It’s really hard to be good at sports in Chapel Hill without anyone noticing. With a sports-crazed student body and membership in one of the nation’s best all-around athletic conferences, UNC-Chapel Hill is the sort of place where the women’s soccer coach is a national celebrity and 1,300 free Americans once attended a field hockey match without anyone threatening to kill them if they didn’t.
Yet somehow, the North Carolina men’s soccer program exists in obscurity. The Carolina Blues have gone to the College Cup- soccer’s Final Four- in three consecutive years, and have missed just o
ne NCAA Tournament since 1999. But when the winningest coach in program history resigned after 22 years to go be the head coach at Creighton (CREIGHTON!), the reaction on campus ranged from “Who?” to “ …oh.” After all, Elmar Bolowich announced his resignation just hours before the first Carolina-Duke basketball game.
Unlike the University’s higher-profile non-revenues, the men’s soccer team does not have a history of dominance (women’s soccer), nor a string of ESPN appearances in the dead of summer (baseball) nor a cultish bro following (men’s lacrosse) to prop it up. But while the No. 3 Tar Heels won’t get the same attention as some of its Olympic sports peers when it opens its season Saturday at home against UNC-Wilmington, they could very well be the best of the bunch.
Here’s why: