Tell this former UNC soccer keeper she can’t do something, and she’ll prove you wrong

Courtney Lehmann thought she was dying.

As a soccer player for UNC and four-sport athlete through high school, Lehmann knew injuries well. But this was different. Pain shot from her bruised head to her crushed feet.

The nurses were wheeling her in for her CT scan when she heard a voice from down the hall.

“Courtneyyyy,” the voice called.

It was the last thing she remembers.

A ‘Rudy’ scenario

With five minutes left in the 1990 women’s soccer national championship, Lehmann was scrambling to get ready. Her coach, Anson Dorrance, called her number, and she needed to find a jersey.

The Tar Heels were crushing the UConn Huskies, 5-0, at Fetzer Field in Chapel Hill. Dorrance was confident his team would win its eighth national title. He wanted to give Lehmann, a senior playing in front of a crowd of friends and family from her hometown — Newtown, Connecticut — a chance to get some minutes as a forward to close out the match.

She stripped off her keeper jersey. As the backup goaltender, Lehmann had assumed that she’d be on the bench for the match unless something happened to starter Merridee Proost.

“I just never expected to get in the game,” Lehmann said.

She ran onto the field, joining Mia Hamm and Kristine Lilly, two of the greatest soccer players of all time. Courtney stood next to them in a strange jersey. Her heart raced. Her socks didn’t match.

Just seconds after she took the field, UNC drove to the net.

Lehmann didn’t mean for it to be perfect, but it was. The crowd erupted as her kick found the back of the net off a Lilly header.

Lilly was already tousling her hair before Lehmann fully realized what she had just done. The 6-0 margin set a record for the largest margin of victory in an NCAA Championship match.

But I shanked it, she thought. She had aimed for the left corner and wound up giving it a right spin off a miss-hit. Lehmann didn’t celebrate, didn’t dance and didn’t slide Mia-esque across the field.

“I was terrified that I just scored,” she said. “I didn’t know what the hell to do. I just clapped my hands. I’ll never forget it. I was just like, ‘Oh, I guess I should clap my hands really quickly.’”

It was a “Rudy” scenario, but it also felt like a full circle moment after everything she had endured throughout her undergraduate experience..

The medals from that day still hang in Lehmann’s office. A shining moment, a lasting reminder. Her students at the University of the Pacific know Dr. Lehmann is a national champion, but few know the whole story. Few know how a twist of fate led her to one of the most successful sports teams of all time, and how she climbed mountains for that glorious goal. The moment, that fluke and those medals stand as a microcosm of who she is — a winner, an overachiever. A fighter.

It was more than a win. It was validation of her hard work because just two years prior, Courtney didn’t know if she would ever walk — let alone play — again.

The accident

Courtney Lehmann remembers the day well. She was happy— giddy with excitement. After nailing an interview for a hostess position at Spanky’s restaurant on Franklin Street, she celebrated by driving her motor scooter to get an orange-flavored Slushie. With one hand on the accelerator her slush resting in the other, she drove back to her dorm.

A car in oncoming traffic didn’t see Lehmann and pulled out for a turn, barreling into her moped and sending her tumbling through the air. She bounced off a car hood before smacking her head on the pavement.

She didn’t move. Lying on the road, all she could do was shift her eyes from right and left.

“I could see that I was bleeding from what appeared to be my ear and I knew I was pretty screwed,” Lehmann said. “Everything hurt.”

She was conscious upon arriving at the hospital. Nurses and doctors buzzed around her, trying to do anything they could to stabilize the bleeding from her left foot, which was crushed. Her shin was cracked. She had a concussion. Her right knee was busted open and to this day, gravel from the street sits just under her skin.

“Courtneyyyy.”

She knew it was Dorrance, and that comforted her; she wasn’t completely alone.

“I was terrified I wasn’t ever going to come back out,” Lehmann said.

Dorrance had been eating lunch when the lacrosse coach told him about the accident. He left immediately.

