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North Carolina Tar Heels | |
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University | University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill |
Conference | Atlantic Coast Conference |
NCAA | Division I (FBS) |
Athletic director | Bubba Cunningham |
Location | Chapel Hill, North Carolina |
Varsity teams | 27 |
Football stadium | Kenan Memorial Stadium |
Basketball arena | Dean E. Smith Student Activities Center |
Baseball stadium | Bryson Field at Boshamer Stadium |
Soccer stadium | Dorrance Field |
Other arenas | William D. Carmichael Jr. Arena |
Mascot | Rameses |
Nickname | Tar Heels |
Fight song | I'm a Tar Heel Born Here Comes Carolina |
Colors | Carolina Blue and White [1] |
Website | goheels |
The North Carolina Tar Heels are the athletic teams representing the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The name Tar Heel is a nickname used to refer to individuals from the state of North Carolina, the Tar Heel State. The campus at Chapel Hill is referred to as the University of North Carolina for the purposes of the National Collegiate Athletic Association. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill was chartered in 1789, and in 1795 it became the first state-supported university in the United States. [2] Since the school fostered the oldest collegiate team in the Carolinas, the school took on the nickname "Carolina", especially in athletics. The Tar Heels are also referred to as North Carolina, UNC, or The Heels. [2] The female athletic teams are sometimes referred to as Lady Tar Heels.
The mascot of the Tar Heels is Rameses, a Dorset Ram. It is represented as either a live Dorset sheep with its horns painted Carolina Blue, or as a costumed character performed by a volunteer from the student body, usually an undergraduate student associated with the cheerleading team.
Carolina has won 44 NCAA Division I team national championships in seven different sports, tied for seventh all-time, and 52 individual national championships.
Men's sports | Women's sports |
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Baseball | Basketball |
Basketball | Cross country |
Cross country | Fencing |
Fencing | Field hockey |
Football | Golf |
Golf | Gymnastics |
Lacrosse | Lacrosse |
Soccer | Rowing |
Swimming & diving | Soccer |
Tennis | Softball |
Track and field† | Swimming & diving |
Wrestling | Tennis |
Track and field† | |
Volleyball | |
† – Track and field includes both indoor and outdoor. |
The baseball team has had recent success, reaching the championship series of the College World Series in 2006 and 2007 losing both times to Oregon State. They also appeared in the College World Series in 1960, 1966, 1978, 1989, 2008, 2009, 2011, 2013 and 2018.
Carolina has enjoyed long success as one of the top basketball programs in the country. Overall, the Tar Heels have won six NCAA National Championships and were retroactively awarded one for the 1923–24 season by the Helms Foundation and the Premo-Porretta Power Poll. [3]
Under coach Frank McGuire, the team won its 1st NCAA championship in 1957. After McGuire left, legendary coach Dean Smith established the team as a powerhouse in college basketball. In 31 years at Carolina, Smith set the record for the most wins of any men's college basketball head coach, a record broken in 2007 by Bob Knight. Under Smith, the Tar Heels won two national championships and had numerous talented players come through the program. Smith is also credited with coming up with the four corners offense. More recently, the Tar Heels won the national championship in 2005, 2009, and 2017 under coach Roy Williams.
Jamie Loeb attended UNC for her freshman and sophomore years (2013-15), during which she became the first freshman in close to 30 years to win both the Riviera/ITA Women’s All-American Championship (making her the NCAA Women’s Singles Tennis National Champion) and the USTA/ITA National Indoor Intercollegiate Championship. [4] She was also the first singles national champion in UNC women’s tennis history. [5] [6] [4] In both her freshman and her sophomore seasons she was named Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) Player of the Year. [7] [5]
The men's golf team has won 14 conference championships: [8]
Two Tar Heels have won the NCAA individual championship, Harvie Ward in 1949 and John Inman in 1984. Ward also won the British Amateur in 1952 and the U.S. Amateur in 1955 and 1956. The team's best finish was second place in 1953 and 1991.
Tar Heel golfers who have had success at the professional level include Davis Love III (20 PGA Tour wins including 1997 PGA Championship) and Mark Wilson (five PGA Tour wins).
Following Coach Sam Barnes who built the modern wrestling program at UNC (1953-1971), Head coach Bill Lam led the Tar Heel wrestling program for 30 years until his retirement in 2002, where his former wrestler and 1982 NCAA Champion C.D. Mock became his replacement. Under Lam, the Tar Heels were a consistent top 25 NCAA team. Lam led the Tar Heels to 15 ACC tournament titles in addition to being named ACC coach of the year 10 times. Following the Lam era, Mock was named ACC Coach of the Year in 2005 and 2006 in addition to claiming two ACC team titles. [9] In 2015, Mock was fired as head wrestling coach. He was shortly replaced by Olympic bronze medalist and Oklahoma State University graduate Coleman Scott.
