anson dorrance edit
Mon, Aug 14, 2023 6:26PM • 1:00:46
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
coach, kids, people, soccer, extraordinary, teach, dean smith, wonderful, women, lead, center, leadership, practice, leaders, players, good, team, athletes, dance, live
SPEAKERS
Paul Barnett, Anson Dorrance
Paul Barnett 00:00
Anson Dorrance Good morning my time. Good afternoon, your time and welcome to the Great coach's podcast.
Anson Dorrance 00:06
My pleasure to be here with you. Thank you.
Paul Barnett 00:09
Well, we start with something really simple. Could you tell us where you are in the world and what you've been up to so far today?
Anson Dorrance 00:17
Right now I am sitting in the middle of my dining room during a spring break, in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and the break is I coach at a university level. So my, all my players right now are actually scattered to the winds. So I don't have a training session this afternoon. And I'm an absolute free man, because if I did have a training session this afternoon, I would not be on this podcast.
Paul Barnett 00:47
Well, thank you very much for carving out a little bit of time to chat with us. I've been, as I said, off air, I've been chasing courier assistance for at least six months to get this interview. So I'm very excited to chat with you today.
Anson Dorrance 00:59
Well, so my so I appreciate this. And by the way, I enjoy all these conversations. So please don't think that this has any sort of labor for me, it's not in fact, I have rarely turned down a podcast opportunity because honestly, the conversations with different people are fascinating for me, and, and I thoroughly enjoy them. So I like this new medium.
Paul Barnett 01:21
Well, I'll be waiting for the feedback at the end of the intermediate to see how I went relative to all the others that you've done. It's an I would like to just ask you about something I read about you in preparing for today. And it you said that early in your career, you identified five great coaches, and selected the five most prominent qualities of each of them to form your own philosophy. Could you tell us who those people were and what have you added from that exercise?
Anson Dorrance 01:52
Yeah, so what? What I did I think this is in the intro to training soccer champions. I had all these different mentors and there was a quality and each mentor that I tried to adopt myself. So there was a guy that was coaching at Lynchburg, college by the name of Shellenberger and he just seemed to exude class. And so I wanted to sort of be able to exude his class. So I adopted his sort of persona. And that one area of, I guess, I guess, checking boxes and so I wanted to have the class of Shellenberger. I wanted to have the presence of Bobby Gansler. Ganser was one of these wonderful coaches that came through a Europe, I think he was part German, maybe part Austrian. And he was a coaching instructor for me when I was a young coach. And I really loved when he would stand in front of a group and he had this ability to stand there and just project confidence. And he had a wonderful manner. He was very formal in a very good, sort of dramatic way. And I really respected him. And he taught me a lot about the game, and these coaching schools that I attended with him. And so that was that was a part of it for me. I wanted to have the humility of, of a Dean Smith. I mean, this is The Collegiate coach of you know, Michael Jordan. And so you know, watching Dean Smith work just was extraordinary because the way he treated, the lowliest manager on his roster would be treated with the same amount of deference and respect that he would treat Michael Jordan with. And I just really, really appreciated all these different qualities that he exuded as just a remarkable leader of of people. And then one of my mentors is a wonderful gentleman by the name of Cliff McGrath. [PB1]
And when I was a young coach, I would go to these coaching conventions, and invariably, he was one of the keynote speakers, or at least the master of ceremonies. And he had this capacity with his storytelling, and his charisma to just own the room. So I wanted to be able to speak like Cliff McGrath. And so basically, I took a piece out of all these different coaches and I tried to assemble and what my blind was going to be, you know, the super coach that could sort of do everything, you know, speak in a charismatically lead, you know, with this wonderful sort of Germanic frame jutting out, you know, commanding the the training session. And so I just found these great qualities and all these people are I admired, and sort of assembled them all together in the intro to the book and honestly, it was so long since I've written that book. I may have skipped a coach or two or substituted someone in for someone else. But honestly, that was my ambition I wanted I wanted to be Yeah, I wanted to really be as good as I could be, and not in any one area. I wanted to be very good at everything. And so talk about ambition, I did not lack for ambition as a young man. And now that I'm an older man, I'm wondering where all this came from, I think it came from the love of my mother, she absolutely loved me, she gave me this extraordinary confidence. Because I run into most people, they don't have this, this extraordinary confidence that I have. And I know that I benefited from a mother that just, you know, thought I was just a great little kid. And I'm absolutely convinced that she made all the difference in the world for me, because my ambition was absolutely over the moon.[PB2]
Paul Barnett 05:51
Well, you also attribute your love of soccer to the time you spent living in Kenya. And I'm wondering, What do you remember seeing in Kenya that ignited your affection for soccer?