“When I heard about that, of course I’m going to respond,” Dorrance said. “These are kids I care about. But we all cared about Courtney. She was just an incredible human being.”

The Lehmann family was home in Connecticut, more than 500 miles away. Carol Lehmann received the call from a nurse and it knocked her flat. It’s a mother’s worst nightmare.

“I’ve only had three calls like that in my life and each of the three times, my knees have just buckled and I’m carrying on the conversation on the floor,” Carol Lehmann said.

Path to recovery

Courtney spent a few days in the hospital. She left stitched-up and bandaged, looking physically broken.

But her spirit wasn’t.

Lehmann hated the month she spent in a wheelchair. She hated the limitations, the restriction. Despite her left foot still being permanently disfigured, she refused to give up soccer. She didn’t care if it took months of physical therapy.

And it did.

But through sheer will power, Lehmann returned the next fall season, and played her entire junior and senior year.

Scoring the final goal in the national championship match was as symbolic a moment as anyone could have imagined. She had conquered every trial, every tribulation.

“It was the sixth goal, it wasn’t like anything was at stake, but it was validation of the hard work and overcoming of the injuries that really threatened my ability to play let alone walk like a typical, able human being,” Lehmann said. “It was a wonderful fairy tale ending.”

“That was a bit of a tearjerker for everybody,” her mother said, remembering the wave of emotions that came over her seeing her daughter hold the championship trophy.

“It was a triumphal moment,” Carol said. “Euphoria.”

Fighting spirit

Don’t ever tell Courtney Lehmann that she can’t do something — because then she’ll have to prove just how wrong you are.

“Courtney is full of piss and vinegar in the most positive way,” Dorrance said.

It’s that gritty, can’t-stop attitude that led the venerable coach to ask Courtney to join his team in the first place. A fateful day brought Dorrance to Carmichael Gymnasium where Courtney was playing goalkeeper in a round of recreation miniball. He saw the spunky, 5-foot, 4-inch freshman blocking shot after shot. He wanted her on his side.

“I just have a lot of respect for this brave little girl that came in there, basically with the trees, and fought them tooth and nail every day,” Dorrance said.

She wasn’t the starter, but she was often the hardest worker, inspiring the team with her tenacity and courage.

“I think it’s just in her DNA,” Carol Lehmann said. “We always try to inspire our girls and remind them that they were only held back by themselves.”

When she was told as a 10-year-old, “girls don’t play soccer,” she proved them wrong. When she was told she wasn’t allowed to join Little League as a girl, she became the starting pitcher in the All-Star game. When she was told she’d always be physically impaired, she scored the final goal in the 1990 NCAA title game.

And when she was told academia is difficult for a woman, she became an accomplished English professor.

“Dr. Lehmann has single-handedly been the most influential person I have met during my time in undergrad,” Arooba Lodhi, a student of Lehmann’s Powell Scholar program, said. “Dr. Lehmann has obviously come through so many struggles in her life, but there is something inherently stronger in a person and a woman in general to not let those things always weigh them down.”

She’s learned from those years with UNC soccer what it means to overcome, to be battered yet to stand tall.

Lehmann didn’t play professional soccer, but she keeps that winning attitude as a professor.

While teammates Lilly and Hamm achieved Olympic glory, Lehmann achieved academic glory, earning a Ph.D. She achieved the highest honors in college athletics, and continues to achieve highest honors as a renowned educator at University of the Pacific. She’s the Director of the Humanities Scholars Program, author of three books, and winner of the 2016 Distinguished Faculty Award.

“I just really believe in building that better world now,” Lehmann said. “And that certainly goes back to playing on a team where we wouldn’t settle for not being our best. Not just athletes, but our best inner person. And that’s what I try to do as a teacher in my classroom, always.”

This story was provided by Media Hub, a project of students at UNC-Chapel Hill’s Hussman School of Journalism and Media.

This story was originally published March 31, 2021 at 12:00 PM.