Excerpts from:
Anson Dorrance
The Vision Of A Champion

"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."

Anson Dorrance is the legendary women's soccer coach at the University of North Carolina.  His program is commonly referred to as "The Dynasty."  He is not only the most successful coach in the women's game - a four-time National Coach of the Year - but an ambassador of the game, a highly sought-after motivational speaker, a major force in training young players through wildly popular soccer camps, and a successful television broadcaster.  His teams have won 18 NCAA National Championships and many of his former players have gone on to become the most accomplished players in the world.

"In the speeches I do around the country, one of the topics I address is the three levels of competitiveness.  I don't care if you're talking about the National Team, college, or high school soccer, you can rate every athlete on the team and place her in one of three different categories.  The third-tier competitor is the person who thinks she's competitive because she's on a sports team.  Her parents, peers, and coaches all think of her in the same way.  The second-tier competitor is on a sports team, and is competitive when the coach draws a line on the field, there's an out-of-bounds, score is kept, and at the end of some time, or a number of opportunities, there is a winner and a loser.  The first-tier, number one competitor, is what I call a natural-born competitor.  Whether she's on a soccer field with a coach and a score, on her own in her backyard juggling, in a classroom taking a test, or licking stamps -she always competes.

Every team has a plethora of second-tier competitors.  You're really lucky if you have one or two natural-born competitors.  The players who are third-tiers just aren't going to make it on the team long-term.  They might survive four years at UNC, but they're not going to be starters.  They might survive and be named to the women's National Team, but they aren't going to become veterans.

Even on the National Team, we have all three levels of competitors.  They aren't all number ones.  As a coach, the challenge is to get all the threes to become twos, and all the twos to totally embrace competition 100% the time and become ones, like natural-born competitors."

"Acquiring mentality is a crucial part of your developmental challenge.  It helps to understand this mentality by having concrete examples.  Like any soccer skill, which you learn by demonstration, it is easier to understand how mentality works if you see how a coach might communicate it, or teach it.

Overall, I believe female players are getting mentally tougher.  I notice this on a youth level, particularly in my recent work with the ODP Region III teams.  But like all players, including those at UNC, young players are a work in progress.  In the ODP training several years ago, we addressed the issue of mentality by using one girl in particular as an example.  Although she was a talented player, she avoided heading the ball.  A lot of players make subtle choices - timing a tackle just a bit late to avoid possibly getting hit, or making sure to be slightly out of the way when an air ball comes toward their heads.  My task as a coach is to know when they're doing this, and call them on it.  When we noticed the girl in ODP who avoided heading, we set her a goal: one header per game.  We turned it into a kind of joke - the entire bench cheering for her when she finally headed a ball.  Underlying the laughter, though, was an important message.  There was an expectation that everyone was going to head the ball, even if they didn't like it, or it was painful. 

I believe there are right and wrong ways to send a message.  When trying to get a player to fight through her pain threshold, and to deepen her risk taking mentality, a lot of parents and coaches make a big mistake.  When an athlete gets knocked down or falls, for example, they go rushing out like the player is in her final death throes.  She's not; she's just in a little pain.  When someone goes bolting out onto the field any time a player is clipped, banged, or bumped, subconsciously the player thinks: this is how I get attention.  But that's a negative dynamic.  That's why I purposely don't go out onto the field when my players go down. 

Of course, there are times when players are truly hurt.  We certainly support them in that case. But most of the time it isn't catastrophic injury.  It's just getting whacked in the shin or getting the wind knocked out of them.  Yes, that hurts; it's frightening, but it's part of the game.

You can survive the bone-jarring pain of a tackle and not flinch.  Pop up and deal with it.  What a coach or parent should compliment is the player who, despite getting absolutely hammered, immediately gets up.  Then the athlete gets the message that taking physical risks is praiseworthy.

When I was coaching men at UNC, I had a really nice player named Billy Probster.  We were in practice, and in a very vicious tackle, he was absolutely hammered to the earth.  He was rolling around on the ground, screaming and writhing.  I silently stood over him, watching, as he contin­ued to roll around, screaming.  Finally, I said, "Billy, I know it hurts, but if you were to die now, is this the way you'd like us to remember you?" Everyone found this hilarious.  Even Billy started laughing.  The message was clear: don't writhe around when you're smacked.  Pain is manageable. You can deal with it.  Like Billy, given the chance, you can even laugh at it."

The Vision of a Champion

"Mentality is the defining quality that allows you to utilize all of your soccer abilities. It all goes back to what I say in the introduction of the book-the vision of a champion is exemplified by heart, athleticism, strength, tactics, focus, and skill."

-Anson Dorrance