Anson Dorrance 06:03
Actually, it wasn't Kenya. My first soccer experience was actually in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. And Kenya, I was the classic, you know, son of an aristocratic family. And I played sports like rugby, and cricket and I box because that's what aristocrats did. I played some field hockey as well, we aristocrats would never, you know, descend into the abyss of the lower classes and play a game like soccer, God forbid. So no, in Kenya, I went to this English school, and I represented my color, which was me, it was yellow. And we competed against three other colors and all these different events. And soccer was not one of the events. I mean, we even have this event that was called British Bulldogs, where you had to sprint across an open field, not get caught. And if you weren't caught, the challenge of the person that caught you, was to lift you up in the air and scream British bulldogs and then throw you to the earth, you know. So even have ridiculous games like that as the, the meat army would try to cross through, you know, the Red Sea or whatever, you know, however, that red team name themselves. So I, I was wonderfully a British aristocrat in those days, I was not a soccer player back then, because that wasn't for me. That was, you know, that was for that was for the lower classes. And so I didn't actually pick up soccer until I went to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. And boy, did I have a baptism of fire with soccer in that environment, because I was clearly the absolute worst player on the field. And every game I played in, as these extraordinary African boys would dance around me over me threw me, you know, like, was just I was, you know, a traffic cone. So that was my exposure to the game. And honestly, I did not fall in love with it, then. I'm not one of these people that you know, graciously enjoyed being stomped to death in a sport that I had no mastery of. Back in those days, I was an expert at shooting marbles, and throwing rocks, my arm is a gun. And all of us back in the St. Joseph days in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, all had a rock in our back pocket that we use to throw it. Basically these cigarette cards that we cut out that at a relatively long distance had to hit with this rock. And as a result of my, my throwing arm developed wonderfully. During these days, of course, everyone wanted to beat the white kid with the brand new marbles because all of their marbles were destroyed from overuse. And mine, of course, were brand new. Why? Because I was the only white kid in the entire school. In fact, one of my father's favorite jokes about me, when I went to this African school, was that it's one of the few academic awards I've ever won. Actually, in my life. I've only won two academic awards in my life I'm talking about from elementary school right through the end of when I dropped out of law school, and one of them was I won the English award at St. Joseph school in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Why? Because there was only kid in school that spoke English at home so and the guy that gave me the award, by the way was Emperor Haile Selassie, which is wonderfully extraordinary, especially when you look at his status in the world as basically ruling the country that was the only non colonized African country. And as a result, he's revered all over the world as this great African leader because Ethiopia was never colonized. But yeah, so I was introduced to soccer there, but honestly, I was miserable. I did not develop great affection for it as people went through me like I was dead. My my games back then were marbles and throwing rocks.
Paul Barnett 10:13
Well, from that humble beginning of the career grows, but I want to go on a bit of a journey before we get there. Because I've got an interesting quote from you, Anson, actually, you say, your margin of success is based on your inner drive. Now, I'm curious to ask you what did the best team environments do to allow this inner drive to express itself?
Anson Dorrance 10:38
I guess the the what's really interesting, the older I get, and the more podcasts I join, the more I have a better understanding actually, of who I am. And I'm one of these guys that loves listening to political shows, especially now that, you know, the United States is lurching towards authoritarianism. So I watch all these liberal political shows on American television. And I also watch the conservative shows because they certainly want to know what everyone's thinking and what they're saying. And there's a wonderful American, liberal commentator, political commentator, by the name of Rachel Maddow. And I love listening to her show. And the reason I do is she's exceptionally bright. And she brings on interesting people to sort of explain the world and may or at least American politics to me. Now, this particular day, she brought on a wonderful expert. And he was she was about to introduce this, the series of questions that this expert was going to address, and then the expert turned it around on her and said, Well, you know, Rachel, love. What do you an expert in? And I saw her literally stopping to think, because she had never been confronted with this kind of question. And this is an extraordinarily articulate and eloquent, you know, loquacious speaker, so it wasn't like she ever had to hesitate before someone asked her a question. And yet, when this person asked her, Well, you know, you know, Rachel, what are you an expert, and she actually hesitated. That was saying, this is extraordinary. So that means she's actually thinking about what to say. And then her answer, I thought was absolutely wonderful because of what it forced me to do. And she said, I am an expert in reading comprehension. And I was thinking to myself, that is a really interesting answer. And then I started to think about that answer. And that was a perfect answer for her to give, because when I listened to her on her political show, she is extraordinary explaining at explaining the world to me, and the politics in the world, and the different opinions of the politics in this world. And the different issues that I guess all of us have to address if we are interested in the, you know, the future of, you know, this planet we live on and the people that are in it,
