Tar Heel Mentality

Whitney Engen sits on the porch of a North Carolina beach house with fellow freshman Ali Hawkins, watching the sunrise. The Californians watch the sun ascend over the oceanic horizon, a novel experience for Engen, who is used to seeing the sun slide into the water instead of emerging from it. The scene is eerily similar to the situation Engen finds herself in: the sun embarking on its trip across the horizon mimics the start of Engen’s new adventure. Roughly 2,540 miles from home, she will try to carve a place for herself in one of the greatest dynasties in the history of college sports, the 18-time national champion UNC Women’s Soccer team.

By this point Engen has nearly survived the grueling preseason practices that mark the beginning of the Tar Heels’ annual quest for the title. She managed to not go stir crazy when she and her fellow freshmen transformed the McCaskill Soccer Center into their temporary den in the days before the dorms opened, despite the claustrophobic proximity to so many new faces and names. Engen made it through the 120s, the terrifying fitness exercise that requires the players to sprint up and down the field ten times. The freshmen were so nervous about the dreaded 120s that they could barely eat, certain that they would fail and lose any chance to play. She bonded with her teammates on the beach trip the Heels try to take every preseason, but more importantly she showed them that she did not come to Carolina to sit on the bench.

The scrimmage against the University of North Carolina at Wilmington proved to be a crucial game for Engen. She scored the Heels’ lone goal on a header in the first half, but the more important event occurred at halftime. With several players off playing for various national teams, the Tar Heels struggled to find an offensive rhythm in the first half. During the break, goalkeeper coach Chris Ducar suggested to coach Anson Dorrance that they see what would happen if they started Engen at forward instead of her customary midfield position.

“I’ll be damned,” Ducar said later, “we didn’t get another goal, but she was always involved in the play and she was pressuring people and that really became her trademark. She bought into our high pressure front line and that ended up paying us huge dividends.”

And so another adjustment landed on Engen’s list. Not only did she have to deal with finding her niche in a completely new social structure, learn how to properly say “y’all” and accept that North Carolina barbecue is vastly superior to any other, she had to leave the position she had played all her life. She found herself playing on a forward line with Olympic gold medalist Heather O’Reilly and putting senior Libby Guess on the bench, but the move turned out to be a perfect fit.

“I love to attack, I love to go forward,” Engen said. She explained that in UNC’s system, a forward isn’t a true forward. “The way the system works is if you just work your ass off and you run and you defend and you get to where they tell you to be, it works out for you.”

The Tar Heels are down two at the half, the season hangs in the balance, when a Carolina blue and white clad midfielder gets the ball alone on the right side, near midfield. She blasts it with the outside of her right foot, aiming for the gold medalist running down the sideline. The ball rolls too fast, though, and as the gold medalist and a lone defender jog toward it, it seems destined to scoot out of bounds, another Tar Heel attack evaporating into thin air. Right as the ball reaches the endline, though, Engen, a streak of white and Carolina blue, blows past the other two players, tapping the ball off her teammate’s shins just before it rolls out of bounds. Engen recovers the rebound, turns and fights through one, two, three, four defenders, turning, dribbling, tackling as if her life depends on it. She finds a window of daylight and pokes the ball across the face of the goal. The goalkeeper parries it with one hand and then the other, but she cannot reel it in. A Tar Heel knocks the ball into the back of the net…

Fortunately for the Tar Heels, that is exactly what Engen does. She runs and she defends and she works her ass off. This competitive quality is what made Dorrance and Ducar notice her in the first place. Ducar went to a game at a youth tournament to recruit another player, but when he saw Engen he knew immediately that she should be a Tar Heel. He saw the heading, the tackling, the flair that a Division I soccer player needs, but he also saw that she never stopped competing. He told Dorrance, who saw Engen at a different youth tournament but didn’t know her name, and they knew she had the “Tar Heel mentality.”

“The thing I loved about Whit from the first couple seconds when I saw her play as a youth is she had a competitive commitment that was extraordinarily unique,” Dorrance said.

“She’s the one person on the team I know will not stop running the entire game and will not give up,” Harris said.

This competitive quality is evident whenever Engen plays, whether she’s in practice, a game or simply playing a board game with her family, which her father insists they don’t do anymore because she is definitely not the only competitive member of the family. Engen is the player who sprints forward to block an opposing goalie’s clear. She is the one sliding through the snow during an off-season practice, despite how unfamiliar the cold white substance is to the girl who spent her entire life in Southern California.

Because of moments like these, Engen’s teammates presented her with arguably the highest honor a North Carolina women’s soccer player can earn. The Gift of Fury award goes to the player who always competes, always plays like her life depends on it, and, as Ducar said, goes on an “unrelenting search for perfection and to help a team win.” Unlike past winners, though, Ducar thinks Engen can win the award three more times.

“It’s something ingrained in her,” he said. “It’s in her being. She’s a fighter.”

