to the Tarheels WoSo team strength... (More boredom killing.....) In response to acknowledging that the days are long over for UNC being able to recruit the top players every year, four years ago Anson was quoted by Graham Hayes as saying that his motivation was focused on the challenge of building successful teams around a few top prospects. And so it has come to pass with this past year being a great example. No UNC players in 2016 were named to the first two All American teams (Bridgette was the only Heel named to the third team), The only first line accolade for the Heels was Frances Reuland getting the top NCAA academic honor at the final four, the "Elite 90" award. (Second time in 4 years for the Heels) And to prove the point only one Heel was signed by the NWSL this year (and has yet to see any playing time.) Top Drawer Soccer, after the season was over decided that only upper class player on the UNC team deserving of national recognition was keeper Lindsey Harris who they tabbed at #68. (Although TDS did recognize frreshmen Redei and Shultz as the #57 and #87 freshmen in the land. OK. The pickers of talent have spoken. There apparently was not much of same in their eyes at UNC in 2016. AND YET..... how the heck did the Heels end up in the Final Four again? Could this be Anson's kind of team he is challenged by? Which leads me to looking at the prospects for the future. The future looks good. No, on paper, the Heels are not competing with Stanford, UCLA, and Duke for the very top talent. (And maybe not even with USC, Virginia, and a few other schools, but that would be close.) Anson's teams will be composed of classes with one or two potential top prospects followed by some solid lesser known talent plus a lot of walk-ons. Just what he said motivates him to keep coaching. It should be interesting.
I just looked at UNC's commits/signings for 2017-2019 and the Heels look loaded. It does not look like the talent is falling off in the least. There certainly seem to be a lot more than 1 or 2 top prospects in each class.
i wouldn't say UNC isn't competing for the very top talent as Stanford, Duke, and UCLA..because they certainly are. Many of those who committed to those schools did seriously consider UNC at some point. UNC is always in play. A more accurate statement would be that the wealth of talent is more spread out in recent years among other schools. Sure UNC isn't going to get 3 of the top 5 players like they used to every year and it's unrealistic to have expected that trend to continue with the evolving climate of collegiate women's soccer. there will be cycles. The "down" years in UNC recruiting will simply be because other programs are becoming more prominent. Players are opting to stay closer to home or basing their decisions on other factors knowing that UNC isn't the only top program they can play at, which makes sense and is just a natural evolution of things. Even with that said, UNC do and will continue to get their share because they are still the most Elite program in all of women's collegiate soccer due to continued excellence with the best coach. As others have stated, the next three years UNC will be getting a ridiculous amount of talent. The CASL pipeline isn't showing signs of slowing. Anson has shown what he can do even with lesser talented teams and with the incoming talent i can see 1 or 2 college cups within the next few years.
If you're starved for UNC soccer, the NWSL offers many Carolina connections. Last week the NC Courage went to 3-0 in the new season at WakeMed in Cary with a 3-1 over Ashlyn Harris' Orlando team--(she called out her teammates after that effort). The Courage's defense, coached by Bill Palladino, has given up only one goal so far. Jessica McDonald scored and assisted against Orlando. Anson was roaming around enjoying the show. The Courage play the #2 team Boston--Brooke Elby's team--Sunday at 6. It looks like a lot of these games are streamed--some are on cable.
NC Courage went to 4-0 vs the Boston Breakers today 1-0 at Boston. UNC alum Jessica McDonald scored the lone goal and became the new league's all time scorer at 33. Palladino's offense got its third clean sheet--nothing new there--it's been pretty hard to beat UNC the last three decades when you can't score on them.
I'm surprised there hasn't been some type of "moneyball" evaluation if anyone who coaches chooses to specifically not recruit freshman and sophomore girls and then go after only juniors. Seems everyone goes after freshmen and sophomores , yet there doesn't seem to be that much crashing and burning for recruiting that young. Maybe I'm missing that or maybe those kids are the ones that don't make it through "admissions" at the last second or something... just seems in the era of statistics that would be something easy to measure. Are there really no girls that bloom in junior or senior years and become college stars? or maybe since there are so many non-scholarship fractional scholarships, no one cares if the hot player in high school ends up as just one of 28 on the bench in college.... since they are getting an education and there's no money in womens soccer. Fairly certain if some college coach was recruiting one and dones in basketball and that coach never won and those players never made lottery draft we'd know. I think the lack of a rewarding pro-system in WoSoc means there's not much scrutiny on successes or failure in recruiting. Some in state kid doesn't get much PT in college who cares, she went to a decent school and it didn't cost her parents that much.
Not sure how the UNC recruiting strategy works, but if one leg of the stool is to lock down in-state players with recent national team experience they seem to be doing a pretty good job with Taylor Otto there, Briana Pinto 2018, and Tori Hansen, Maggie Pierce and Marzia Josephson 2019. Serepca is heading to UVA and I might be missing others?
I'm a little worried that Briana Pinto might not spend much time at UNC. Given that she seems to be on the cusp of making it to the WNT, might she bypass the college experience?
This is an interesting question, in a broader sense than just Pinto. With first Horan and now Pugh having bypassed college for professional play, it will be interesting to see if more follow. It also will be interesting to see if some play a year or two of college ball and then go pro, as happens regularly on the men's side.
The master facilities plan, sans money. http://www.goheels.com/ViewArticle.dbml?ATCLID=211600490&DB_OEM_ID=3350