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Transcript on deposit at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Library
Citation of this interview should be as follows:
“Interview L-0054, in
the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern Historical
Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill”
Anson Dorrance was born in Bombay, India, and spent his boyhood in places like Singapore and Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, but every three years his family spent three months in Lewisburg, North Carolina, Dorrance's father's hometown. These ties to North Carolina eventually brought Dorrance to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where after a successful career as a soccer player, he became coach of the men's soccer team. Dorrance enjoyed a fruitful eleven years as men's coach, but he has earned lasting acclaim as the coach of the women's team. Since 1979, he has put together a remarkable record of success (at the time of this 1991 interview, his teams had won nine national championships). He did so in part because of his attention to the complexities of coaching women, whose thinking and speaking styles he believes differ from those of men. Dorrance believes that his appreciation of these differences, most important of which might be what he sees as discomfort with competition in women, allowed him to teach his athletes to embrace competitive excellence. Dorrance's observations about the complex relationships between female athletes—and between female athletes and their coach—are at the heart of this interview. Dorrance also describes the birth and development of the women's soccer team at UNC, changes in attitudes toward female athletes, and his own athletic career. Researchers interested in women in sports, coaching or leadership strategies, and gender relationships will find a great deal of material in this interview.
University of North Carolina women's soccer coach Anson Dorrance reflects on his teams' remarkable successes and his career as a male coach of a women's team.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
I guess where I'd like to start is with you telling me a little bit about your background; how you got into soccer.
Okay. I was raised overseas. I was born in Bombay, India and every three years we moved; from Bombay to Calcutta to Nairobi to Adis Abu to Singapore to Brussels. Then I went to a boarding school in Switzerland before I came to college. And of course, being raised internationally, I was exposed to the game. But frankly, I learned how to play it here in Chapel Hill. It's funny. When I was a young coach, that pedigree of having lived all over the world gave me a kind of credibility that's necessary, since I don't think I was that secure as a coach. But we were in Haiti recently and the press asked me basically, the same kind of question. What was my background? And I went through that litany of places that I've lived, and the team that we had down there, the national team, was so extraordinary, they all nodded knowingly assuming that was where I learned how to play. And then I finished that review of where I'd lived with, "And I learned to play soccer in Chapel Hill, North Carolina." It sort of stunned them, but it's true. When I went to school here I played for Marvin Allen. I really learned a lot about the game, just by playing it here collegiately and through him. And then, since college, from coaching courses in the United States I guess the development of my soccer aptitude was purely American. Or my appreciation for its international impact was certainly from being raised abroad.
How did you end up in Chapel Hill?
This is my home state. Every three years the company that my father
worked for would give him a three month home leave and we'd spend it in
Lewisburg, North Carolina, on a farm that my grandparents ran; a tobacco
farm. They also had some cotton and hogs and so every three years we'd
go back there and dry and
But your dad was in the oil business?
Yes. He worked originally for Standard Oil in New Jersey and then when
that split into Exxon and Mobile, he went with Mobile. And then he
worked for
Were you here all four years?
No. My first semester I went to St. Mary's University in San Antonio,
Texas. The high school I went to in Switzerland was a
Did playing soccer have anything to do with your decision to go to school here?
No. I came to school here because I was returning home, basically, and because it was a school where the sons of my father's lawyers went and they recommended it. The Blackburns were in school here. Basically, they were my best friends through undergraduate life and I still see George Blackburn pretty regularly. It was through their recommendation that I applied to this school. And it was actually through their assistance that I was admitted mid-year, because that's an unlikely scenario for an out-of-state student to be admitted mid-year.
But you did end up playing here?
