The timing was ideal. On an unexpectedly pleasant day in early August, the North Carolina women’s soccer team held its first practice of the 2016 season.
Hours later the top-ranked U.S. women’s squad took the field in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, at the Olympic Games.
The match almost 4,500 miles away had a pronounced Tar Heel flavor.
Seven former UNC players – five on the active roster, three in the starting lineup – were among the 22 American Olympians. Yet another ex-Heel competed for the opponent, New Zealand, ranked 17th in the world.
Presented with this serendipitous convergence, UNC coach Anson Dorrance neatly seized the moment, hosting his current Carolina contingent for supper at a downtown Chapel Hill restaurant that showed a telecast of the U.