North Carolina Courage rue playoff result, but not season overall
The Courage reckon with negative capability in assessing a strong season.
CARY, North Carolina — Sunday night was the end of the 2023 journey for the North Carolina Courage, but spirits were pretty high nevertheless.
The Courage hosted Gotham FC in the teams’ playoff opener at WakeMed Soccer Park, but Gotham’s sneaky mastery of their opponent — they never lost in all competitions this calendar year against the Courage — came to bear, Gotham winning their first-ever NWSL playoff game 2-0 and North Carolina left to wonder what might have been.
This is professional sports, after all, and in an ultra-competitive environment, the losing team was certainly disappointed their run had come to an end. But in the postgame press conference, both head coach Sean Nahas and captain Denise O’Sullivan explained the end of the season was bittersweet, not purely bitter.
“We didn't find a way tonight and that doesn't change everything, that’s not going to define us,” Nahas explained. “We have to learn from it. We have to grow from it. No one is going to tell me that this season wasn't a success. And if anyone tells me that this season wasn't a success, then you shouldn't be a supporter. Let me put it this way: We didn't take anyone by surprise because we believed in what we were doing. But we didn't overachieve. We believed in who we are. I can go to sleep tonight knowing that we have put this club on a map and I think people will want to come play in this style and this brand of football.”
While the quote may read like Nahas was full of fire postgame, his tone was measured, even fairly upbeat considering the circumstances. With a playoff berth after missing out in 2022, another NWSL Challenge Cup title this year, and a team that established a positional play style featuring considerable possession in a league where transition rules the day, a lot was accomplished.
And then there was the Courage clapping back at projections made ahead of the season projecting the team to be a bottom-dweller in the standings, something that clearly motivated Nahas all year and the players.
“We've had a great season,” said O’Sullivan. “We've proved ourselves right. I think what we've done inside the lines every single day, that's all we cared about, and we didn't listen to the outside noise that didn't didn't bother us at all, about coming 12th, coming last in the league. That was the prediction at the start of the year. We finished third and we pushed every team to the limit. So I'm really proud.”
Yet O’Sullivan did admit she didn’t expect the rebuilt team to come together as it did: “There was a lot of turnover in the offseason, a lot of big changes coming into this season. And I think even myself, I didn't think we'd end up being this far. So it's massive for every single player. I think everyone stepped up I think Sean, the staff have been absolutely excellent with us and we just stuck to our values every single day and inside the lines, we worked hard.”
Having watched and covered the Courage closely this year, the feeling ultimately was that the team was full of good vibes, players got along with one another, were bought in and put in the work. The clichés often spouted in this realm about team-first philosophies and players loving all their teammates, when ample context clues may point to the contrary, were absent from this squad.
The only disagreement in Nahas and O’Sullivan’s postgame remarks concerned the absence of Kerolin on the night, who suffered a torn ACL in the regular season finale the week before. And yet, both coach and player were right — Nahas emphasized that the Courage had never relied on any one player all year, and even with Kerolin’s prodigious talent, she had missed chunks of the season on international duty; And O’Sullivan rued Kerolin’s loss, rightly pointing out that the Brazilian brought something to the Courage’s gameplan that simply could not be replaced like-for-like.
I recently learned about a concept in art that really opened my eyes, called negative capability. First outlined by the poet John Keats, the most simplistic reading is that in contrast to those who think the purpose of art is to find “truth,” Keats posited that beauty itself can be an admirable and worthy goal in art. Over time, the concept has expanded to account for the ambiguity that art may not resolve complex or contradictory feelings, but instead, engender feelings of the sublime without full resolution.
I bring all this up because in sports, we’re often treated to absurd binaries. The ultimate goal is to win, the championship the goal above all. But in any sporting endeavor, there can be just one champion. What does that mean for the remaining competitors that fall short? In some cases, it may be seen as pure failure. But in other situations, that negative capability in a sporting sense emerges. If a club, mired in scandal just two years ago as the league it was in appeared to be on the verge of collapse, could fully dig out in 2023, on and off the field, is it not a success even if the goal of the league title came up short? Of course it is, and it is refreshing to hear the team captain and head coach express that openly.
“That's part of the learning process,” Nahas said as he explained why Gotham had the better of the Courage on the night. “And you know, it's all part of the growth, guys, and we'll learn from it. Like I said, it's okay. I'm not leaving here disappointed. I just leave here disappointed because like I said before, I don't get to coach them again [this year]. But I'm so proud of this group.”