The Tar Heel wrestling program boasts many ACC champions, All-Americans, and has 3 individual NCAA champions: C.D. Mock (1982), Rob Koll (1988), and T.J. Jaworsky (1993, 1994, 1995). Jaworsky is known as one of the greatest college wrestlers of all time as he is the first and only ACC wrestler to win three NCAA titles in addition to winning the inaugural Dan Hodge Trophy, given to college wrestling's most dominant wrestler. Koll is now the head coach at Cornell University where he has led the program to new heights with multiple top 10 NCAA finishes.
UNC wrestling All-Americans: C.D. Mock, Dave Cook, Jan Michaels, Bob Monaghan, Mike Elinsky, Rob Koll, Bobby Shriner, Tad Wilson, Al Palacio, Lenny Bernstein, Doug Wyland, Enzo Catullo, Pete Welch, Shane Camera, Jody Staylor, Marc Taylor, Stan Banks, Justin Harty, Evan Sola, Chris Rodrigues, Evan Henderson, Ethan Ramos, and Joey Ward.
Other notable alumni include C.C. Fisher, 1998 ACC champion and Most Outstanding wrestler, who went on to become a successful wrestler on the international stage where he was as high as second on the United States Olympic latter. Fisher also went on to become a successful coach for multiple Division 1 wrestling programs including Iowa State and Stanford.
The late Sen. Paul Wellstone attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) on a wrestling scholarship. In college he was an undefeated Atlantic Coast Conference wrestling champion.
The Tar Heel wrestling program has won 17 total ACC championships: 1979, 1980, 1984, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006
UNC's best finish at the NCAA tournament was 5th in 1982. [10] They also took 6th in 1995.
Carmichael Arena is currently the home to the Tar Heels Wrestling team located centrally on campus. [11]
Other national championship victories include the women's team handball team in 2004, 2009, 2010, 2011; and the men's handball team in 2004, 2005, and 2006. The men's crew won the 2004 ECAC National Invitational Collegiate Regatta in the varsity eight category. In 1994, Carolina's athletic programs won the Sears Directors Cup which is awarded for cumulative performance in NCAA competition.
Carolina also fields non varsity sports teams. North Carolina's rugby team competes in the Atlantic Coast Rugby League against its traditional ACC rivals. North Carolina finished second in its conference in 2010, led by conference co-player of the year Alex Lee. North Carolina finished second at the Atlantic Coast Invitational in 2009 and again in 2010. North Carolina has also competed in the Collegiate Rugby Championship, finishing 11th in 2011 in a tournament broadcast live on NBC. [12]
North Carolina has won 45 NCAA team national championships. [13]
Below are 13 national team titles that were not bestowed by the NCAA:
Carolina's most heated rivalries are with its Tobacco Road counterparts Duke, North Carolina State, and Wake Forest. In recent years, the Carolina-Duke basketball series has attracted the most attention. HBO even made a documentary in 2009 called "Battle for Tobacco Road: Duke vs. Carolina". [14] The Tar Heels also have a rivalry with Virginia in college football, known as the South's Oldest Rivalry. UNC and UVA are the two oldest schools in the Atlantic Coast Conference.
Carolina's main fight song is I'm a Tar Heel Born. Its lyrics appear in the 1907 edition of the university's yearbook, the "Yackety Yack," although how long it existed before that is not known. [15] Some say that it was in the late 1920s that it began to be sung as an add-on (or "tag") to the school's alma mater, "Hark The Sound", although the current version of the sheet music for "Hark the Sound" includes the "I'm a Tar Heel Born" tag as an integral part of the alma mater and credits the full song to William Starr Myers with a date of 1897. [16] Today, the song is almost always played immediately after the singing of "Hark The Sound", even during more formal occasions such as convocation and commencement. Just before home football and basketball games, the song is played by the Bell Tower near the center of campus, and is often played after major victories. [17]
As it appears in its 1907 printed form, the final words of the song are "Rah, rah, rah!" Starting in the 1960s, however, "Rah, rah, rah!" was "unofficially" replaced with "Go to hell, State!"; NC State was UNC's main athletic rival for much of the first half of the 20th century. From the late 1980s onward, the "unofficial" final lyrics have been "Go to hell, Duke!"; reflecting Duke eclipsing State as Carolina's main rival. However, "Go to hell, State!" was taught at freshman orientation well into the 1990s.
