CARY
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 UCLA’s 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 — 20 minutes of overtime later that featured a final, backbreaking goal in the 107th minute — high-stepped off the field with a 3-2 win.
Somehow, they’d just stunned Monday’s crowd of 9,531 in WakeMed Soccer Park in Cary (a neutral site in name only).
Somehow, they had completed one of the greatest comebacks in the history of the women’s College Cup.
Somehow, fueled by a belief that they said never wavered, they were national champions.
“Sixteen seconds to glory,” Dorrance told reporters after the game, reflecting on what could’ve been.