When Randy Waldrum arrived in Oakland in January of 2018 as the new head coach of the Pitt women's soccer program, he took a look at the big picture.
The program had endured a rough stretch, combining to go 5-27-4 overall in two seasons leading into the exit of coach Greg Miller.
The situation in that big-picture sense was nearly untenable. Since joining the ACC in 2013, the Panthers had amassed just seven wins within the conference in five seasons.
It was clear the program needed a new direction.
Athletic Director Heather Lyke brought in the right guy for the project.
For 14 seasons at Notre Dame, Waldrum had coached at the top of the game. The Fighting Irish went 399-108-29 in his tenure and won two national championships (2004, 2010), including the Fighting Irish's storybook 2004 season in which Waldrum led way to the title in his first season as their coach. He was the first women's soccer coach in NCAA history to guide a team to a national championship in his first season.
So when Waldrum began to assess the situation at Pitt, he noticed something glaring.
It was void of home-grown talent.
Pittsburgh talent.
"I can remember going to the first recruiting event in January when I got in, and I showed up at Cool Springs at an indoor facility, and I'm feeling like everybody's staring at me," Waldrum said. "I'm going, like, 'What's going on? What did I do? Do I have everything on?' Finally somebody come up and said, 'What are you doing here?' and I said, 'I'm recruiting,' and they said, 'You're the first Pitt coach we've seen out local in six years.'
"That told me right away what it was like here with the relationship. So have to give a lot of credit, really, to Ben (Waldrum), our associate head coach, and to (assistant coach) Dustin (Stein), they really worked hard that first year and a half, just getting out to the local clubs and meeting the staff and putting on some sessions for them, and just re-establishing that relationship."
That 2018 team which Waldrum inherited in his first season consisted of just five players from western Pennsylvania. The previous staff had lost its connection to the city. It lost its connection to the culture. It lost its... connection.
"Personally, I hate to see Pittsburgh girls go elsewhere," said sophomore midfielder Ellie Coffield, a Mars, Pa. native, "because you're from here. Why not represent your home town?"
After four-plus years of connecting, building, and reconstructing, this Pitt roster is rooted with "Pittsburgh girls" representing their home town and home state.
Proudly.
Those once-budding relationships Waldrum and his staff established with the area have helped the program blossom into something special. The Panthers are NCAA Tournament bound for the first time in program history. They will host their first-ever game, against Buffalo at 7 p.m. on Saturday at Ambrose Urbanic Field.
"It's so special to be doing it among my Pittsburgh teammates," Coffield said.
Leaving a ππππΌπΎπ!
β Pitt Women's Soccer (@Pitt_WSOC) November 7, 2022
For the first time in program history, we are heading to the NCAA Tournament!π#H2P pic.twitter.com/EnmpRH73tS
It took some time to build. Waldrum couldn't recruit his 2018 team, and he made it clear to those which remained from the previous regime that if they didn't feel they were a fit in his program, they were free to go elsewhere, and that his staff would help them find a new place to play. Then came 17 freshmen and four transfers into the class of 2019 which bought into building, as Waldrum says, "something, as opposed to going to (North) Carolina and just being another name on a 22-national championship team. They wanted to be a part of building it."
Then came the 2020 class in the COVID-19 pandemic year, in which 10 more arrived to Pitt, including more of the area's top local players like Coffield and North Allegheny product Sarah Schupansky.
Each class was better than the last. Pitt won 11 games in the COVID-19-shortened season, which turned out to be its third-ever winning season as a program.
Fast forward two years, and of Pitt's 33 rostered players, 12 hail from Pennsylvania, and five arrived from the western half; four of which are from the Pittsburgh area.
All of those visits to the area clubs mattered. So much so that players which may not have originally committed to Pitt at last was met with the bare-minimum presence.
But it was more than about that. Those recruiting trips to local clubs were opportunities for Waldrum and his staff to convey his message, his program, and for him to re-sell the city to its residents.