Yes. I came here and I played all sports. The prep school I went to, only twenty people graduated and it was the sort of school where if you were the least bit athletic you played all the sports. So, when I came here, actually, I played a lot of intramurals for Teague and loved it; played every sport there was. And actually, we started an intramural dynasty with Teague. It lasted, I think, about fifteen or twenty years. That was the first year they won. They won every year I was there and I think they've won almost every year since, the campus intramural championship. And then I tried out for the soccer team the following fall because I had transferred here as a mid-semester freshman, so I was here in the spring semester. Couldn't compete because the NCAA rules prevented a transfer from playing immediately. So I spent that year practicing with the soccer team, but also playing on the rugby club here following the soccer practice, and then every other intramural sport I could. And so my education here certainly was to a degree academic, but it was to a large degree athletic.
Was your experience here something that you want your current players to have something like it?
Yes. It's really funny because of the success our teams have had I get to
do a lot of speaking engagements and I guess people are always surprised
at the way I treat athletics, because I really don't think it's anything
particularly earth shattering or viable to any great degree. And I try
to sell my athletes on that because if we lose, no one dies and if we
win, we're not any closer to world peace. And so we try to put it in
How did you end up becoming the men's soccer coach?
Well, it was a sort of bizarre scenario. I played here from 1971 through
'73. I played three seasons here; the fall of '71, '72 and '73. And the
teams I've played for were regionally competitive teams. We weren't
national powerhouses. And one reason we weren't is the coach I played
for followed a philosophy
Can you tell me a little bit about the circumstances leading up to the women's varsity team being formed?
I had nothing to do with the formation of the varsity club on campus.
There was a group of very aggressive and ambitious young women who
wanted to play collegiate varsity soccer and what they did is, without
my assistance, they approached the athletic director on their own and
basically petitioned for varsity status. And they did a great job
because the athletic director said, "Well, you know, we'll certainly
consider it, but there are certain things you have to do to sort of get
your ducks in a row." And one was to make sure all the players who were
competing in the club were eligible undergraduates. So, we wanted them
to try and follow the NCAA regulations to any degree they could in
preparation for the game varsity status. He asked them to play a
competitive schedule and they did all these things and put it all
together. And the coach at the time was a gentleman named Mike Byers. I
think originally, the girls were interested in petitioning to have a
varsity, but also to ask him to be the head coach, which is
It sounds so unlikely to me that this group of students could just become a varsity team; easy almost. Did it have to do with the timing of it?
I don't understand either. I mean, the credit that I give Bill Coby is
consistent because I really think he had a great vision because there
was no reason for him to start a women's varsity here. Women's soccer
wasn't that popular in the state. It really wasn't that popular in the
region. I mean the region is still catching up with the rest of the
country. And I give him great credit because he put us in a position
where we haven't looked back. And the analogy I use is by having a
varsity here before anyone else did in the region; it was like a
sprinter in a 100-yard-dash being given a twenty-yard head start.
Basically, we've been in that position ever since. I think my function
as a coach has been, "Let no one catch us." And he just put us in a
remarkable position because whenever a young soccer player in our region
or even in the Northeast was considering schools, ours had to be one to
consider. The recruiting class of 1981, I think, was an incredible
class. We had two recruiting classes before that. The one in 1979 was a
very thin class because we established the varsity in the late spring,
so I was able to recruit only a couple of players, one from North
Carolina and one from Dallas, Texas, who became a four-year captain for
me by the name of Janet Raeford. And one named Emily Scruggs from
Rochester, New York. So, with those three players, and Heinz. I don't
remember her first name off hand. But those three were outstanding
collegiate players and we had a great first season, but most of our
victories were against clubs and the competition wasn't that high. We
used to play a high school age select team from northern Virginia to
supplement our schedule. And almost
What happened when these new players came in and displaced the old ones?
Very traumatic. The chemistry on those first several teams was very bad.
It was very bad for a thousand reasons. First of all, recruiting a group
like that and bringing them in displacing the group that had started
would be cathartic anyway. But then you've got a group that was
displaced that basically started the club and lobbied to establish it
here. And basically the reason they did all these things even though we
all have a kind of pioneer spirit, they basically did it so they could
play and get full University support and all this sort of thing. So when
these new kids came on it was very clear they were better. It wasn't an
issue of "I'm better than this player." No, these players were clearly
national caliber players. But it was a
That's interesting. Was this the first time you'd coached females?
