Carolina celebrates Class of 2025 with rousing Mia Hamm speech

Though Mia Hamm ’94 is widely considered the greatest women’s soccer player of all time, she couldn’t have won four NCAA titles, two World Cups and two Olympic gold medals all by herself.

As Hamm told Carolina’s Class of 2025 under the Kenan Stadium lights Saturday night, it takes a team working in sync to truly succeed.

“A team with 11 Mia Hamms will not win the World Cup or Olympic Gold,” Hamm said. “You need people with different skills, different strengths, different approaches to solving problems.”

The 2025 Spring Commencement ceremony honored 6,829 graduates – 4,358 undergraduates, 1,487 master’s degrees candidates and 962 students receiving doctoral degrees. And, as Hamm reminded the graduates, none of them made it to this day on their own.

“Each of you will receive a diploma with your name on it,” Hamm said. “But written in invisible ink all over that piece of paper are the names of everyone who helped you along the way.”

“And always and forever, you’ll be a part of this team. Our team. Graduates of the University of North Carolina,” Mia Hamm told graduates at Spring Commencement. (Jon Gardiner/UNC-Chapel Hill

Establishing roots

For the second straight year, Carolina held Spring Commencement at night, giving the ceremony a prime time feel and punctuating the celebration with fireworks.

Saturday also marked the second straight year Chancellor Lee H. Roberts presided over the ceremony. Roberts was named interim chancellor in January 2024 before being officially appointed as Carolina’s 13th chancellor on Aug. 9, 2024.

Addressing the Class of 2025, Roberts invited the graduates to think back to their first days on campus in Chapel Hill – how new and bewildering it all felt.

“But now, this campus and its landmarks belong to you,” Roberts told them. “You have memories in the library, in the Pit, rushing Franklin Street.”

Chancellor Lee H. Roberts speaks at Spring Commencement on May 10, 2025, at Kenan Stadium. (Jon Gardiner/UNC-Chapel Hill)

Roberts told the graduates about his own favorite landmark on campus. From his office window in South Building, Roberts has especially grown to admire the large white oak tree that embraces the Old Well.

“For as long as this University has existed, the trees here have stood as a reminder of the strength, patience and deep-rooted community that only the nation’s first public university could nurture,” Roberts said. “Now, you are taking the next step. Your future, like the branches of the trees on our campus, is reaching outward and upward, stretching toward new ideas, communities and fields.

“My challenge to you as you enter this new chapter of your life is this: remember your roots.”

Carolina celebrated more than 6,800 graduates at a nighttime ceremony for the second straight year. (Jon Gardiner/UNC-Chapel Hill)

The Carolina team

Three decades after her own Carolina graduation, Hamm certainly hasn’t forgotten her roots.

The Tar Heel sports legend told the Class of 2025 that she still remembers all of the emotions of graduation day – how homesick she already felt for Chapel Hill and how proud she felt to graduate from an institution with world-class academics and athletics.

“Yeah, we have a couple trophies and banners,” Hamm quipped, drawing a rousing applause from the crowd. Hamm’s former team, the Carolina women’s soccer team, recently hoisted its 23rd national championship trophy.

Hamm emphasized that the Class of 2025 is all part of the same team, a sentiment that senior class president Timothy McLendon echoed in his address to his peers.

“UNC is different: a place where friends become family, where heartache and hardship gives rise to unity, and where we all are wonderfully unique, but if you peek inside, you will see that we all bleed Carolina Blue,” McLendon said.

See more photos from Spring Commencement in this gallery.

As someone who starred on some of the greatest teams in sports history, Hamm shared four lessons in team-building that she learned along the way:

• Aim for unity, not uniformity.
• Carry the water: So many tasks need to get done, and most are not very glamorous or fun. Will you pitch in?
• Don’t miss out on the joy.
• Put the team first, and success will follow.

“And always and forever, you’ll be a part of this team. Our team. Graduates of the University of North Carolina,” Hamm said in her concluding remarks.

“This is our University. The University of the people. And from the first day you stepped on this campus until your last breath, you will always have a home here.”