Senior midfielder and Upper St. Clair graduate Landy Mertz is a prime example of this. She was recruited by Waldrum while playing for Century Soccer Club. She originally committed to and played at Dayton before transferring home prior to the start of the 2020 season.
"When I was getting recruited, I was really young, and I still didn't fully understand what was going on," Mertz said. "When they would say, 'I'm going to Century practice, but all four of the Pitt coaches are going to be there tonight,' that's a special thing. I think it's important, especially if you're trying to recruit local kids like our coaches are, to have good relationships with the local clubs. Even for me playing for Century, we walk out with the Century girls during the games, and it's a full-circle moment for us. We were once those players coming to Pitt games and watching those girls, and now we are those girls."
A connection maintained through time, all because Waldrum made the concerted effort to bring Pittsburgh kids home.
"There was a local club coach here with Century named Randi Rohm, and she actually played for me at Notre Dame," Waldrum said. "So she was very helpful in getting us players like Landy Mertz. When we first got here, she was like -- now she's going back to players that had verbally committed to other schools and hadn't signed yet -- saying, 'This is going to change. Now let's put Pitt back on the map.' So we had some in-roads with a few of the club coaches here, which really helped us."
From there, it was about selling the buy-in. With that 2020 class including Coffield and Schupansky, they were able to see the early fruits of Waldrum's labor on the field.
"One of the main things, regardless of where the program is, the ACC for itself as a conference is incredibly impressive," Coffield said. "Yes, we were in a rebuild. Fortunately, me having only been here for only two years, back when I was getting recruited, eighth, ninth grade, being a local girl, I was able to come watch the team develop. Every single game I came to, they looked better. It was something that I wanted to be a part of, and now seeing the team's success that we're having, it's really exciting because we're at a stage now in the season where everything is a first, and it's really fun to be a part of."
In as strong of a soccer conference as the ACC is -- with other power programs such as West Virginia, Penn State, and Ohio State nearing in a relative proximity -- recruiting locally is hard enough. But what Waldrum has done with this program is still unlike anything it had experienced in its history.
"I think it makes it special for not only us, but for everyone in Pittsburgh," Mertz said. "Being on the news and hearing from the basketball coaches, the other Pittsburgh sports teams, it's been really special because it's sort of brought everyone together in a way. It's like, I go and I look on Twitter, Instagram, and I see people that I never would have thought were paying attention to women's collegiate soccer that they're super pumped up about our NCAA Tournament bid. So it's been very cool, not only for us on the team, but I think a lot of people in and around the city, as well."
βThis is years in the making for us.β
β Pitt Women's Soccer (@Pitt_WSOC) November 8, 2022
Pittsburgh native @landy_mertz on what it means for our program to make the NCAA Tournament.#H2P pic.twitter.com/tTdWgfRuv3
As Mertz illustrated, people have taken notice. Pitt men's basketball coach Jeff Capel even shouted out the women's soccer team in his opening statement following his team's win over Tennessee Martin on Monday.
"The very first thing I want to do is congratulate our women's soccer program," Capel said. "What an amazing thing, first time ever getting to the NCAA Tournament. What that coaching staff, what Randy has done, the young ladies on the team, the assistants, it's pretty amazing. It wasn't a 'rebuild.' It was a 'build.' I know he's worked and recruited and all those things, and to see them be rewarded for that is pretty amazing, so shout out to them."
ππππ@jeffcapel started off his postgame press conference last night by congratulating @CoachWaldrum & @Pitt_WSOC!#H2P pic.twitter.com/AM3QO1W1Gz
β Pitt Panthers (@Pitt_ATHLETICS) November 8, 2022
This renaissance period in Pitt women's soccer has been verified from this season -- a 12-4-3 overall record, a 5-3-2 record in conference play, and key victories over Virginia Tech, Miami, and No. 17 Notre Dame. The Panthers took the Fighting Irish to the wire in the opening round of the ACC tournament, drawing at 1-1 in regular time and then dropping the game via penalty kick shootout.