Yes. And it was an absolute nightmare. I think the first couple of years
I was coaching the women's team, it wasn't just a question of the new
players coming in displacing the old ones. It caused our problems. Or
that these girls were very headstrong. I think I was part of the problem
as well, because I was coaching under the early eighties assumption that
women wanted to be treated like men and I followed all the dictates of
the feminist literature and it was an absolute disaster. I guess in
theory, at least, the avant garde theory of feminism is men and women
are the same and they should be treated the same. But I've learned since
that men and women are completely different and should be treated
completely differently. I'm certainly in favor of equality, but to stand
up and say, "We're different. We should be treated the same as a
result," is absurd. And the nice thing about the athletic arena is I
don't have to justify this with any sort of genetic review of you know,
the brains of men and women or the social review of you know, how
environment dictates behavior. My arena is winning and losing and I
learned how to win with women and it wasn't by treating them as men.
I'm interested in how you try to institute that in practice. You mentioned the one thing: the beginning of the week, one way and then…
Well, the way we can't do it is to, I guess, constantly review what's
going on. We call it keeping score. In fact, in clinics we call keeping
score training the "female psychological dimension." And the way we do
it is every part of every practice, everything's recorded, but it's not
reviewed because I think if we recorded it and then reviewed it
immediately, there would be a lot of animosities between all the
players. All we do is record it, so what the girls can sense is going on
every time they do anything, every time they shoot a ball is it's
recorded whether or not it goes in. And if they're playing a 5-B-5 team,
whether or not their team wins or loses, we record it. Anytime we do a
heading duel between two players, who wins the heading duel is recorded.
We play a lot of one on one competition between the girls. All that is
recorded. So what they get a sense of is we encourage the winning. We
talk about it all the time, but we don't expose winners and losers. And
so, even though it's constantly discussed about bearing your match up,
we always talk about, you know, on this one on one match up we're going
to play a series of games right here and one of you is going to crack
and we want you to be the one cracking the other person. Whoever loses
in these duels has been psychologically buried by their opponent. And
there's a tremendous sort of fear,
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
… that we develop over the course of four years, is almost every freshman that comes in is incredibly intimidated by this arena. And their freshman years are almost always nightmares. Even if they're successful athletically on the field, it's an incredibly emotionally cathartic year because they're foreign to this arena and they're just not used to it. It takes them four years to really adjust to accept the fact that it's okay to bury each other and that it shouldn't jeopardize relationships, and it's going to make us stronger and more competitive and better. And so those are hard challenges in developing that quality in women.
I do a lot of reading in these areas because this is becoming very
topical. Carol Gilligan treats it to a lesser degree in some of her
stuff. In fact, it was really funny, when I first got married, my wife's
partner gave me a book to read that she said really helped her in her
relationship with her husband. It was In A Different
Voice by Carol Gilligan and it was really interesting. The thing I
learned from that book about relationships is males really objectify
absolutely everything. If your wife comes home from a hard day at work
and she basically starts complaining about her boss, what I used to do
is I used to, basically, be objective and explain to M'Liss why her boss
would do things in that fashion. And so, what she would feel is that I
was siding with her boss and that I had absolutely no empathy for her
position. It was really difficult for her to deal with me being like
that. After reading that book I completely changed, because if your wife
Ms. magazine and those sorts of
things to what I was seeing was actually happening with the players I
was coaching. And it was a transformation about understanding, that men
and women don't think the same. In fact, things I've read since have
been really interesting as well. Another a book that's been out maybe a
couple of months is called, You Just Don't Understand.
