PARIS — The week was nearly over, the Olympics practically wrapped, when Erin Matson walked into the foyer of a botanical-themed boutique resort. A type of gilded backyard pulled from a Parisian dream. This place is how the opposite facet lives, and the title match. La Fantaisie.
Nike booked a block of rooms through the Olympic Video games. Its friends have been a part of an annual Athlete Suppose Tank, a consortium to survey influential girls in sports activities. The listing included Daybreak Staley, Megan Rapinoe, Sue Chook and so forth. They sat for group discussions, Grasp Class shows from Serena Williams and Stacey Abrams, and for product periods, giving suggestions on Nike items popping out quickly and others nonetheless years from launch.
The youngest member of the group was USC basketball star Juju Watkins. The second-youngest was Matson — a 24-year-old coming into her second season as head discipline hockey coach on the College of North Carolina.
Matson arrived within the foyer carrying an outsized designer Nike sweatsuit. The chauffeur ready exterior was scheduled to go away for the airport in 45 minutes. Jess Sims, the Peloton instructor-turned-ESPN character, walked previous, asking if she and Matson have been sharing a trip to Charles de Gaulle.
This isn’t the standard lifetime of an American school discipline hockey coach. Matson is represented by Wasserman Group, the highly effective sports activities and leisure company representing Katie Ledecky, Diana Taurasi, Nelly Korda and others, and this summer season proved her attain. She walked the pink carpet on the ESPYs. She was a featured speaker on the espnW Summit in New York Metropolis.
At a time when spiking curiosity in girls’s sports activities is dictated closely by title recognition and star energy, Matson has discovered a spot in these reserved areas. As soon as the nation’s prime highschool discipline hockey participant and member of the U.S. nationwide group at age 17, she performed 5 seasons (2018-22) at North Carolina and received all conceivable honors. She turned the NCAA’s third all-time main purpose scorer, was a part of 4 nationwide championship groups, and was named nationwide participant of the 12 months thrice.
However this 12 months, as a substitute of competing in Paris, the 24-year-old face of the game was throughout city hanging out with Serena Williams because the U.S. nationwide group went 1-3-1.
The backstory is layered. Following the December 2022 retirement of legendary coach Karen Shelton, UNC named Matson, then 22, as head coach of the winningest, most well-funded school discipline hockey program within the nation. Many celebrated the transfer as daring — a succession mimicking Shelton’s rise 42 years earlier. It was one other period, however Shelton as soon as went from being a three-time nationwide participant of the 12 months at West Chester, to highschool head coach in New Jersey, to taking on UNC at 23. Others weren’t so cheery in regards to the transfer. Some noticed Matson’s hiring as ridiculous, a borderline insult to girls’s sports activities, and criticized the college for what they noticed as a closed job search.
Matson and the Tar Heels responded by successful the college’s eleventh nationwide championship in her first season as head coach.
All of this earlier than turning 25.
Thus, the standing.
Thus, Paris.
Matson stuffed a journal with notes and quotes. She talked to Staley about coach-captain relationships. She listened to Abrams converse on staying true to at least one’s values. She felt, at occasions, misplaced. “Why am I right here?” Not due to an absence of credentials, however due to discipline hockey’s ultra-niche place in girls’s sports activities. It’s a problem a lot older than Matson.
Over lunch with Rapinoe sooner or later, Matson was struck by a realization — that Rapinoe, a U.S. soccer icon, turned so by being transcendent on the sphere and outspoken off the sphere. She raised the profile of ladies’s soccer as a participant, a freedom afforded on the sphere greater than when working because the CEO on the sideline.
In Paris, that discipline was Yves du Manoir Stadium. The U.S. nationwide group, a gaggle that includes two of Matson’s present gamers, one former participant and 5 gamers she’ll coach in opposition to this fall, have been outscored by eight objectives and eradicated in pool play. They didn’t medal, once more, extending a streak courting to 1984.
The intuition, in fact, is to make it make sense, however nothing is kind of so easy right here, and it’s solely the game that’s struggling.
Right here’s the shortest doable model of the lengthy, convoluted story of Matson and USA Area Hockey. When employed at North Carolina, Matson knew taking a full-time job with a six-figure wage meant stepping away from the U.S. nationwide group. In her model of occasions, she wished a couple of years to settle into the job, then hoped to proceed her taking part in profession, splitting time between teaching and taking part in. She advised UNC athletic director Bubba Cunningham of her plans to pursue the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles. He was all for it.
Then two issues occurred. The Tar Heels received the nationwide title in Matson’s first season. And the U.S. nationwide group, one projected as a protracted shot to make the Paris Olympics, efficiently certified for the Video games.
North Carolina coach Erin Matson is lifted up by her group after defeating Northwestern for the nationwide title in November 2023 at Karen Shelton Stadium in Chapel Hill. (Jamie Schwaberow / NCAA Pictures by way of Getty Photographs)
Reversing course on her unique choice, Matson made a late effort to land a spot on the U.S. group, requesting a tryout and taking part in within the indoor Pan-Am Video games to notch some worldwide taking part in reps. Whereas a lot of the already established U.S. nationwide group had sacrificed time and vitality, residing and coaching at a facility in Charlotte, N.C., the official roster was not but finalized. A number of collegians who performed their 2023 seasons could be invited to check out. Matson wouldn’t. USA Area Hockey issued an announcement that Matson “didn’t qualify beneath the obligatory phrases of the choice standards.” Simon Hoskins, the chief director of USA Area Hockey, advised The Athletic it was his choice to disclaim the tryout request, saying, “It’s an organizational coverage, so it involves me.”