That win over Virginia Tech, a fellow NCAA Tournament team, was a 4-1 victory in the ACC opener. It proved to the Panthers that they were worthy of their merit, and it validated in a vacuum what this program had hoped to become following that four-plus year rebuild.
"That's a game that has sort of kept us out of the tournament a couple of times," Mertz said. "That was a game, I think, that we deserved the result that we got. I definitely think the Virginia Tech game was a turning point for us this year."
But, just as most great teams do, Pitt has had to fight through some harsh adversity.
Before the first touch of the season, junior midfielder Chloe Minas tore her ACL, which left what Waldrum had described as a "big question mark" for the position.
Then, in the sixth game of Pitt's season, leading scorer and senior forward Amanda West tore her ACL. She began the year on a five-game streak of scoring goals -- six in all -- while assisting on three others. Then sophomore defender Ashley Moon tore her ACL on Oct. 6 against North Carolina.
Three prominent players, including the team's best goal scorer, all out with torn ACLs.
"It's definitely been a bit of an emotional roller coaster," Mertz said. "Obviously you have some of your best players going down early in the season with Chloe and Amanda, and then later in the season with Ashley. It's been really hard. You want to be there and support them, but also still taking care of yourself and your team and the girls that are playing, so I think we have done a really good job of having that sort-of 'next man up' mentality.
"We have a lot of girls on this team, and it's just not the starting 11 that can get it done, and I think this season has proved that more than ever that there are girls that are capable of stepping into those roles. So I think for us to see those types of stepped-up players then go and succeed on the field, it sort of instills more belief in everybody. While, obviously, we're devastated for the girls that can't play, it's also sort of helped us rally around them and continue to be successful."
Mertz is speaking from example.
Her 32 shots on goal ranked fourth in the ACC, and her four game-winning goals tied for tops among six players. Senior forward Leah Pais, while starting in just four games, led the team in goals with seven. Schupansky tied for the team lead in points (19) while finishing fifth in the ACC with her seven assists.
The "big question mark" left with Minas' preseason injury was answered by Coffield, who chipped in three goals and three assists on the season while starting in all of Pitt's 19 games.
"I have to give so much credit to (Minas)," Coffield said, "because I've stepped into the role that she had on this team prior, and they have been incredibly helpful with every stage moving forward. Randy has told us several times, though, that our team, and it's so true, has -- we haven't missed a step. Every group of girls is ready to step into whatever role they have to regardless of what happens."
Waldrum said the team didn't flinch following West's injury, and it remained steadfast following Moon's injury.
"I think it more shows us that we have a team," Waldrum said. "We're not dependent, reliant on just one player. I think a lot of people, when Amanda West went down, probably wrote us off since she's our record goal scoring machine. And I think we lost Chloe Minas, who's arguably one of our best midfielders and a captain, and Amanda's a captain, and we lost Chloe before the season even started. So what I think it did is it just allowed some other players to step up and perform. We didn't -- as a staff in front of the team -- we didn't make a big deal out of it.
"We didn't talk about it, we didn't spend a lot of time. We obviously talked about taking care of those players that were injured and making sure they were in a good space mentally and help them in every way we can, but as a team we didn't really talk about it in terms of going, 'Oh, no, now you've got to step up.' We just kind of came back out to practice and it was business as usual. That was the approach the team took, and I think it was probably the smartest thing we could've done at that time."
It was that calm and collected demeanor which Waldrum employed and subsequently kept the players' perspectives in check. They weren't going to let injuries deny what has been built over his tenure.
And because of it, they have achieved program firsts across the board.
"I think just the hunger this year of finally saying this group is an older, veteran group now, and we've kind of been through it," Waldrum said. "This was the year we earmarked as the year to -- we challenged them to say, 'leave your legacy.' That team that nobody can ever replace. You're the first team into the Tournament, then you'll always have that in your back pocket. And they lived that motto through the year."