Simply known as "Tag" by many Marching Tar Heel alumni, and titled as such on some recorded albums, "I'm a Tar Heel Born" has been adopted by at least two other colleges for their use, including the University of Rhode Island and the University of Richmond.
Another popular song is Here Comes Carolina.
As its title implies, it is most commonly played when a Tar Heel team enters the field of play. Traditionally, the band plays a version of the traditional orchestral warmup tune before launching into the song when the first player charges out of the tunnel. During the warmup tune, fans stand and clap along. The effect is similar to that of a train coming down the track.
For many years at basketball games, the band played the first seven notes of the song in different keys during player introductions, modulating a half step each time before launching into the song in the normal key after the final player was announced.
The last part of the song's melody come from an old revival song, "Jesus Loves the Little Children".
Notable graduates from the athletic programs include Michael Jordan from men's basketball, Mia Hamm from women's soccer, Charlie Justice from American football, Davis Love III from golf, B.J. Surhoff from baseball and Marion Jones from women's basketball and track & field.
Roy Allen Williams is an American college basketball coach for the North Carolina Tar Heels. He started his college coaching career at North Carolina as an assistant coach for Dean Smith in 1978. In 1988, Williams became the head coach of the men's basketball team at Kansas, taking them to 14 consecutive NCAA tournaments, four final four appearances, two national championship game appearances, collecting a .805 win percentage and winning nine conference titles over his fifteen-year span.
The Carolina–Duke rivalry refers to the rivalry between the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill Tar Heels (Carolina) and Duke University Blue Devils (Duke). It most often refers to the athletic rivalries between the Duke Blue Devils and North Carolina Tar Heels athletic teams. The North Carolina–Duke rivalry is fierce, particularly in men's college basketball. It is considered one of the most intense rivalries in all of US-sports: a poll conducted by ESPN in 2000 ranked the basketball rivalry as the third greatest North American sports rivalry, and Sports Illustrated on Campus named it the #1 "Hottest Rivalry" in college basketball and the #2 rivalry overall in its November 18, 2003 issue. The intensity of the rivalry is augmented by the proximity of the two universities—they are located only ten miles apart along U.S. Highway 15–501 or eight miles apart in straight-line distance. In addition, both Duke and North Carolina are considered highly prestigious universities, which, coupled with their vastly different funding structures and cultures—North Carolina is a public school while Duke is private—contributes to the intensity of the rivalry.
The NC State Wolfpack is the nickname of the athletic teams representing North Carolina State University. The Wolfpack competes at the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I as a member of the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) for all sports since the 1953–54 season. The athletic teams of the Wolfpack compete in 23 intercollegiate varsity sports. NC State is a founding member of the ACC and has won eight national championships: two NCAA championships, two AIAW championships, and four titles under other sanctioning bodies. Most NC State fans and athletes recognize the rivalry with the North Carolina Tar Heels as their biggest.
Robert Fetzer Field was a sports field located in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and was the home of the lacrosse and soccer teams of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the North Carolina Tar Heels. The four teams that called Fetzer field their home have a combined total of 26 national championships. The stadium was demolished in 2017 to make way for the Soccer/Lacrosse Stadium that was built on the same site.
The North Carolina Tar Heels men's basketball program is the intercollegiate men's basketball team of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The Tar Heels have won seven Men’s Basketball National Championships. North Carolina's six NCAA Tournament Championships are third-most all-time, behind University of California, Los Angeles (11) and University of Kentucky (8). They have also won 18 Atlantic Coast Conference tournament titles, 32 Atlantic Coast Conference regular season titles, and an Atlantic Coast Conference record 20 outright Regular Season Championships. The program has produced many notable players who went on to play in the NBA, including three of the 50 Greatest Players in NBA History: Billy Cunningham, Michael Jordan and James Worthy. Many Tar Heel assistant coaches have gone on to become head coaches elsewhere.
Eddie Fogler is an American retired college basketball player and coach. He played for the University of North Carolina from 1967 to 1970 where he played as a point guard on two NCAA Final Four teams. Fogler was an All-City guard at Flushing High School in Flushing, New York.
The North Carolina Tar Heels women's soccer team represent the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the Atlantic Coast Conference of NCAA Division I soccer. The team has won 20 of the 27 Atlantic Coast Conference championships, and 22 of the 36 NCAA national championships.
The 2008–09 North Carolina Tar Heels men's basketball team represented the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The head coach was Roy Williams. The team played its home games in the Dean Smith Center in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and was a member of the Atlantic Coast Conference. The team won the 2009 NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Tournament, the fifth NCAA national title in school history.