The ensuing backlash ran each methods. Matson’s supporters levied accusations of jealousy within the ranks of USA Area Hockey. Matson’s detractors criticized her for wanting particular remedy and strolling away from the nationwide group within the first place. Acrimony and arguments mounted. Earlier this summer season, a sequence of conversations with members of the 1984 bronze-medal successful group drew a wide range of responses — each that USA Area Hockey wasn’t capitalizing on a brand new star, and that roster insurance policies exist for a purpose. In the meantime, different present school coaches declined to go on the file to debate the subject.
Anybody working from a perch of perspective might see a legitimate case both method. Matson did select to prioritize her teaching profession over her taking part in profession. On the similar time, no matter protocols or private emotions, was it actually within the sport’s greatest curiosity for her to not check out for the Olympics?
Area hockey, performed evenly amongst women and men in different elements of the world, has lengthy struggled to catch on in america. Whereas different girls’s sports activities have hit intervals of momentum, discipline hockey has by no means moved into the mainstream. It’s regional. It requires particular (learn: costly) turf. It doesn’t draw droves of youngsters as a youth sport. So whereas different girls’s sports activities have loved measurable progress, like elevated school scholarship totals, discipline hockey has stagnated. An absence of success on the nationwide stage might be seen as each a root trigger and a byproduct. Since ’84, america has completed no higher than fifth in any Video games since.
Hoskins cites an absence of presidency funding.
“It’s simply not honest,” he mentioned. “It’s a sponsored business that we’re competing in. It’s an actual wrestle for the group.”
Cash is one factor, however recognition is one other, and discipline hockey has by no means waded into public consciousness as a result of the general public is aware of so little about it. Sports activities want stars; on this occasion, the game’s greatest American star wasn’t a part of the sport’s greatest stage in Paris. Nicely, she was, besides she was watching observe and swimming meets and posting photos for her 70,000 Instagram followers whereas the U.S. group scored 5 complete objectives in 5 video games.
A day stuffed with gymnastics and ready the 🐐 do her thanggg
Not pictured: product periods with Nike in regards to the future 👀👀 pic.twitter.com/7Bksq9PYAK
— Erin Matson (@erinmatsonn) August 6, 2024
Neither the outcomes nor the optics add up.
Although the ugliness of the 2024 course of remains to be contemporary, Matson says she absolutely intends to pursue a spot on the 2028 Olympic group, even when that requires upwards of two years taking part in for the nationwide group — “100%,” she mentioned — however as a corporation, USA Area Hockey should study its shortcomings on the worldwide stage.
“I feel there’s received to be adjustments (within the system),” Matson mentioned. “I received’t sugarcoat that. I don’t know what number of occasions we’ve received to fail for folks to say that, however like, , come on. So I feel there’s going to be. However there’s undoubtedly no query that I’d love to try this. I do know I may also help.”
Contemplating how fraught issues turned by means of the spring, some will surprise what’s rectifiable.
“You don’t have to love me,” Matson mentioned. “I’m not telling you to be my good friend. I don’t want any extra mates. I’ve help and I’m grateful. However why can’t we come to an understanding? Can we wish to win or have the most effective likelihood to win? I don’t imply simply right here on the Olympics. Our sport must win.
“I’m not somebody who lives in remorse, will get hung up on that, or holds grudges. I really consider if you wish to develop or progress, you possibly can’t be hung up on that stuff.”
Within the meantime, Matson will hold teaching. In what felt like a wink to her detractors, she made a notable rent this summer season. Romea Riccardo, who received 5 NCAA titles at UNC and graduated in December, was named as a full-time assistant coach on workers. Matson says Riccardo was to her what she was to Shelton. As soon as upon a time, the 2 have been freshmen collectively.
“The argument from the faculties that recruit in opposition to us is, ‘They’re a younger workers; they do not know what they’re doing,’” Matson mentioned. “And , I at all times joke — don’t folks know that we like a goal on our again by now? If you happen to simply keep quiet and don’t inform me what you’re considering, I’ll truly in all probability get much less motivated. However for those who hold telling me, oh, you’re too younger, oh, you possibly can’t do that and that — like, cease it, ‘trigger you’re solely hurting your self.”
The 2024 North Carolina season will begin subsequent week with the Tar Heels, once more, a nationwide title favourite. Matson says she is aware of perceptions. “That, oh, Erin is off gallivanting in Paris. Oh, Erin is out in LA on the ESPY Awards,” she mentioned. “However I don’t assume folks perceive that I understand how lucky I’m, and I exploit these alternatives and ask, how can we be higher, how can the game get greater?”
Possibly that’s doable. Or perhaps it’s fantasy.
(Illustration: Dan Goldfarb / The Athletic; photographs: Andrew Katsampes / ISI Pictures, Jamie Schwaberow / NCAA Pictures by way of Getty Photographs)