and it forced me to think well, you know, and so what are you an expert on? And the last thing that came to mind, to me was football, soccer I, that didn't occur to me. And then I thought about it, and I came to the conclusion. I'm an expert in competition. And the question you asked me is a really good one. Because I think what sets the environments apart that I coach in, is I can construct an environment where my athletes are hanging on with the edge of their fingernails, because of how competitive I have roped it up to be. And as a result, my athletes develop what I call the gift of fury, which has the capacity to compete like no one else. And we have had some very ordinary teams that have done nothing but one game games, not because they were the superior soccer players, the better tacticians or more gifted, you know, technically or, or athletically, but the quality that these great teams that one possessed was the capacity to win. So that's my expertise. I am an expert on competition. [PB3]
And I'm not one of these people that genuinely thinks you can actually teach leadership in fact, even though I do a lot of leadership speaking. I always let the people know that I've hired me to speak in some leadership conference that you know what, please know if someone in The crowd asked me well answered, do you think you can teach leadership? I'm going to still cash your check. But I'm going to say no. Because I've been trying to teach leadership for, you know, every year I've been coaching, and I don't think I've succeeded, I think what I've discovered is, you know, this person can lead and this guy, this person can't and, and I've put all these people in different positions to see if they could leave. And even though I've been desperate to try to teach something about leadership, I think all that I've really done is I've put them in these positions, and they've succeeded. And I'd say, good, you know, okay, well done. And I don't think I can teach leadership. And I questioned whether anyone actually can. But the teams that I've had that have been incredibly successful have been incredibly well LED. And I think it's because of these extraordinary people that I've recruited or selected to lead the teams. And then I've, I've watched them do it, and trust me, I am. I work myself to death, to teach leadership. But and here's the way I guess, I would convince myself that I can teach leadership, if every one I teach or the majority of them becomes a good leader. But I can't testify to that. I can't testify to you right now. That the majority of the people that I've tried to help become good leaders have become good leaders. And I'm even trying something new this year, I'm always willing to share my latest efforts to try to teach leadership[PB4] . So if you want me to dig into that I can drill into this new idea I have, and
Paul Barnett 16:42
please share it with us. But I do want to come back and ask you about competitiveness. But I'm very happy to hear about your new leadership idea.
Anson Dorrance 16:48
Sure, sure. Sure, Arthur. Here we go.
Obviously, the first leadership challenge that all of us have is to lead yourself and what I'm going to share us and particularly deep, but it's where we all have to begin because you can't lead anyone else unless you've succeeded and leading yourself because in order to lead anyone, you have to have at least some modicum of credibility. So the analogy I use with young leaders is, you know, there's no hope for you to lead us in fitness if you're unfit. So based on what you know, part of our culture, you want to try to lead, you have to have credibility in that area to lead it effectively. So the first thing you have to start with in any sort of leadership quest, is to lead yourself. And this is where so many of us fail, actually, many of us fail, because we just don't have the capacity to lead ourselves. Because leading yourself requires all sorts of things that scare all of us to death, like commitment, work ethic, you know, discipline, keeping our promises, I mean, all these things that are just an incredible series of demands, which is why most of us would rather not lead ourselves. We'd rather you know, drift with the wind and, you know, do what's ever comfortable and, you know, pursue, you know, whatever, you know, lights are fire and, and obviously, those people rarely end up leaders because they're so undisciplined. And they don't understand the incredible challenge that all of us have the do lead, where the first step is to effectively lead yourself. [PB5] [PB6]
So here's where I am now. When I was a young coach, the American State Department had the audacity to send me down to Argentina, on a State Department mission, to teach the Argentinians how to play football. Isn't that extraordinary? So I was thinking to myself, gosh, the arrogance of the American State Department to send me down to Argentina, especially now, especially now me sharing the story with you is wonderful, because of course, they're reigning World Champions, on the men's side. So anyway, this story is wonderfully appropriate for the current condition. So anyway, I'm sitting down there, no, obviously, I'm not sent down there to you know, Coach, man, I'm down there to coach women's coaches and women. So I don't want to pretend that I was sent down there to, you know, reconstruct, you know, the Argentinian men side, and that's why they've won the world championship, God forbid. So anyway, I'm down there. And the training center back when I was sent to Argentina was right next to the Buenos Aires airport. So of course, since I'm down there to teach them how to play football, I'm taking into this wonderful training center. I walk in and what do I see immediately on the walls are pictures of me notI the great Argentinian coach that won their world championship back in the day. And they had all these sayings on the walls and I love things. I'm a closet intellectual. So I'm reading one quote after another and my favorite quote on the wall, and I might not get this exactly right. So God forbid if you're listening to this podcast in the middle of the Buenos Aires, you know, National Training Center. I might not get this exactly right. But I know I'm gonna get the theme, right?