And the contention of this book, and it's a real good one, is that men
and women speak a completely different language. And it's so true. The
more I read this book, so many light bulbs are going off in my head that
I guess the story in the intro sort of captures this book. A man and a
woman are driving down the highway together and the man's driving. The
woman says to the man, "Aren't you thirsty? Wouldn't you like to pull
over?" The man's not thirsty and says, "No," and he keeps driving, which
is exactly the way I would Sports Illustrated article about, you
know, the amount of times I'm getting attacked for saying men and women
are different and they should be treated differently. And of course, the
reaction that anyone has to that sort of statement is, you know, it's a
form of sexism. And in a way, I guess it is if Are We Winning
Yet? And it's a great book because what it asks is, "Is there
something unique that women can contribute in athletics?" And I think
there is and I don't think the women figured out what it was yet, but it
was great for her to ask the question. She implied there were areas
where women can contribute to the growth of athletics. And also, areas
where men might be taking women where they might not want to go on
athletics, which causes me to think about my emphasis on competing and
winning, because that isn't the same kind of emphasis that women would
naturally bring into athletics. So, that's sort of the question, you
know, how much my direction has for athletics or for women. And I'm
hoping it does. I am hoping what it will do for women is give them, I
guess, an appreciation for competitive excellence, because you can't
really become excellent in a recreational arena. And I
How do you observe that the relationships are important on the team? I understand how you stress the competition on the field and that that's okay. How do you then take the other side of that? What's important to them?
Well, what we do as much as we can is I always try to share stories about
different women on the team doing things for other women on the team. We
try to create an atmosphere of rewarding the unique environments where
it happens. And it happens enough for us to constantly talk about it.
The way I guess we officially talk about it is, we talk about it during
a game; not all eleven players are going to play their best. I mean,
there are going to be some games where one player is going to play
poorly. So it's our function as a team to make sure we carry her. And
what I share with them about team athletics that I prefer to individual
athletics is team athletics, in my opinion, is all about basically
carrying the ones that aren't playing as well that day, because some
day, they will eventually carry you. And that's a philosophy we try to
carry over into sort of everything. Everyone has a function. You know,
the
I've heard that your teams are pretty close. Is that true?
Yes and we try to foster that, although it's a never-ending struggle
because in a bizarre sort of way, I think women have a tremendous
capacity for affection for each other, but by the same token, they have
a tremendous sensitivity about, I guess, everyone's weaknesses. Women's
weaknesses are reviewed more by women among themselves about each other
than men's weaknesses are reviewed about themselves. And in a way, the
more threatening the woman is, the more critical everyone is of her. And
so the women that are threatening, obviously, are the ones who get the
most attention, the one that's the star or something. And so being a
star on a women's team is a very, very difficult position for her to be
in because obviously she wants to be the
At some point, a couple of years ago, you came to be just the women's coach. What went into that decision?
Two years ago. Well, coaching two teams is a nightmare. It's just too
much work and it was a difficult position for me to be in. Obviously, I
loved it at first because it made me a full-time coach. And initially,
it was great. It was almost like a vacation because dropping out of law
school and just coaching two teams was a wonderful sort of respite, but
because we were very
That's interesting. I imagine there aren't too many people that have made that same decision.
Actually, a lot of the coaches that coach both end up coaching the women
out of choice. Just because it's a much more rewarding experience. And
what you realize after a while is, you know, obviously, the profile of
women's athletics isn't that of the men, but even to a degree, that is
positive. I mean, you don't want your job constantly reviewed in the
press and the pressure from that. And if you follow the athletic
literature, I mean, top coaches are quitting all the time just because
it's just not worth the abuse. There's very little exposure really in
You were saying the pressure is different in women's sports; the expectation to win, I guess, or whether people will even notice. How have you felt the support of the community, the students has been?
It's been very good. But it's not the sort of thing that we've ever
really worried about. The media likes to bring it up all the time
because for a while there, no one came to watch us play. But it didn't
matter. They tried to upset us with these questions. The press would
say, "You know Anson, you got this team but no one comes to watch you
play." And I kept telling them, "I don't care and neither do the girls."
When the girls started playing soccer, no one was watching them and
they're not continuing to play because someone comes to watch them. They
play because they enjoy playing. And so, we're not caught up in some of
the status stigma that men are, which might be another major difference
between men and women's athletics. I mean, men play for all sorts of
reasons, certainly because it was
Do you think it's going to get to the point where it's popular and paid attention to?
