UNC women’s soccer falls in NCAA championship as UCLA scores improbable comeback win
Fans stomped.
The stadium shook.
UNC head coach Anson Dorrance, the only women’s soccer coach the Tar Heels have ever employed who built North Carolina into the peerless program that it is, checked the scoreboard. So did everyone else.
Twenty seconds.
UNC 2, UCLA 1.
UCLA readied for a corner. Ally Lemos took a deep breath, swung her leg — and the ball floated and floated. A moshpit ensued. North Carolina goalie Emmie Allen got knocked to the grass. And above the rubble rose Reilyn Turner, whose head found the ball and snuck it right underneath the cross bar to tie it 2 all with 16 seconds on the clock.
The Bruins — 10 minutes of overtime later that featured a final backbreaking goal in the 106th minute — high-stepped off the field with a 3-2 win.
They’d just stunned the crowd of 9,531 in WakeMed Soccer Park in Cary (a neutral site in name only) and had just completed one of the greatest comebacks in the history of the women’s College Cup.
They, against all odds, were national champions.
“Sixteen seconds to glory,” Dorrance told reporters after the game, reflecting on what could’ve been.
For so long on Monday night, North Carolina was in control. The Tar Heels controlled the possession 63% to 37% in the first half and 54% to 46% for the game. They built a lead that felt unbreakable — a 58th minute goal and a 74th-minute goal, both by virtue of crosses that found the head of UNC junior Avery Patterson.
And yet, three second-half UCLA goals later, the Tar Heels had lost — hugging each other in teary disbelief, so close to delivering this program its first national championship since 2012.
This story will be updated.
