Expecting To Win

As Maryland women’s soccer senior centerback Eden White sat in her Uber leaving her official visit to Maryland in the spring, she found herself close to tears while on the phone with her mom.

“I just did not want to leave,” White recalled. “It felt super natural hanging out with the girls, it felt natural being with everyone on the staff,” she added. “It’s really just like a family, with Meg as kind of the matriarch. Everyone on the staff is here to take care of you, to protect you, and to make you better on and off the field. I wanted to stay there.”

That feeling was fully reciprocated by second-year head coach Meghan Ryan Nemzer and her staff. As soon as they started recruiting the Santa Clara transfer, they knew they needed her in College Park. 

According to Nemzer, her advanced soccer pedigree combined with her intrinsic leadership traits made her a no-brainer pickup in the portal.

“Soccer-wise it was no question that we needed her to be a Terp, just with everything she can do on the field,” Nemzer said. “But we also try to be really intentional about what type of people we bring in. So we called some of our contacts and basically everyone said, ‘Look, she’s an amazing soccer player, but she’s even a better human being.’”

“It was clear that she’s all about ‘we over me’. And that’s a staple for us in our recruiting process,” Nemzer added. “She didn’t play much during her freshman or sophomore year at Santa Clara but she continued to push the starting centerbacks. She accepted her role, but wasn’t happy about it, and she strove for better. She made everyone better everyday.”

As Nemzer said, the Portland, Oregon, native played sparingly her first two seasons at Santa Clara. The same was said for much of her junior year, until a teammate’s unlucky injury paved the way for White to fill a starting role. 

And when the opportunity arose, White was ready for it. Despite not having seen a ton of playing time before that, her hard work everyday in practice and her ability to keep herself ready at all times allowed her to excel in her new starting position. 

“Everyone wants instant gratification nowadays,” Nemzer said. “There’s not a lot of people nowadays who want to roll up their sleeves, work hard and compete. Eden could have gone anywhere in the country because she wasn’t playing as much as she wanted, but she chose to stay, she wanted to be loyal, and those characteristics mean so much to me. She bet on herself, stayed the course and trusted the process. And what a reward she got for it.” 

What a reward indeed.

During that 2020 season, White rode her starting role all the way through the NCAA Tournament, playing every single minute of Santa Clara’s tournament run until she was eventually holding the NCAA Championship over her head. 

And as White stood grasping the trophy that so many college soccer players are unable to ever raise, she thought not of her new title as a National Champion, but instead of the up-and-down journey she preserved through to make it to that point.

“When people ask me about winning a National Championship, they think it’s all about the final minutes of that last game and holding the trophy,” White said. “But honestly, what I thought about the most is all the times I wanted to give up, all the doubts I had about it all. Pushing through all that was the most rewarding part of it for me and it made actually holding that trophy up so much sweeter.”

Today, White is a few months removed from her mother answering her phone call and telling her, yes, she did have to leave Maryland, but also, yes, she should commit and return to College Park as a Terp. 

And now that she’s all settled on campus, White has become a leader for the Maryland women’s soccer team. 

“She could have gone anywhere in the country, but she chose Maryland, and we couldn’t be more happy to have her here,” Nemzer said. “Her story and her resiliency is amazing and definitely something I’m stressing with the team.”

White’s various experiences across her four years at Santa Clara provide her with a unique perspective on what it means to be a good teammate that she’s been eager to share with her teammates.

“It’s super important and underrated that everyone on the team has a role, and that they understand and embrace those roles,” White said. “People can get hyper-fixated on starting and on playing all 90 minutes, but there’s so much to be said for the practice players who make the team so much better everyday and then turn around and don’t get those moments.”

For Nemzer, defined roles will be crucial for a team that brings in 10 highly-touted freshmen, the highest total in the Big Ten and the tenth most in the nation. 

“All these girls were the stars of their high school teams and played every single minute,” Nemzer said. “That’s not going to be the case this year for every one of them. Having Eden as an example and having her tell her story and living through it, I think that will help the youngsters understand that whether they get 90 minutes or nine minutes, it’s all equally important. I can say that, but I think when it comes from a peer, they listen a little more.”

Having those messages come from teammates instead of the coaches has been a big point of emphasis this offseason as the team has developed a culture galvanized by the players. 

“I’ve never been around a culture so player-driven,” Nemzer said. “And to compete for championships you need it to be player-driven, not coach-driven. And I could see that on our first day when we had individual meetings and it was like, ‘Big Ten here we come’. We have the culture set and we have the players here now where we can make competing for championships the norm.”

Those expectations are big, but White wouldn’t have it any other way. In fact, it’s one of the main things that drew her to Maryland. 

“We’re expecting to win—simply put,” White said. “We’ve had a lot of conversations about making a deep run in the tournament.”

Once again, White draws from her time at Santa Clara to help the team embrace accomplishing the unexpected. 

“No one expected Santa Clara to be in the tournament,” she recalled. “We had to have this underdog mentality. Just because we hadn’t been there before, didn’t mean we couldn’t get there. It’s not as much about talent as it is grit, determination, and the belief that you can do it.”

“Going into this year it’s all about that belief in each other and what we’re doing,” White added. “We believe we can win the Big Ten and that we can make a deep run in the tournament. There’s no reason it can’t be us.”