I'm not sure. Women's tennis has reached that point and I don't know why.
But that's about it. Gymnastics. I don't know why either. Maybe in
gymnastics it might still be sort of a
I guess soccer would not be a sport that one would immediately think of as feminine. And certainly you're encouraging the players to be extremely aggressive. I've seen them play and they're incredibly tough. Is that a concern for you? Is it ever a concern for the players?
I think by the time I get the players it's not a concern anymore. They
went through that catharsis in high school when they were either being
shunned or excoriated for being aggressive. So, by the time I get them
that's not a psychological issue anymore for me. That's one of those
junior high issues when, you know, puberty starts to kick in and they
start to realize maybe who they are and what direction they are going
in. Those are issues that maybe junior high coaches and high school
coaches have to deal with. I don't, because
And I've seen in the news recently, I think it was a woman basketball coach, sort of letting out the word that she would not recruit lesbians.
Yeah, was that at Penn or Penn State?
I think one of those.
Yes. I heard that on tour. And that's very clever recruiting because what
you're recruiting, you're not really recruiting the player, you're
recruiting the parents. And obviously, lesbianism isn't something we
address. I mean, we understand it's a part of women's athletics and you
know, the lesbians I've had on my teams have been great; great players,
great for chemistry, very positive role models in my opinion, but you
can never come out and make that sort of statement publicly because you
would be destroyed by it. I mean, all the religious zealots out there
would make mincemeat of you. I was reading in the paper today the
Presbyterians, I guess, won't push through this new stance on premarital
sex and bringing in gay and lesbian preachers. Now, I don't know
anything about the Presbyterian sect except this didn't go through. And
I'm sure the reason it didn't go through isn't that it wasn't a positive
step. It's just that the public reaction would be so negative toward
their church that they would suffer as a result.
Yes.
Okay. All parents of young athletes are aggressive and have this fear that their daughters are gay or are going to be. And I think this is a way to sort of let the parents know, "If you send me your daughter, I'll convert her," as if such a thing is possible, which is absurd. Everything I've read about it and my understanding now is I think your sexuality is on a continuum from rampant heterosexuality to rampant homosexuality with bisexuality being in the middle and you're dropped somewhere on the continuum. And to a degree, your environment takes you in one direction or another, but if it takes you in a direction away from your natural genetic predisposition, you're not going to be comfortable. And so, in a way, if these parents of this girl that's sort of on the border or maybe even a bit gay, is sent to this school to be converted into being a heterosexual, I think you're doing her a disservice if she spends her whole life confused and unfulfilled and you know, nervous. And so, I don't know whether or not that's necessarily a good thing. But it's great recruiting. I mean, it's clever. She's going to get a lot of good players and she's going to win over parents who have this fear watching their daughter grow up and become a lesbian, you know. "Oh, gosh, she's a lesbian because we let her play softball last summer," or something. "Oh, God, it's our fault." So I think that's clever in one perspective, but I think it's dishonest from another. I don't think that coach has an understanding about, I don't know what it's called. Gender predisposition? I don't know what the formal term is, but I think she's missing the boat.
I guess one advantage that you have being a male coach is that you don't have to deal with, "Is the coach a lesbian?"
Yes, but then you've got the other thing which I think is even worse. I think the greatest challenge for men coaching young women is, you know, there's a sexual line you can't cross, and it's crossed constantly because let's face it. A lot of the girls that come in, especially into a high visibility place like this have a tremendous respect for you. And you know, these mentor relationships, they're bent out of shape to a degree anyway. It would be an environment that would be easy to exploit and so if you don't have that as a stigma, you've still got the other thing that is something you've got to be very careful about. I think one of the worst things about men coaching women is that line that's crossed. It's not so much you have to be careful, but you do. And it's not one sided. It's not just coming coach to player. So, you know, there are issues you've got to deal with from that perspective that, obviously, the female coach wouldn't have to deal with.
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
[START OF TAPE 2, SIDE A]
Well, I guess another image that I think of when I think of soccer is a fairly white image. Have you had black female players yet?
