COLLEGE STATION, TEXAS – I was only going to write one story on the NCAA Women’s Soccer Final, and that was the story recounting the game itself – a 1-0 win for North Carolina over Stanford.

But then in the post-match press conference Tar Heel defender Whitney Engen, the defensive player of the College Cup, who is normally a fairly quiet personality, felt compelled to talk about what the UNC tradition and this specific team mean to her. I had spoken with Whitney briefly over the weekend in the official hotel of the tournament and even then she had impressed me with her deep feeling about the whole group of young ladies she plays with – but her comments Sunday afternoon struck me as representing everything right about high-level sports, so I wanted to share them with you.

Whitney Engen (back row, far left) celebrates with her fellow seniors. Photo courtesy of UNC Athletics.

Special thanks to Laurie Cannon of the NCAA and Deanna Werner of Texas A&M media relations for making the audio file of the comments available to me so I do not have to rely on my faulty note-taking in sharing this.

“Our career here as a senior class is a testament to how far we’ve come. I don’t know how many of you know this but our senior class played our first game here at Texas A&M in front of 8,000 plus people, and we ended up losing that game. I think it was the first time (in 24 years it turns out) Carolina had ever lost their first game of the season. We all kind of looked at each other because we knew we came to Carolina to win and here we had lost our first game of the season. I think to come full circle and to win our last game here really meant a lot to a lot of us.

“I think the legacy we want to leave on this program is that we pride ourselves on being a family. We pride ourselves on caring so much about one another. We go out on the field and work hard for the person next to us. You look at this team you see the accolades that people have won on our team and the fact that everybody comes to practice every day and works as hard as they can to know that they are pushing the girl next to them is really just a testament to how deep and how caring this family is.

“Because the truth is, while we have Olympic Gold Medal winners on our team and national players of the year and we have girls who, anywhere else, wouldn’t be expected to show up and do what they do for us, but every single day in practice they are held to a standard where they must push every other player in practice and make that person better, and I think that is a true testament to this program and I think this senior class has embraced that and we made sure everybody was held to the highest standard, and it felt great to go out this way.”

Both Engen and Dorrance were choking back the tears as the normally soft-spoken defender made these comments, and it was clear that they were from the heart, just as the entire UNC effort was on the day. That’s nothing to do with any other soccer program, but the fact is we are a society that is being dumbed down in all walks of life and one that is increasingly comfortable with lower and lower standards of performance and achievement. So for whatever bad things you think about young people and high-level athletics, look at this as one of the very good things, and take heart and inspiration from it.