That's the takeaway from the fact that Carolina soccer players swept the awards for something called the Elite 88, which is, well:

An award founded by the NCAA [that] recognizes the true essence of the student-athlete by honoring the individual who has reached the pinnacle of competition at the national championship level in his or her sport, while also achieving the highest academic standard among his or her peers. The Elite 88 is presented to the student-athlete with the highest cumulative grade-point average participating at the finals site for each of the NCAA's 88 championships. 

Yay! It's the part of the NCAA that pretends to care about its student athletes.

Anyway, as both the men's and women's soccer teams made it to their respective Final Fours, the men's award went to Bill Dworsky, who's pulling a 4.0 in Economics and Comparative Lit while Kristi Eveland took the women's award with a 3.93 in Business Administration. Eveland was part of a starting defense for the Heels that only gave up 12 goals all season; UNC finished the year a few weeks back with the third national championship for this year's senior class and 20th overall with a 1-0 win over Stanford. The men's team battled Akron to a scoreless tie in their Final Four, only to lose on penalty kicks. Akron would go on and lose in the finals to Virginia, also on penalty kicks.

Between these performances and UNC women's field hockey championship, the Heels should be high in the Director's Cup standings that will be released today, with only Stanford and Virginia possibly having higher scores. Please try to go about your day normally, and do not crack under the immense tension.

After mixed results in the ACC tournaments, UNC is barging ahead in the various NCAA Tournaments currently going on. The field hockey team, after a loss in their ACC tournament opener, nabbed the three seed in the NCAA tournament. They've plowed through their first two opponents beating both Ohio State and Wake Forest by the same score of 4-1. The defeat of the Demon Deacons was especially crushing, as the Final Four is being hosted in Winston-Salem this season. And the Heels have success in that city; in addition to beating Wake there earlier this season, it's also where UNC happened to win the 1995 Championship, their second. UNC goes into the Final Four with this year's ACC Freshman of the Year, the awesomely-named Kelsey Kolojejchick, as well as four other all-ACC players including the 2007 winner of the same award, Katelyn Falgowski. The Heels are joined in Winston-Salem by undefeated Maryland and the team that knocked UNC out of the ACC, Virginia. Games are Friday and Sunday.

The women's soccer team did win the ACC tournament, their 20th. This earned them the top seed in one of the regionals, where the swept their two games at Fetzer Field. This is largely behind the play of the ACC Tournament MVP Casey Nogueria, with 13 shots  and three assists, and three goals from freshman Lucy Bronze. The defense has a streak of seven straight shutouts going into this Saturday's third round game in Chapel Hill against Maryland. The Terps have lost twice to Heels in the past month; if Carolina wins, they face either Wake Forest or South Carolina the following week.

The men's soccer team was eliminated from the ACC tournament in the first round by N.C. State. They've earned the 5th overall seed, and play either Brown or Stony Brook Sunday in Fetzer Field. The finals in this tournament are down the road in Cary, which the team used as a home field when Fetzer was being renovated a few years back. Things are looking good for adding more hardware to the various trophy cases over the next month.

Forget football – I know what you've really been hungering for. Yep, you can't live without reports on this season's Carlyle Cup race, where UNC and Duke square off in 23 sports to see exactly how many ways Carolina can defeat the Blue Devils in any particular year. So far this season, Duke has had to face the undefeated and top-ranked women's soccer team, the undefeated and second-ranked women's field hockey team, and the at the time undefeated and second-ranked men's soccer team.

Things went rather poorly for the folks from Durham.

Surprisingly enough, Duke had the greatest success in women's soccer, in a game that was scoreless for the first eighty-three minutes that was suddenly pushed into overtime when the teams exchanged goals in the final seven minutes of regulation. It was the first goal scored on the Heels since August 22nd. True, the Heels had lost two players to injury and were missing two others, Ashlyn Harris (goalie) and Tobin Heath (midfield) due to national team commitments, but no one wants to be in the presence of Duke students any longer than they have to. UNC would go on to win in overtime after Alyssa Rich scored in her first career start.