Dorrance calls the Gift of Fury his favorite award. While genetics may give a player the upperhand in terms of speed or strength or quickness, the players who possess the gift have to make the decision to constantly compete and give their all for their team. “The Gift of Fury is a very noble quality,” he said, “because it is a quality that involves personal physical sacrifice…and it also demonstrates a kind of physical courage.

“Whit has physical courage in spades.”

The Tar Heel defender routinely clears the ball from the back line of the defense and watches it bounce toward midfield. Engen traps it and turns, letting the opposing defender fly by her. In a moment she is flashing down the field, a defender closing her on either side, moving to cut off her path to the goal. They are too late. Engen splits them with a yard to spare on each side and deftly bends the ball with her right foot past the diving keeper…

Despite this gift and the success it brings her, Engen is not the slightest bit arrogant or complacent. She scored as many goals as Heather O’Reilly and had the third highest point total on the best team in the country, but she still fears for her position and practices like it.

“I feel extremely threatened. I don’t feel comfortable in the least bit, but in a sense that’s a good thing because it just makes me want to work harder,” Engen said as she proceeded to list the other players on the team who she thought might take her spot and explain why each is so good.

“She knows she’s good,” said Ashlyn Harris, Engen’s friend and teammate, “but she doesn’t give herself enough credit.”

This humility endears Engen to those who know her because it is so genuine. Ducar sometimes gives her compliments just so he can see her blush and Dorrance lists this quality among the reasons she can be a great leader by example. Her parents claim her modesty comes mostly from her community service experience and the example that her grandfather, who was a rear admiral in the Navy, set for her.

Engen hints that her attitude might stem from a lack of self confidence, but it is not a negative in her case. She claims that she has never thought of herself as a stand out player, noticing how good her teammates are instead. Instead of letting her lack of confidence cripple her performance like some other players, though, she uses it to fuel her development.

“She wants to be the best at everything,” Harris said. “Nothing is ever good enough for her.”

Down one goal in the NCAA Quarterfinals, the Heels begin their counter attack: a tackle here, a quick pass there. A one touch pass to Engen, who touches it again, sending it down the field. Her teammate chases the ball down, brings it into the box, cuts it back behind two defenders, sending them skidding past. She looks up, sees Engen charging past the penalty spot, sends a bouncing past through the goalie box. Engen traps it and fires. Tie game…

Most players who make the All-ACC freshman team, assist the goals that win the ACC Championship and NCAA Championship, and tally 12 goals and 13 assists their freshman year receive a lot of attention from college coaches during the traditional recruiting process. Not Engen. Dorrance and Ducar worked tirelessly to convince Engen to come to UNC, but for the most part the only reason other schools paid any attention to her was that Carolina noticed her.

“Anson always gave me the feeling I belong at Carolina,” Engen said. “He always made me feel comfortable with my decision.”

Engen’s decision to come all the way across the country did not come as easily as Dorrance’s recruiting pitch made it seem, though. She says she is a “big homebody” and that deciding to go so far away was a big step, especially with UCLA, the school where her mom played varsity tennis, located so close. She also received a lot criticism from her teachers and friends for making the decision so early. Everything turned out well in the end, of course, and Engen got additional satisfaction because she made the decision on her own.

“I try to live my life with no regrets,” she said. “I want to feel confident in my decisions and I want to feel like I’m in control of my own life.”

According to Harris, this independence is one of Engen’s most characteristic qualities, but not as defining as her selflessness. When Harris felt frustrated or disconnected from the team while rehabilitating her knee, Engen always went out of her way to make her feel better.

“I honestly feel like she puts me before herself,” Harris said. “I feel like she would drop anything for me…she’s just so caring. It doesn’t matter if she’s hurting or if something’s not going her way, she puts me before herself.”

Harris has noticed Engen opening up to her teammates more throughout the season, though, which she attributes to the bond they all share. Though it’s hard to constantly fight each other for playing time, an atmosphere that Engen needed five consecutive “competitives” to describe, off the field the women are incredibly close.

“This year could not have been any more perfect,” Engen said. “I got 30 sisters out of it, it was life changing.”

Engen sprints after the ball as it flies toward the opponent’s end, running hell bent for leather, oblivious to the impending pandemonium. The first defender beats her to the ball, barely, and manages to get off a sloppy, last-ditch pass. As each second ticks off the clock, 5…4…3…, an equalizer becomes more and more impossible, but Engen follows the pass, refusing to let up until the horn sounds. Her arms shoot into the air. Her teammates rush the field. The Dynasty has proven itself once again, the national championship returned to where it belongs. One down, three to go…

Welcome to my corner of the internet. You can expect me to comment on the sports universe as I see it, especially MLB, college basketball, football and women's soccer. I admit that I am a big time Braves fan and am a Tar Heel born and bred, so much of my musings will be from this point of view. That being said, I will try to be objective or at least let you know when I am not. So thanks for checking in, I will do my best to entertain you, inform you, give you something to think about, and maybe even make you laugh from time to time.