DTH Columns

Oct. 6, 2004 — Media gloss over Tarpley's major injury

Lindsay Tarpley broke her leg last week.

If you didn't know, you're forgiven — between Lexis-Nexis and the online archives of The (Durham) Herald-Sun, The (Raleigh) News & Observer and The Charlotte Observer, there's a grand total of nine articles that mentioned Tarpley's name last week.

Four of them are from the N&O, two of which mention the injury in passing. The other five articles consist of three paragraph-long briefs, a passing mention and the lead for a Heather O'Reilly feature.

And just one of the nine wholly dealt with the injury's impact on the team.

It's almost as if Tarpley didn't lead an undefeated national champion in scoring — a feat that made her a consensus All-American and earned her national Player of the Year honors from four leading soccer publications last year.

If this was Darian Durant — key cog to the football team's success — the news would be passed around the horn quicker than Tinker-to-Evers-to-Chance.

Women's soccer coach Anson Dorrance didn't have any issue with the media coverage, saying that the doctors at Virginia Tech were very forward about the injury and that all of the interested media found out everything they wanted to know.

"There's a circle of people in the country that are concerned with women's soccer," O'Reilly said. "And those are the people that know about Lindsay's injury."

But the question remains: why wasn't there more interest?

In addition to her collegiate accolade, Tarpley is a gold medalist and scored the first of the U.S. team's two goals in the gold-medal game.

This was less than two months ago. Tarpley played on the world stage then, but she is unable to break into the national news.

There's something inherently backwards about that equation.

But Tarpley doesn't believe that she warrants national attention — yet.

"I've got a lot to work on," she readily admits. "That's the main reason I came to UNC. Every day I can get better and learn from this experience."

As of now, that experience won't involve much except working hard to come back.

"It's time for her to be more of a motivator and a player on the sidelines we can look to for inspiration, because she's that type of player, that typed of person," O'Reilly said. "It's a reminder that you can't take your health for granted, and you have to play every game like it's your last.

"That's what she did, and that's why she's going to be back in a few weeks and helping us then."

That comeback is one that Dorrance is surely anticipating, as he acknowledged the difficulties of losing a player of Tarpley's caliber.

While Dorrance tries players in new roles to compensate, Tarpley is trying to downplay her importance to the team.

"We've got a strong team with a lot of talented players who will be able to regroup," Tarpley said. "I don't think that losing any one player is going to make a big difference."

When asked to hypothesize about the reaction there would be if Mia Hamm had suffered a similar injury during her time at UNC, Dorrance deflected the question, saying that Hamm was lucky enough to avoid such an injury.

Instead, he repeatedly emphasized that, as good as Tarpley already is, we're going to find out a lot more about her while she deals with the recoverty process.

"I respect her even more now than I did before," Dorrance said.

We all should.