The other two Duke games weren't nearly as close. The men's soccer team also won 2-1, holding Due to a paltry five shots on goal and none in the first half. The field hockey team absolutely destroyed the Blue Devils, outscoring them 7-0 on goals from five different players; compare that to Duke's offense, which only managed three shots on goal the entire game. How badass is the field hockey team? They've got a player out there allergic to her own sweat. I now feel bad for every excuse I've given for not going out for a run. Duke at the time was ranked twelfth – field hockey being a particularly small sport – while UNC remains second, stuck between undefeated Maryland in first place and undefeated Virginia at third. The Heels play both teams on Saturday's this month.

With the women's team having already secured the national championship this season, the men's team has now earned a chance to do the same, beating top-ranked Wake Forest  1-0 in the NCAA semifinals. It was the defending champion Deacons' second loss of the season.

UNC goes on to play fellow ACC team Maryland, a 1-0 winner of St. John's. The Terps have beaten the Heels twice this season already, in back to back games at College Park and Cary to close the season and eliminate UNC from the ACC Tournament, respectively. No school has ever won both the men's and women's titles in the same year, although UNC came the closest in 2001 when the men's team took the trophy home and the women's fell in the finals to Santa Clara.

The title game is played Sunday, in Frisco, Texas, but can be seen at 1 pm on ESPN2.

It what is almost an annual tradition, UNC's women's soccer team won it's 19th national championship, defeating Notre Dame 2-1 behind a pair of Casey Nogueira goals. Carolina is such a mainstay in the title game that it was their fifth championship victory over Notre Dame - the Heels also beat them for the title in 1994, 1996, 1999, and 2006.

It was Notre Dame's only loss of the year, while UNC finished 25-1-2. It was also Casey Nogueria's second and third goals in a national championship game, as she scored one in 2006 against, you guessed it, Notre Dame.

The 2008 Olympic Women's Soccer team has been selected, and as is right and proper there are more Tar Heels on the list than any other school. Joining Heather O'Reilly and Lindsay Tarpley from the 2004 gold medal team are Lori Chalupny and Tobin Heath, with Kacey White as an alternate. Interestingly enough, all but Chalupny are listed as midfielders, although both Tarpley and O'Reilly have played up front on the national team before and Chalupny played midfield in the 2007 World Cup. Only Heath and White are relative newcomers to the team (and current UNC players), with the other three having a minimum of 70 appearances apiece on the national team.

The same day Mike Copeland goes down with a torn ACL, the New York Times runs a story on the prevalance of the same injury in teenage girls. It's a bit alarmist, in the "Our children are in danger!" way, but throws out an interesting estimation - that ACL injuries in teenage girls are as much as five times as prevalent in their male counterparts. And naturally they go to Anson Dorrance for an opinion on the whole thing, and he knows where to put the blame:

It sounded reasonable to me, since I couldn't recall a headline ACL tear on the UNC team, but the very next page brings one up:

There's also Susan Bush, (two torn ACLs, '00 and '01), Ali Hawkins (last year), Ashlyn Harris (each knee, '05 and '06) and of course, Anson Dorrance himself, back in 1991. Even the coaching is dangerous. And that's just the first few pages of a Google search.

Anyway, the whole thing is a pretty good read. And of course, no mention of ACL injuries and Tar Heels is complete without the story of Jimmy Hitchcock.

I present to you your 2006 Women's Soccer National Champions, the North Carolina Tar Heels:

The 2-1 victory over Notre Dame was the Heels' fourth in the NCAA Finals to take home their 18th title. This was the longest UNC had ever gone without winning a National Championship, a drought going back to 2003. Freshman Casey Nogueira and senior Heather O'Reilly each scored, as the Irish couldn't come back from the two-goal deficit.

More pictures of the game are available here, and Irish commentary here.

On the men's side, Carolina March favorite UC Santa Barbara took home the championship holding off UCLA 2-1 on the snow-plowed field in Saint Louis. I guess the Bruins don't have the cold weather tolerance that the folks in Santa Barbara acquire. The Gauchos denied the Bruins their 100th NCAA title across all sports (UCSB now has two, the previous one being the water polo title in 1980.) and have left UCLA fans with only the consolation of some trivial win in a minor sport yesterday. Better luck next year, Bruins.