By Pat Welter

“I’m sixty-eight years old, holy mackerel,” Asha Means said.

The UNC senior soccer captain is a vocal leader without a filter at Tar Heels practice.

“Everything I think I basically say,” Means said in an interview with WRAL. “I appreciate that I’m with a group of people that are okay with that because that’s very rare that everyone accepts whatever you say no matter the tone, no matter the context.”

“The faster I run, the faster it’s over,” Means said before she did a sprinting drill to start practice. “Why do I feel like I gained forty pounds in one night,” she laughed as she finished.

She doesn’t take herself too seriously, but getting to this point was all business, in fact she spoke it into existence.

“I told my parents when I was eight years old after my first ever soccer camp that I was going to play soccer here,” Means said. “They were like yeah right.”

Means grew up in the Charlotte area, you could say playing soccer at Chapel Hill was predestined. Both her parents were UNC athletes too.

“For me it was the field and the guys,” Natrone Means said. “For [my wife] it was dancing on the field with the girls, so I think we definitely bonded.”

Asha’s father Natrone is an offensive analyst on the UNC football coaching staff, but Tar Heel fans remember him best as one of the most prolific running backs in school history. Natrone played under Mack Brown at UNC in the early 1990s.  He was a two-time first team All-ACC selection and finished his career with 3,074 rushing yards and 34 touchdowns on 605 attempts.  He was drafted by the San Diego Chargers in 1993.  He was a 1994 Pro Bowl selection after leading the team to Super Bowl XXIX versus the San Francisco 49ers.

“Never saw ‘big Nate’ on the field but I’ve seen every highlight video there is to exist,” Asha said. “I must give him credit where credit is due, no man of that size should be able to move that fast.”

“I’ve tried my best to let her sports experience be her own,” Natrone said. “I really don’t know if she would listen to me if I would have told her what to do anyway. I think Asha has been one from an early age once she sets her mind to task she definitely completes it and gets it done.”

By the age of ten Asha was all in on soccer, but before that she danced too, just like her mom Shonda Means, who was on the dance team at UNC. Shonda went on to cheer for both the Carolina Panthers and Charlotte Hornets.

“Gameday was definitely an experience,” Shonda said. “Lot of great memories there, I got to witness [Natrone] doing a lot of great things on the football field and remember all the good times I had with the dance team. At the time we were part of the band which was great because we were out on the field at halftime and then we would cheer in the stands.”

You could say Asha got the best of both.

“Asha learned to run fast from this guy right here,” Shonda said as she pointed to Natrone. “Just her competitive nature was definitely from him.”

“I think her sense of humor comes from me,” Natrone said. “Her looks and her smarts come from mom.”

“Ahh thank you,” Shonda laughed.

They’ve come a long way since meeting as freshman on campus, even if the story is slightly different depending on who tells it.

“We shared a class freshman year English,” Shonda started. “This is back before the times of everybody having a cell phone, so we had a wall phone with the chord and the phone rang a few times and [my roomate] kept saying ‘I don’t think he’s calling to get the assignment, I think he’s hoping you answer the phone’.”

“We were introduced by one of my friends,” Natrone said. “Out at a social event one night and I saw her standing over there. I think I had seen her, I know I had seen her before. I and one of my friends go over and manufacture an introduction.”

All these years later, they are proud parents who still bleed Carolina blue.

“We are proud of Asha and all of her accomplishments,” Natrone said. “The fact she was able to come to UNC is something she said she wanted to do from a young age and get a chance to compete at what we believe is the highest level of soccer at one of it not the best program in the country. As a parent you can’t help but be proud.”

“There’s just something to say about the Carolina spirit and not everyone understands it,” Asha said. “You don’t understand it unless you’ve been through it or actually live it. Both of them have been through it and live it. That’s something I’m grateful I get from them because everything we do you do your best at it.”

Source: wralsportsfan.com