Yes. We've had more black male players, but we have had two black female players. It is basically, an upper-middle-class white game. The blacks don't play it. There are areas in the country where they do. The only area I can think of off-hand is Columbia, Maryland. There is an upper-middle-class black population there and all the kids play soccer. That's where one of the two black kids that I've coached on the women's side have come from. But that's more a demographic thing than a racial statement because as the blacks move into the suburbs they are going to be playing the game and their daughters will be playing the game. And also, I think it's sort of a demographic of what the blacks like to play because I think their prestige is still tied up in basketball and track and field. And so, if there's a great young girl athlete and she's black, her role models are going to be you know, Kersey and the black basketball players. Michael Jordan is even her role model even though Michael Jordan is male because that's her culture. And so, I think her tendency, if she is a great athlete and living in the suburbs, it's still possible to go in that direction. I think as we become more integrated in that socioeconomic classification, we're going to have more black women playing.
Is soccer internationally an upper-class sport or is that just here?
No, actually, internationally, in some countries, it's a lower-class sport. In England it is. The upper class play rugby and cricket. Internationally, soccer for women is a cultural statement. The more liberated the country is and the more liberal it is in its attitude towards women, the more likely it is to have women soccer players. For example, the further north you go in Europe, the better the soccer gets. The Scandinavians have some of the best teams in the world; Norway, Sweden and Denmark are outstanding. Germany's very good. And then the further you go south, the teams get worse. Spain is the worst, for example. And then Africa, of course, is a nightmare. And the Middle East is a nightmare. So, based on how women are treated will dictate the level of their soccer program.
That's interesting. What happens to these top players who come here? Is there anything for them to do with their soccer ability after they've graduated?
The only thing they can really do to pursue soccer is to end up coaching.
A lot of them do. It's really funny, though. Some of the really talented
people had the same reaction I did at first. I didn't really take this
profession that seriously at first, because I don't think it's a very
serious profession. And so, someone who has a lot of talent, I think,
among our women didn't really look at it first like it was a really
serious profession to pursue. And yet, some of them have gotten involved
in it and they love it. I mean, it's almost natural because I was
thinking back to my attraction, the way I ended up in it. All my
memories about soccer are so positive,
I guess one of the things I was disappointed to see was one of the few times you've had national publicity was about that "napalm" quote. Can you tell me a little bit about what that was about?
Yes. Marcia McDermott is actually, one of the women I was referring to as
someone that could literally have done anything; very, very bright
articulate woman. She sort of wrestled with soccer because just like me,
she didn't really consider it a worthy profession. And she's pursuing a
graduate degree in English while she's coaching at the University of
Arkansas. I really liked her because she was bright and witty. We were
bantering back and forth in some practice or actually, before games
about the fact that we knew we were going to win. And at the time, I
guess, the movie "Apocalypse Now" was popular. There was a great scene
in "Apocalypse Now" about this group of men assembling on a hill and
they are watching napalm being sprayed all over the jungle in front of
them. And one of them turns to the other one and says, "Can you smell
that napalm?" "Yeah, I can. It smells like victory." In other words,
whenever the American troops in Vietnam would put napalm down on
anything, it would ensure a victory. And so the analogy we used was that
that was a feeling; there was a smell in the air that we knew we were
going to win. The sort of teams we had then, we knew we were going to
win. We were overwhelming favorites. And you know, in athletics, there's
always tremendous analogy between warfare and athletics. I mean, it's
gone on since the beginning of recorded time. And so, it wasn't a new
analogy. I mean, Sports Illustrated as one of the worst cheers
of the year. That was our first exposure in Sports
Illustrated. I can't remember how it went in Sports Illustrated but it was in one of those little sections
early in the magazine that said something like, "The most morbid cheer
of the year." And then there was even a cartoon in Sporting
News and they had the grim reaper there with his scythe, you
know, with skulls all over a soccer field and had the quote up there,
you know, and had my name and the team's name up there. So it really got
a negative run of press. And then in the bizarrest of ironies, soon
after that we started getting mail from veterans. They thought it was
wonderful. They thought that for every other war that's occurred, there
have been positive sports analogies to it. And
I'm going to interview Marcia, too, for this project.
