Chansky’s Notebook: If Dean Were Here

Yes, Coach Smith, Carolina is a field hockey school.

I remember like yesterday when Dean Smith was asked about UNC being known as a basketball school. Smith flashed that wry smile and said, “We’re more of a women’s soccer school, considering all the championships Anson Dorrance has won.”

I thought about that again this week when Coach Karen Shelton’s Carolina field hockey team reached its eighth consecutive NCAA Tournament Final Four. Yes, you heard that correctly. Eight straight. The No. 4-ranked field Heels did that by shutting out second-ranked Maryland Sunday, 3-0, on the Terrapins’ home turf, winning the regional on the road for the first time since 2009.

Overall, it is the 21st Final Four in Shelton’s Hall of Fame career, which began at UNC in 1981. This may be among the sweetest because her team did not earn an NCAA seed and had to beat favored Maryland on its home field to advance. That seems a lot like Smith’s basketball team, which notched some of its greatest victories against the longest odds.

Shelton is going for her seventh national championship this weekend as her career victory total currently stands at 627, which includes 19 ACC championships. Yes, field hockey is one of those Olympic sports that live in the shadow of money-makers football and men’s basketball. But it is very hard to overlook what Shelton continues to do year in and year out.

This season, her Tar Heels peaked at the right time, with senior goal keeper Shannon Johnson posting back-to-back shutouts in the regional, and will now face UConn in the national semifinals Friday in Norfolk with Delaware and Princeton playing in the other semi and the right to play in Sunday’s national championship game.

There is a certain irony to the Dean Smith analogy, as Shelton is in her 36th season here as head coach, the same number of years Smith was at the helm before retiring. And, while the sports are different in so many ways, Smith only made it to 11 Final Fours and never more than three in a row. So, if he were here, Smith would point at Karen Shelton and say, yep, a field hockey school for sure.

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