The 2009–10 North Carolina Tar Heels men's basketball team represented the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Their head coach was Roy Williams. The team played its home games in the Dean Smith Center in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and is a member of the Atlantic Coast Conference. They were the defending National Champions. This season represented the 100th season of basketball in the school's history.
The North Carolina Tar Heels men's lacrosse team represents the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I men's lacrosse. North Carolina currently competes as a member of the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) and plays its home games at Fetzer Field and Kenan Memorial Stadium in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
The 2011–12 North Carolina Tar Heels men's basketball team represented the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the 2011–2012 college basketball season. The team's head coach is Roy Williams, who is in his 9th season as UNC's head men's basketball coach. The 2011–12 North Carolina team finished the regular season with a final record of 32–6, and with a 14–2 record in ACC regular season play, winning the conference regular season championship outright. They were invited to the 2012 ACC Men's Basketball Tournament, where they beat Maryland and North Carolina State before falling to Florida State in the championship game. They were also invited to the 2012 NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Tournament reaching the Elite Eight where they were defeated by Kansas. This was the second time UNC lost to Kansas in the NCAA Tournament with Roy Williams as UNC head coach. Roy Williams previously coached Kansas from 1988–2003. Kansas later fell to Kentucky 59-67 in the National Championship Game. The Tar Heels won their previous three games in the NCAA Tournament by an average of 13.7 points. In the second-round game versus Creighton, starting UNC point guard Kendall Marshall broke his right wrist with 10:56 remaining in the second half. Kendall Marshall did not play in UNC's two following games in the NCAA Tournament, a 73-65 overtime win over Ohio in the Sweet 16 and a 67-80 loss to Kansas in the Elite Eight. The loss to Kansas was UNC's second straight loss in the Elite Eight, after losing to Kentucky the year before.
The North Carolina Tar Heels women's lacrosse team represents the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I women's lacrosse and currently competes as a member of the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC). The North Carolina women's lacrosse team won the ACC tournament in 2002 and their first Division 1 National Championship in 2013.
The 2015–16 North Carolina Tar Heels men's basketball team represented the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill during the 2015–16 NCAA Division I men's basketball season. The team's head coach was Roy Williams, who was in his 13th season as UNC's men's basketball head coach. The Tar Heels played their home games at the Dean Smith Center and were members of the Atlantic Coast Conference. North Carolina finished the season with a 33–7 record, 14–4 to win the ACC regular season championship. The Tar Heels defeated Virginia to win the ACC Tournament. They received an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament as a #1 seed. There, they defeated Florida Gulf Coast, Providence, Indiana, and Notre Dame to earn a trip to the Final Four, the school's 19th trip to the Final Four. In a matchup against fellow ACC foe, Syracuse, the Tar Heels won easily to advance to the National Championship against Villanova. North Carolina, despite a circus shot by Marcus Paige to tie the game at 74 with less than five seconds remaining, lost on a last second three pointer by Kris Jenkins.
Joel DeWayne Berry II is an American professional basketball player for the Greensboro Swarm of the NBA G League. He played college basketball for the North Carolina Tar Heels and led the team to the 2017 national championship.
The 2017–18 North Carolina Tar Heels men's basketball team represented the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill during the 2017–18 NCAA Division I men's basketball season. The team's head coach was Roy Williams, who was in his 15th season as UNC's head men's basketball coach. The Tar Heels played their home games at the Dean Smith Center in Chapel Hill, North Carolina as members of the Atlantic Coast Conference. They finished the season 26–11, 11–7 in ACC play to finish in a four-way tie for fourth place. As the No. 6 seed in the ACC Tournament, they defeated Syracuse, Miami, and Duke before losing to Virginia in the championship game. They received an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament as the No. 2 seed in the West region where they defeated Lipscomb before losing to Texas A&M in the Second Round.
The 2018–19 North Carolina Tar Heels men's basketball team represented the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill during the 2018–19 NCAA Division I men's basketball season. The team's head coach was Roy Williams, who was in his 16th season as UNC's head men's basketball coach. The Tar Heels played their home games at the Dean Smith Center in Chapel Hill, North Carolina as members of the Atlantic Coast Conference. They finished the season 29–7, 16–2 in ACC play to finish tied for the regular season conference championship with Virginia. As the No. 2 seed in the ACC Tournament, they advanced to the semifinals before ultimately losing to Duke. They received an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament as the No. 1 seed in the Midwest region, where they advanced to the Sweet Sixteen before losing to Auburn.
The 1987–88 North Carolina Tar Heels men's basketball team represented the University of North Carolina from Chapel Hill, North Carolina.