"This is horses--t."
Believe it or not, this was the advice of the women's team's good luck charm: A life-sized cut-out of the women's head coach, Gail Goestenkors.
The picture was a gift from a friend of Goestenkors for her 40th birthday--or as Vicki Krapohl said, her "second 20th birthday"--which she celebrated Feb. 26.
"It was just a joke," Goestenkors said. "My friends took it around town and had pictures made with it in various places here and Chapel Hill."
Realizing how humorous this present was, the Naismith Women's Coach of the Year decided to play a joke on her team.
"I brought it into the locker room to scare some of the players because it's about my size," Goestenkors said jokingly. "I put it in the showers."
Although it obviously scared the players when they first encountered the cardboard cut-out, they knew they had found this season's humorous motif.
But such is an excellent example of how Goestenkors has kept the pressures of this season--the most intense in the program's history--as far out of the minds of her players as possible. This has been particularly important considering Goestenkors' team is very young, with five freshmen and just two seniors in the lineup.
The players have had great fun with the cut-out, bringing it to the Streets of Southpoint
"We took it to the mall to see if people knew her," Krapohl said. "One person thought she was [University of North Carolina women's head coach] Sylvia Hatchell. Most people knew who she was; we were impressed. We had pictures made of Coach G."
Junior Wynter Whitley has grown particularly fond of the cut-out, taking care of the cardboard during away trips.
"It's mainly Wynter that keeps it and takes care of it," junior forward Alana Beard said.
The cut-out is taken to every road game, with the life-sized picture even having credentials for the team's flights. When the players rest in the hotels, the good-luck charm stays mostly with Whitley and senior forward Michele Matyasovsky.
For home and away games, the cut-out is placed next to a dry-erase board, where a word balloon is made to say one of Goestenkors' favorite phrases.
"'Attention to detail' was one of the first things that it said," Goestenkors said. "They had it saying things I would have been saying to them."
Alana Beard used a different example.
"'This is horses--t,'" she said. "It's one of her favorite phrases."
The cut-out has actually instituted some luck, as the only game without the life-sized picture was the sluggish 66-48 win over Georgia State in the first round.
The cut-out replaces last season's good luck charm: Homey, a freeze-dried hampster who has been dead for seven to eight years. Homey became a fixture for the team when Sheana Mosch brought in her dead pet for show and tell, an annual occurrence that the team does to bond.
"Homey's out [for this year]," Krapohl said. "It started at show and tell. It's just something Coach G does. We bring something from our past."
Goestenkors enjoys the humorous good-luck charms, admitting that she likes to joke around with her team.
"I love to laugh with my players," she said.
In addition to Goestenkors' cut-out, the Blue Devils have adopted another tradition this season: Mosch's greeting of Duke's starting players after being announced in the pre-game introductions. Mosch always leaps high into the air and greets each player with a chest bump to get the game off on the right foot.
The team will need all the luck it can find for the Final Four. If Duke is to become the national champions, it will in all likelihood have to face both Tennessee and Connecticut, women's college basketball's two greatest dynasties. But for now, the cut-out is just to be used to ease the pressure on the team.
"It's just something to lighten the mood," Mosch said.
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