Oh, good. So how do you know Marcia?
She was in one of my classes.
What happened very early is we coached this team and recruited this team with a very high profile mentality. My background as a coach was coaching the men's team in the most competitive conference in the country. And when I was given the women's team I literally decided that I wasn't going to treat them any differently from the men in terms of time commitment or resources commitment to what extent I could. And so, we took the work ethic that made our men's team competitive in the Atlantic Coast Conference, which is the toughest conference to compete in in the country, and used that same work ethic to recruit the women. So what was happening, on Monday nights I would call men from all over the United States and on Wednesday nights I'd call women. Letters would go out to men on Tuesday and would go out to women on Thursday. So the women got a recruiting deluge and interest that was like the men. With a lot of people that started coaching women, their background wasn't really a high profile men's program, so they didn't bring the same kind of work ethic in.
Just a couple more questions.
No problem.
So you think having the program treated so seriously from the beginning…
Yes, and then what happened was we had a lot of good kinds of success,
not just winning on the field. The players really liked it here. And
it's interesting. Again, when you're coaching women and recruiting
women, what's as important as anything else is if they like it here; if
they like the coach, if they like the girls. And these are things I also
learned very early, that even the recruiting is different for men and
women. And I applied my understanding of women and recruiting early, and
so my contacts were always very personal. I had the girls recruit a lot
because that made an enormous difference. I remember one year I was
losing a player and I couldn't figure out why and I did a change of
tactics. I started having my girls recruit her and we won her over and
ever since, we've had the girls do a lot of the recruiting. And I
understand how important the visit is now for women. With the men, the
visit is important, but there are so many other factors; the amount of
scholarship money you're giving them, the profile of your program, the
sort of reputation you have. I mean, all these things are more important
for them. For the women, it's how they perceive the team to get along,
how they get along with people on their recruiting trip, if they can
sense it and be accepted as people, if they can get a sense that "I'll
be comfortable on this campus." And the nice thing about this campus is
this is a wonderful campus for women. It's very social, it's very
beautiful and I just think it's a great recruiting environment
But surely, everybody is gunning for you.
There are definite challenges to staying on top. But also, I think it
gets back to another disparity between men and women in athletics. One
is men sort of enjoy the underdog role. It motivates them. And so, if a
men's team has been on top and they're playing with another bunch of men
that are underdogs or considered underdogs, there's an incredible surge
of adrenalin among those underdog men to beat the guy on top. In the
women's arena because, I think, of differences between men and women, if
your women's team can come into the game with a certain sort of
intimidating aura, it doesn't motivate the opposition like it does for
men's teams. The men's teams, being the underdog sort of pisses them
off, you know. "I can't believe it. Yeah, they're real good. Well, I
played that guy in the summer and I wrecked him up and I'm not afraid,"
and they go on that sort of arrogant mentality which gives the men's
arena tremendous opportunity for upset because their mentality is that
way. They
Is any of this stuff making sense?
Yes, it's making sense and I can identify with a lot of what you are
saying, just from thinking of my team experiences and the different ways
coaches have dealt with the team. I guess one of the things I'm just
curious about is questions of the good
What school did you go to?
Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois; a small school.
So how do you know Marcia?
I was a TA for one of the history classes she attended.
Oh, that she attended here?
Yes.
She was a good student, wasn't she?
Individual freedom versus the good of the team. So you were mentioning earlier about your earlier teams where the girls would go downtown and get trashed. And this was always a debate on our team, to what extent does the good of the team intervene in what are usually students' personal decisions about sleep, food, diet, smoking, drinking.
