Here's a riddle for you: If the Virginia women's soccer team played North Carolina last season in the ACC tournament title game and the Cavaliers were crowned champions at the conclusion of the match, how is it possible that Virginia has never beaten UNC?
My first guess involved UNC coach Anson Dorrance selling his soul to the devil and in exchange receiving assurance that there would never be any record of North Carolina's women's soccer team ever losing a game. It turns out that's not the answer, but considering UNC has won 16 of the last 22 national championships, it doesn't seem like much of a stretch to me.
The reason why the ACC Championship victory was not recorded as a win is because it wasn't a win. It was a tie. Virginia tied North Carolina and then advanced on penalty kicks to win the title.
So the Cavaliers get their ACC title, but they still can't shake the fact that in the 29 games they have played against North Carolina, they have not won even once. 0-28-1.
Basically, North Carolina women's soccer owns Virginia. It's not like the Cavaliers are alone; North Carolina women's soccer is hands down the most successful collegiate program in the last 30 years if not all-time.
But not one win in 29 games? Not even a Virginia team that is perpetually ranked in the top 10? It can't win once?
Apparently not. Not yet, at least. The Cavaliers bring a perfect 4-0 ACC record and a No. 5 national ranking into Chapel Hill looking to finally beat the Tar Heels.
Although Virginia has never won its first four ACC games before, this will not be the first time a talented, nationally ranked Virginia squad takes on the evil empire of women's soccer. The Cavaliers were No. 4 in the country last year when they fell to the Tar Heels in the regular season 2-1 and boasted an 11-2-1 record and a No. 10 national ranking in 2003 when UNC visited Charlottesville and grabbed a 3-0 victory. Throughout the early and mid-'90s, when coach April Heinrichs consistently brought women's soccer talent to Grounds, UNC prevailed each and every time.
It's more than just bad luck, however. These Virginia teams may have had talent, but they didn't have UNC-level talent. When a team wins every title between the years 1986 and 2000 except for two, it is head and shoulders above the rest. So how has North Carolina been able to sustain this kind of success year-in, year-out for the past two decades? Well, once Dorrance and his staff dipped into the talent pool and scooped out what they needed, there wasn't much left for anybody else.
Like many women's sports, the talent pool for women's soccer traditionally has been shallow enough that small children could be left unattended wading in it. There were only a few truly elite players, and North Carolina snapped the majority of them up and compiled a team of all-stars each season that trounced the competition. A similar phenomenon was present in women's basketball as well, with powerhouses Connecticut and Tennessee perpetually making appearances in the Final Four throughout the 1980s and '90s.
The concept of girls playing sports at a highly competitive level was still something new to this country in the first few years after Title IX went into effect in 1972. The opportunity for young women to play was there in the mid-70s, but the number of girls who committed themselves to play at a competitive number was limited, as was the amount of programs out there able to develop talent and prepare these athletes for the next level.
It really wasn't until the 1990s that the quality of programs and the level of participation reached a point at which one could make the claim that there was something resembling equality between boys and girls athletics in the United States. The establishment of two different women's professional basketball leagues (the now-defunct ABL and thriving WNBA) and the short-lived WUSA women's soccer league gave women an opportunity to play on the professional level, even if they wouldn't be making the kind of money that their male counterparts brought it.
Suddenly, things started to change in NCAA women's athletics. Baylor, who had never before won an NCAA Championship, defeated Michigan State to win the 2004 women's basketball title, while Connecticut didn't even make it past the round of 16. After only four different teams won NCAA titles between 1982 and 2000, a different squad has taken home the trophy the past four seasons. The door has been opened for other teams to come in and make the Tar Heels look like mortals.
There's no reason to think that Steve Swanson's Virginia squad couldn't be one of those teams. The former coach of the U-16 national team (2000-02) has brought in highly-touted recruiting classes the past few seasons and a freshman (Jess Rostedt) and a sophomore (Sarah Curtis) rank in the top three on the team in scoring. Plus, the Cavaliers are the defending ACC champions. Until last year, the Tar Heels had won every ACC tournament ever held.
Despite being the reigning champs, the Cavaliers still can't get away from the fact that they have never recorded a win against North Carolina. In essence, the Tar Heels have been a riddle the Cavaliers have been unable to solve. If Virginia truly wants to be part of the new generation of Division I soccer elite, the Cavaliers will have to find the answer.
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