Each week during the soccer season, we'll try to shine the spotlight on a player whose recent performances reinforce her place among the best in the nation. Consider it our way to check in on, or in some cases introduce, the personalities who will shape the race for espnW player of the year.
Brianna Pinto's first college game would be cause to all but roll out the red carpet on most campuses. After all, few college teams feature a player who trained with the senior U.S. national team leading up to its games against England, France and Germany, three of the top teams in the world. Fewer still feature a player who did that as a junior in high school.
Such a debut would mark the start of an era. At the very least, it would merit a starting role.
Yet there Pinto stood Sunday, waiting next to the official for a break in play during the first half of a game between North Carolina and Ohio State. She waited to take the field as a substitute for the Tar Heels. When it comes to a program that has piled up so much history that championship trophies sometimes sat on the carpet in the hallways of the former offices for lack of space to display them, even someone with a resume like Pinto's waits her turn.
Not that she waited long to make sure her name figured in the soccer history of Chapel Hill.
North Carolina's 2-0 win against the defending Big Ten champion was coach Anson Dorrance's 1,000th career win across both men's and women's college soccer (in addition to 828 wins and 22 national championships as women's coach, both NCAA and AIAW, he compiled 172 wins as coach of the men's team from 1977 to '88). As Dorrance noted, it took a bit of bookkeeping "alchemy" to come up with the milestone, but the newest Tar Heel's opening goal secured it.
After entering early in the first half, Pinto was on the field when freshman Rachel Jones was fouled on the edge of the 18-yard box in the 37th minute. The ball was still rolling in the aftermath of the play when Pinto picked it up and walked to the spot the referee marked for the free kick. With barely a pause for the whistle, and certainly no debate that it would be her shot, she steered the ball into the far side of the goal for a 1-0 lead.
"I knew that I wanted to go back post," Pinto said. "I wanted to get bend on it so that it bends out of the pathway of the goalkeeper and ideally [hit the] side netting because it's the hardest to stop. Luckily it worked out -- well, not luckily; it's something I've spent a lot of time practicing."
The goal came 20 minutes into her college debut, but it didn't take even that long for her to show off uncommon skills for a freshman. Within her first two minutes, she slipped between defenders near the sideline and delivered a pinpoint cross to the back post. Within five minutes, she freed Emily Fox for a cross with a nifty backheel pass in traffic. All of that while playing somewhat out of position. A natural midfielder, Pinto instead was deployed wide left as a forward for her first few minutes on the field.
"She is one of the most complete players we have ever brought in as a freshman," Dorrance said before the season began.
He also said before the season that she had the ability to start as a freshman. And to be fair, there was a pretty good excuse for bringing her off the bench in her first appearance. Namely that the debut came one day after her first practice with the team. Although she is from the Triangle area, the daughter of former North Carolina soccer player Hassan Pinto and softball player Meleata Pinto, Brianna Pinto had the longest trip to campus of any player. She returned from the Under-20 Women's World Cup in France this past Wednesday, sooner than she or the Tar Heels expected when the U.S. exited in the group stage. After speeding through all the necessary tests to get on the field for the Tar Heels, she watched the team's opening win against Illinois on Thursday and then suited up for the first time in training Saturday.
That someone who had posters of Tar Heels on her wall and was a ballgirl at games would end up playing for North Carolina might seem a foregone conclusion, but the very fact that almost no one plays 90 minutes at North Carolina was a selling point. Where other programs tend to play closer to a traditional model, Dorrance still shapes his strategy around college soccer's almost-unlimited substitution rules. Whether it's for 10 minutes or 70 minutes, all players -- which is often 20-plus -- are expected to play at full throttle at all times in a high-pressing system.
Among the things that she said stood out when she trained with the senior national team during the 2017 SheBelieves Cup, spending the tournament with the team even though she didn't play in any games, was the degree to which every single activity was a competition. There was never a chance to coast.
With that knowledge, and after talking to former Tar Heels she grew up around, North Carolina seemed not just close to home but uniquely suited to aspirations that she, boldly, said still include the 2019 World Cup.
"They told me that Anson's best quality is that he can coach people's mental game and get the most out of every single player that is part of this team," Pinto said. "For me going forward -- I've had a lot of success on the field and with national teams and stuff like that. I want to grow mentally, so being prepared to perform at the highest level every single day.
"What I think is [advantageous] about his model of playing sort of reduced minutes is that you're giving 100 percent of your effort all of the time. That way it becomes second nature, so then when I go into environments like the national team, I won't have to switch on to giving 100 percent effort."
You'll see Pinto on the field more often than not this season. It won't take her long to make her presence felt.