CARY, N.C. — Two days after the North Carolina Courage lost the NWSL Championship last year, Paul Riley penned an e-mail to his team. Riley had been named the league's coach of the year that day, but he knew his players were still reeling, physically and emotionally, from a bruising defeat to the Portland Thorns. It was a lengthy missive, replete with the sort of motivational soundbites and fortune cookie wisdom for which Riley is famous. Yet he also sensed, as Riley often instinctively does, what his team needed to read in that moment.

"Seven months ago we set out to be the best team we could be," Riley began. "The world will evaluate on their terms how we did, we will evaluate on ours." He later closed with this admonition: "If you want to go fast go alone, but if you want to go far go together."

The subject line of Riley's e-mail was "No Finish Line." The #NoFinishLine hashtag began appearing on Courage players' social media postings the same day. The slogan would become a mantra, a guiding principle whose deeper meaning is important only to the team it was designed to propel.

The 2018 NC Courage began preseason training in the bluster of winter. Their first match of the year was played four days after the start of spring. While other teams rested, the Courage spent a mid-summer break in their league schedule to play a tournament in balmy Miami. And last Saturday, the first day of fall, the Courage capped a record-setting season by winning the NWSL Championship, vanquishing Portland and exorcising the demons of a year ago on the Thorns' home ground.

Although Riley is fond of claiming his team doesn't focus on achievements and accomplishments, the Courage spent all of 2018 gradually staking their history-making claim. They won their second consecutive NWSL Shield. That mid-summer Miami tournament was the inaugural Women's International Champions Cup (ICC), where a Courage squad sharply depleted by the absence of six national team players defeated Europe's best. Along the way, the Courage bested a bevy of NWSL team records previously owned by the 2014 Seattle Reign, setting new season marks for most wins, fewest losses, most points, most goals scored, fewest goals allowed, most shutouts, and probably more.

Yet, the 2014 Reign didn't win the NWSL Championship - no NWSL Shield winner ever had. And while that Seattle team hosted both of their playoff games, North Carolina would enjoy no such luxury thanks to the machinations of god and man. Instead of a Courage coronation, the NWSL playoffs became a series of Herculean labors that began in May when the league announced that Portland would host the championship final, setting the stage for a possible Thorns home field advantage that eventually came to pass. Then, the Courage lost McCall Zerboni, their field general and midfield heartbeat, to an arm injury earlier this month on the eve of the regular season finale and post-season playoffs. Finally, any solace that the Courage would at least host their playoff semifinal was wrested away by the approach of Hurricane Florence, forcing the Courage to fly cross-country and face the Chicago Red Stars in Portland, OR on a Tuesday night, and then the hometown Thorns just four days later.

One of the most infamous moments of the 2017 NWSL final in Orlando, FL came less than two minutes into the match, when Portland's Tobin Heath tackled North Carolina fullback Taylor Smith, causing Smith to dislocate her shoulder and exit the game. After Smith was traded during the off-season as part of the deal to acquire Crystal Dunn, Riley brought in Merritt Mathias as his new right back. Mathias arrived in Carolina with a hard-nosed reputation, and I asked Riley at the time whether he was trying to infuse more steel into his back line, remembering the lessons of Orlando. Riley scoffed at the suggestion, but a revealing juxtaposition occurred just 30 seconds into Saturday's final in Portland when Mathias sought out Heath near midfield and clattered into her. Perhaps it was bit of payback by proxy. It was also Mathias' not-so-subtle way of announcing that this year's final was going to be different from the last.

Of the Courage's litany of achievements in 2018, defeating the Thorns four times this year is among the most improbable. But guided by their mad scientist of a manager, the Courage have defied conventions and expectations throughout this season for the ages. They traded away the league's reigning rookie of the year plus a U.S. national team outside back and somehow got better for the deal. Sam Mewis, their iron-women MVP from last year, started only 11 regular season games this year, yet the team's record improved. The team lost their best defensive midfielder to injury late in the season, but then didn't allow a single goal over the ensuing three matches to close out the 2018 campaign, including both post-season playoff games.

The Courage's core remains the cadre of 11 players Riley inherited or recruited to the Western New York Flash (the Courage's predecessor) when he assumed the team's coaching reins in 2016 and unexpectedly won the NWSL Championship - Riley branded them "the Bad News Bears." They include Jessica McDonald, this year's NWSL Championship MVP, who never spent more than a single season with her four previous NWSL teams before coming to Western New York and many times gave heavy consideration to retiring in order to seek a better livelihood for her and her young son.

Then there's Crystal Dunn, the soccer dynamo who left for England in 2017 after losing her joy for the NWSL. Dunn returned stateside after she was traded to the Courage last off-season, truncating a Champions League run with Chelsea for the sake of starting anew in North Carolina, the site of her former college glory.

There's Denise O'Sullivan, the spitfire Ireland international whose dreams of soccer success in America appeared dashed with the Houston Dash last year. She asked to be released, resigned to return to Europe, until the Courage claimed her off waivers and convinced her to give her American adventure one last go in North Carolina. O'Sullivan scored the game-winning goal in last year's semifinal, and this year her Courage teammates voted her their season MVP.

Kristen Hamilton has twice battled back from knee injuries (one suffered during last year's NWSL final) to chase her soccer dreams. Heather O'Reilly is an American soccer legend who returned to the NWSL mid-season just to join the Courage, knowing she likely wouldn't be a starter, because she saw something special in this squad. And spare a moment for Yuri Kawamura, who played a full 90 minutes in the June heat of Houston in her first match since tearing her right ACL last year, then tore her left ACL just three weeks later while battling European powerhouse Lyon to win the ICC.

Paul Riley is a product of his two homes: a quirky, extroverted Liverpudlian imbued with Long Island moxie. He says he and his team care more about the journey than the destination, that there's no finish line. They may truly feel that way. But this year, the North Carolina Courage found more than a destination. They fulfilled a destiny.

When Steve Malik purchased the Flash in early 2017 and rebranded them the NC Courage, he said his goal was that they'd become the best women's pro soccer team in the world. At the time, Malik's lofty aim smacked of the sort of puffery you'd expect to hear from a sports club owner about their new acquisition, an owner who also wants to sell tickets. This year, the Courage made good on Malik's aspiration, winning an unofficial season "treble" that included beating the world's best, setting records, and playing a relentless, entertaining brand of soccer along the way. Those fortunate enough to watch the Courage play saw the best team in the history of American women's professional soccer, and one of the greatest teams in the annals of U.S. soccer history. And if they say they're also the best in the world, who are we to argue?