'You've Got to Figure Out What Motivates Them'

The Daily Coach recently spoke to legendary University of North Carolina Women's Soccer Coach Anson Dorrance about lessons from a five-decade career in the sport.

January 28, 2023

Anson Dorrance had a choice.

He could take the short way to the University of North Carolina campus or the scenic.

On this particular day, he chose the scenic, and on the way, spotted one of his senior women’s soccer players bent over, soaked in sweat while going through a morning workout.

When Dorrance arrived in his office, he scribbled a note: “The vision of a champion is someone who is bent over, drenched in sweat, at the point of exhaustion when no one else is watching.”

The senior was Mia Hamm, perhaps the most famous women’s soccer player ever, and the anecdote sticks with Dorrance decades later.

The Daily Coach recently caught up with the 21-time National Champion to discuss his international childhood, the difference between coaching men and women, and how he establishes buy-in with his players.

This interview has been condensed and edited for brevity.

Coach, thanks for doing this. You had a more worldly upbringing than most. Can you tell us about your childhood and some lessons from it?

My worldview was shaped by the fact I lived all over the place. I lived in Kenya, Ethiopia and Switzerland, among other places. I think the most important thing it really shaped for me was my critical thinking.

Did I play soccer growing up? Yeah, in Addis Ababa (Ethiopia), we played some soccer at recess, but I was absolutely horrendous. I was always the worst player on the field, clumsy as could be, no skillset, no understanding of the game. The only thing I competed in effectively was this rock-throwing game and marbles. I was a wonderful marbles target because I was this rich White kid, and mine were nice and shiny. It’s a tough game. You have to knock marbles out of a circle, and I became really good because I was viscerally competitive.

I only seriously picked up soccer as a sport at St-Jean in Fribourg, Switzerland. I had a nice mean streak. When I got to college, I was going to play tennis at St. Mary’s University in San Antonio, but because I was almost killed living there because my mouth would get me in trouble and my fists couldn’t get me out, I transferred to the University of North Carolina. That’s when I really started to take soccer seriously and started training for it.

You had a nice playing career at Carolina. How’d you get into coaching?

I had an English and Philosophy degree, and I didn’t know what I was going to do, but I knew where I was going to live. I got married the summer I graduated in May of 1974 to an extraordinarily successful dancer. I was honestly floundering. I initially started working for a friend who ran a local recreational soccer program called the Rainbow Soccer League. I coached in his league that had people from 18- 65-years-old in it. It was low-level, but I wanted to destroy everyone. We were ruthless and went after it. But that’s where I learned how to coach.

One day, the UNC athletic director at the time called me into his office, and I was thinking it was to ask me about people he was considering hiring to replace my coaching mentor, Dr. Marvin Allen, but he offered me the job on the spot. I was completely shocked.

In my own mind, I wasn’t qualified to go from Rainbow Soccer to the top of Division I. I wasn’t genuinely interested, but I started thinking there’s an income with this, my poor wife is carrying the lion’s share right now, I have to contribute. I thought I’d coach the men’s team part time and go to law school, but I started coaching and fell in love with it immediately.

In the spring of 1979, the athletic director told me there was a women’s soccer club on campus that had petitioned for varsity status, and he wanted me to help them vet them. I went out there and saw they were committed. Their coach had done a wonderful job, so I was shelling for the coach. I thought we’d share fields, play double-headers, whatever. The next words out of the athletic director’s mouth changed my life forever. He said, “Well, Anson, if you’ll coach both teams, I’ll make you a full-time coach.”

So you’re coaching the men and the women at the same time. What were the differences and what were some key takeaways from it?

It’s interesting. The radical feminist literature at the time was telling me there were no differences, just environmental influences that pushed them in different directions. I was thinking, “Great! I don’t know anything about women. This is good news.”

I would design a practice for the men and think I’m going to use it for the women. And I am here to testify this was an absolute disaster. If there’s anything I’ve learned, it’s that men and women are completely different. The evolution of me learning to coach women was basically by making one mistake after another.

What I’ve learned about all the championship teams I’ve coached over the years is they all have extraordinary field leadership. The teams that have to be led from the sideline in women’s athletics are just not as effective. You need leaders on the field. What you need is a leader who is going to hold her teammates accountable and also have incredibly high standards with that accountability. The challenge is for this young woman to find her leadership voice.

How do you cultivate trust with your players?

Men can follow you just because they know you’re smart and they’ve looked at your resume and the things you’re telling them can get them to the promise land, the NBA, the NFL, whatever. That’s not how women follow you.

They want an individual and personal relationship where you’re connecting with them for reasons beyond the game. They have to believe you’re interested in them as human beings and not as athletes.

Women have the more sophisticated, mature understanding that their human development is more important than their athletic. How do you treat them? What do you do for them? Do you have their back? Can they trust you with things they tell you? They have to know you have a respect and admiration for them that’s different than the person playing on their left or right. They have to know you see them, and you’ve got to figure out what motivates them.

Can you build trust with freshmen or sophomores or does that typically not happen until your players are older?

It takes time. The freshmen all come in, at least in my context, terrified, terrified of the environment, of the change. This is where our book meetings are helpful. The nice thing about a book meeting is they’re smaller.

Our team usually has 30 people. A book meeting for freshmen is about seven. You’re not necessarily discussing anything about a game. The books we pick, “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People,” Viktor Frankl’s “Man’s Search for Meaning,” are very good books about human development. Hopefully, they get a sense how important it is for me to help them develop as human beings.

Tell us about program values.

We have 13 now, and for me, these are really important. Why? Because we all come from different backgrounds. We all have different philosophies of what good choices are and what good behavior is. This is why we have to, in a way, certify and get buy in from everyone in our culture. I challenged my sophomores to pick their top three core values and their bottom three. Then, I challenged them on their favorite and which core value can we do without?

It’s really interesting. Most of them picked “Grateful” as the top. Almost all of them picked “Galvanizing” as the least important. But galvanizing is the leadership core value.

They all know they didn’t score very well in galvanizing because they’re not willing to open their mouths, so we discussed why. They recited for me all the different reasons. If they open their mouths, they know all the girls are thinking “Who is she to tell me to do that?” Then, the conversation got to, “You’re not necessarily saying this is the least important core value. This is the core value you don’t have that you’d be really afraid to select as an important one because you’re not willing to galvanize and lead verbally.” They all conceded yes.

It’s really interesting this issue we’re having in verbal leadership is something they’re very transparent about admitting. It’s a thing I haven’t solved yet.

You have players grade each other on these core values. How does that system work?

Twice a year, we have a peer evaluation. All of the kids on the team evaluate their teammates in each of the 13 core values. We sort of do it on a GPA scale. You have to live above a 3.0 on your core values.

You’re allowed to give out one 5. If you give out a 5, you’re saying you’re the best person on the team at representing this core value. You can give out as many 4s as you’d like.

A 4 is an exceptional example, 3 means you live this value most of the time, 2 is occasionally, 1 is rarely. You can give a 3.5, 2.2, etc. If they don’t live above a 3.0, they clearly don’t want to be in our culture. If they are below this line and they’re not on scholarship, we try to get them to quit. If they are on scholarship, we try to get them to transfer because they clearly do not want to live these core values.

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