Pitt leaves a legacy after clinching first-ever NCAA Tournament bid
The Pitt women’s soccer team wanted to leave a legacy in the 2022 season. The Panthers, wearing shirts that read ‘Leaving a legacy’, gathered in the team room of the Petersen Sports Complex on Monday afternoon to watch the NCAA Tournament selection show.
Pitt accomplished that mission.
The Panthers punched their ticket to the NCAA Tournament for the first time in program history. Pitt was tabbed as a four seed in the 64-team tournament, and will host Buffalo on Saturday night for the program’s first-ever NCAA Tournament game.
Pitt enters the postseason with a 12-4-3 record. The Panthers had won 11 games in the prior two seasons, but were left out of the NCAA Tournament both years. Getting there this season was both a goal and a motto for the team.
“We felt like last year we were good enough to be in and we didn’t get in,” Pitt head coach Randy Waldrum told Panther-Lair.com. “So that was a real focus this year and they knew if we got in they would be the first team ever to get in and that could be their legacy as a team.”
The players rallied around that motto this season, but it’s really been part of the vision since Waldrum took over the Pitt program back in 2018. He had been a successful coach at previous stops after starting the Baylor program from the ground up, and then he went on to win two national titles at Notre Dame.
Coaching at Pitt never really crossed his mind. In the 22 years prior to Waldrum’s arrival, the Panthers produced only two winning records. During his stint at Notre Dame, Pitt did not even play its games on campus.
“We had to solve 22 years of bad history,” Waldrum said of the rebuilding project he took on when he got to Pitt. “We had to mend some fences here in the Pittsburgh area with the local clubs, who didn’t have a good relationship with the university at the time. Obviously then trying to find players from around the country that would be willing to take a chance with us on what we were trying to build.”
Talented players believed in the Panthers’ new head coach. Sarah Schupansky is a sophomore from nearby North Allegheny High School. She is tied for the team lead this season with 19 points, including 6 goals on the year. Schupansky believed in what Waldrum was selling.
“When I committed to Pitt I was a freshman in high school,” the sophomore forward explained. “I really knew nothing about the process of college soccer at all. I just got on the phone with Randy one day and the way he talked about the vision of the program and the future that he wanted to create here and the players that he already had here. I just knew it was going to be something special and I just wanted to be a part of it. To be able to help create history here has been amazing. I thank Randy everyday that he gave me the opportunity to play for this team.”
Building the program with talent has obviously been the key to the Panthers’ success, but it had to come from internally as well with support of the athletic department.
“I never saw the campus in 14 years at Notre Dame and us being in the Big East with Pitt,” Waldrum said of his early impressions of the school. "My image of Pitt was only about losing and not supporting their program.”
That all changed after speaking with Pitt men’s head coach Jay Vidovich, who had previously won a national championship at Wake Forest prior to coaching at Pitt. A more detailed conversion with Pitt athletic director Heather Lyke only enhanced his desire to take over this program.
Her message to Waldrum was clear: 'Tell me what we need to do get better.'
Waldrum noted that Pitt needed a new playing surface, a video board at Ambrose Urbanic Field, along with all the new team areas at the sparkling new Petersen Sports Complex.
“She’s been true to her word every step of the way of getting us the resources and getting us the facilities we need to compete, not only in the ACC, but nationally,” Waldrum said.
It has really come full circle for Waldrum’s rebuilding job with Monday’s tournament selection. His team was obviously relishing the moment of the postseason berth, but he was already thinking ahead to Saturday.
“They’re actually quite good,” Waldrum said of Buffalo. “They are going to be better than people think they are. They won their conference, they’re really good up the spine of their team. They’re athletic. It won’t be an easy matchup for us.”
Pitt was one of ten ACC teams to make the NCAA Tournament, the most of any league in the country.
“We won’t play anyone better in the NCAA Tournament than what we just played,” the Pitt coach said after a grueling regular season in the nation’s toughest conference.
Pitt set out this season with the goal to leave a legacy. Obviously that legacy can grow with a few more wins, but for a program that went 26 seasons without making the NCAA Tournament, the 2022 Panthers have achieved that legacy they set out for at the start of this season.
“It means just accomplishing things that haven’t been done before,” Schupansky said.