All we do is we advise them on all these things. I never try to catch
them at anything because I think it's more important for you to have
their trust than to have their allegiance. If you have their trust I
think you're going to go a lot further. And so, we've always had girls
that have gotten trashed, less so now than the old teams. And Marcia
will remember some of these girls I'm referring to on those first couple
of teams because they were hellions. I guess there are wrong ways to win
team allegiance, though. I don't think a coach can stand up there and
convince a group of college age girls that they should sacrifice their
lives for their team because that's
Loyalty.
Yes. So, it's not something that you can sort of insist on. I think it's something they have to give to you. I think long range, if you set up your team rules with that sort of understanding, you'll be trusted and they will give it to you. For example, on the national team, all we have is two rules when we travel and you know, this is for international travel and everything. Basically, we want them to be on time and not get drunk. That's it. Those are the only two rules we have and I think the fewer rules we have the less rules are going to be broken. And then even those rules on curfew, I don't enforce personally. My captains, basically, enforce all the rules. They tell the team when the curfew is and they tell me if someone's out and they can choose not to. And then almost all my disciplinary sanctions are made on a case by case basis because I think all people are different. And obviously, just like in the U.S. court system, you generally want your sanctions to be similar to other sanctions. But I won't hold myself to a set of rules where I'm trapped by my own rules. I'll decide on each, you know, problem one at a time and I'll bring in the leadership to help me sort it out. Then what you've got is a collective sort of discipline. You've got them involved in it and I think it's very healthy.
[END OF TAPE 2, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 2, SIDE B]
You've been here at UNC coaching almost fifteen years?
Since 1976.
Have you seen a lot of changes in how the women's programs are treated?
Yes, obviously, because of longevity, all women's programs are treated very well and because of our success our budgets have become larger and larger, our facilities better and better and the media attention greater and greater. So these are certainly very positive steps for women in athletics. I think, obviously, one factor in all this is the fact that we've been successful. But also, I think women's athletics is becoming more and more accepted and it's becoming more and more attended, the events are. I think in the old days, Title IX was one of the motivating forces in establishing women's athletics in college and maybe that's had a top down effect on girls in high school athletics. Because what's happening now is in the old days, it was so rare to find a woman that really wanted to be a successful athlete and now you find them in each sport. And the opportunities are available for them and they are encouraged by everyone. There's not as much of a negative stigma and if there is a stigma, it's a very, very understated undercurrent. And frankly, the negative stigmas really have to do with sexual orientation now and not the athletic participation itself. And I think after women's athletics clears that stigma, it will be just like the men.
Did you give much thought to women's soccer before you became the coach?
Not at all. The only thing I had about women's athletics that was positive, I have a sister that's one year younger than I am that was an incredible athlete. So I didn't grow up with a negative stereotype about women in athletics. She was very gifted and very aggressive and I think that helped me coach the women because I knew what they were capable of. So I never coached them with any sort of condescension. I knew that they could run themselves to death and work hard and that there was no reason to pamper them because you know, we could get them to smack into each other and recover. So we never pampered them, we never condescended in training them. We basically told them they could be, you know, the best in the country and we never backed off.
I read somewhere that you said that you wouldn't have come here if it was a high powered school with a lot of scholarships. Now, you're running a program.
Yes, because coming out of high school, I wasn't a high powered athlete.
And back in those days, I wasn't aware that you could make decisions
based on your athletic ability. I went to a small private school in
Freiburg, Switzerland, and academics was a priority. And so my reason to
go to college was purely for academic reasons and I knew I was going to
participate in sports, but it wasn't a real focus. It was one of those
things I did in the afternoons. And I entered a program that basically
had that philosophy, you know, you're a student here and the
The women who come here to school are pretty much people who have already made a name for themselves and they are coming here for soccer and for academics.
And I think the social life. I think a woman makes a very complete decision. In other words, I think the men go places for just the athletics. And a woman decides to come to school here because she's a high profile athlete, a major part of her decision, but also how she feels she will fit in with the team and the campus and how she feels the academics will benefit her I think are equal in her mind.
Is there anything else you'd like to add for posterity?
Certainly not for posterity.
I appreciate your taking the time to talk to me.
END OF INTERVIEW