Dec. 4, 2008
CARY, N.C. – The No. 1 Notre Dame women’s soccer team arrived in Cary, N.C., Wednesday afternoon and have spent the past two days getting acclimated to their NCAA Women’s College Cup surroundings. The Irish participated in a pair of spirited practices on Wednesday evening and Thursday morning at the WakeMed Soccer Park complex, followed Thursday by a brief walk-through on the game field where Friday’s national semifinal against Stanford will take place (4:30 p.m. ET, ESPN2/ESPNU/ESPN360.com).
Following the walk-through, several Notre Dame players and head coach Randy Waldrum remained at WakeMed Soccer Park to take part in a pre-tournament press conference, as well as a series of sitdown interviews with the ESPN broadcast crew, including play-by-play voice Beth Mowins and color analyst Cat Whitehill. A transcript from the press conference follows, while video from the press conference, as well as other exclusive behind-the-scenes highlights from Notre Dame’s first two days at the NCAA Women’s College Cup, can be found by visiting the special UND.com Fighting Irish All-Access page and NCAA Tournament Central page at the following addresses:
Fighting Irish All-Access at the NCAA Women’s College Cup
UND.com NCAA Tournament Central Page
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NCAA WOMEN’S COLLEGE CUP
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 4, 2008
NOTRE DAME COACH AND PLAYER QUOTES
Head coach Randy Waldrum
Opening statement…
“We’re looking forward to some great games. From all of the years I remember, these are four of the best teams that have (ever) made it to the Final Four.”
On North Carolina head coach Anson Dorrance saying that this is Notre Dame’s best team ever…
“It’s clearly one of our better teams. We’re deeper and we’ve got to win two more games before we can anoint it as [the best ND team ever]. I think it’s clearly one of the best we’ve ever had.”
On being undefeated…
“It’s not anything we’ve talked about. Not one time all year have we talked about being undefeated or winning the next game to stay undefeated. It’s probably because of the experience of us being here a number of years, and most of these players have been here two or three times in the past. Last year we started out the season with three wins, four losses and a tie, and we made it here. I think they realized that your record getting here doesn’t mean a whole lot. It’s what you do once you’re here.”
On sticking with how they’re playing rather than changing their style…
“I think what we’ve done is take all our opponents and see how they play, and prepare in case we need to make an adjustment. I think at the end of the day, we just played and did the things we know we can do well. I think there’s a tendency to outcoach yourself and look at all the little details, but right now the approach we’re taking is to do the things that got us here, and if in the middle of a game we need to make an adjustment, we can do that.”
On the team’s depth…
“I think one thing we’ve been good about all year is utilizing the depth on our team. I just feel blessed because I look at our players and any of those players would start for most any team in the country. The unselfishness they’ve had about wanting to win, they’ve been great with that. Every player brings something different to the table. They’ve been very good about responding to the need to have them on the field.”
Junior Courtney Rosen
On being undefeated…
“It’s a team mentality. Every time we go out, we go out to win and play just as hard no matter who we’re playing.”
On last year’s College Cup…
“I think our mentality is that settling for anything less than winning the national championship will be disappointing. Maybe last year we were just excited about making it that far seeing as how we did at the beginning of the season. This year, not winning is just not acceptable to anyone on the team.”
Senior Elise Weber
On being undefeated…
“Our theme this year has been to just take it one game at a time, so I don’t think we’re really thinking about being undefeated.”
Junior Michele Weissenhofer
On the motivation derived from losing in last year’s tournament…
“I think this year we have more experience and are a more mature team. We’re certainly a closer team this year and have the same goals. It’s a team effort every single day.”
— ND —