He says something to the effect of soccer is a collection of small societies. And I was thinking to myself, that is a wonderful description of tactical alliances that occur all over the field, if you're going to have to, if you're if you desire to have an effective team, and obviously part of it are attacking relationships, if you're playing a 1352, with your two nines, it's your defensive relationships in between your left midfielder in the five and your left back in the three, it's how close your six plays on top of the three. And so it's yeah, it was a wonderful statement, all of a sudden, when I'm reading this in the walls of, you know, this National Training Center in Buenos Aires, I'm thinking, Oh, my gosh, this guy has something. So one of my many leadership johnse was in the last couple of years, I've been talking about small societies more and more. And I even have my teams as they walk out in the field. If we're playing, let's say, a 433, basically, my left center back, my left back and my left wing, all walk out in the middle of field arms around each other in a line with the tallest player in the middle, and the two shorter ones on either arm, and they're walking out, and you're seeing the heads move back and forth, as they're chatting. You know, my right, center back my right back and my right wing are also walking out in a small society. The center of my field is another small society. So basically, my six and my 10s, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And my nine are somethings anyway, I've got really small societies, and they're connecting with each other, because they need relationships offensively, but they also need defensively. And so I'm thinking this is just a great move for Well, obviously, we've we've added all these different things. And by the way, I've 100 Other things I've done. But now the latest thing I'm on is I'm taking our core values, and I'm taking my top six finishers in my core values. And these are all done with a peer evaluation to sort out who lives my culture. And I'm picking my bottom six athletes and my core values. And I'm matching up my best liver of my culture with my worst. I'm giving them sections of a book written by Christine poor F to read about basically, what I'm going to call your personal narrative, basically, your self awareness. And I'm also giving the leaders, the mentors, a book about radical candor to read. So they can develop this leadership quality to try to inspire the ones that are not living the culture. And so now I'm matching my my core values, sort of winners, against the ones that haven't lived it yet. And so this is my latest leadership adventure. If you call me in a year, I will let you know if I absolutely fell on my face again for the 400th time, or whether there was some progress. And by the way, if there is progress, it's going to appear in a book that Christine Porath and I are going to write together on culture. So that's my latest shot at you know, trying to develop leadership.[PB7]
Paul Barnett 23:31
Oh, thank you for sharing. And I'll definitely check out the book and I will come back in a year and see you win. But it's an I would like to go back to competitiveness that you learned to be an expert in because I, in preparing for today, I didn't know a lot about Dean Smith, growing up in Australia, it just wasn't on the radar as much, but I understand the influence that he had on you as a coach. And the idea of if I'm getting this right, the idea of measuring performance at training as a way of improving the individual was something that you took from him and you have this criteria that can go all the way up to 20 which, which ranks each individual on through a training session, which is actually fantastic. So what actually, I wanted to ask you about is how do you new people that join your team? Players, staff, anybody? How do they adjust to this heightened heightened level of competitiveness? How do you help them through that process?
Anson Dorrance 24:32
Well, first of all, anyone that joins us knows about the competitive cauldron. They've either read about it in my books, or they've been warned against it by all my competitors that basically share with them the last place you want to go is to the University of North Carolina because everything you do in practice is going to be recorded and it's basically oppressive. And it's just, it's just no fun. So every player coming in knows about the cauldron. And so it's not like they're shocked when they experienced it for the first time they know this is coming. But what's coming, I think is more benign than they're led to believe, certainly by the competitors that are trying to convince them not to come. Because all we're doing really is we're giving them extraordinary feedback after every single session. And then they have to decide on what they're going to do with this feedback. And I wanted to design a program that I would like to play in. So I hate rules. We don't have any rules. But I also want to know, at the end of every single training session, I was the best one on the field. And so I'm an alpha. And I want to declare that the people I recruit are also alphas that just are dying to express themselves. One of my favorite lines and Mia hams book, go for goal was when she said, when I got to North Carolina, I could finally be the athlete I was. And what sort of athlete was she, she was a shark, with blood in the water. And in almost every other culture she had been in, she was excoriated for being herself. And when she got to North Carolina, it was like, Oh, my gosh, I am home. So what we try to tell all these alpha females out there that have been ostracized and sort of shunned, and you know, sort of disgraced and every team they've ever played on, because they tried hard, and tried to win. Your home, is waiting for you at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Because we love those kinds of athletes, we will wrap our arms around you and protect you from the chaos of the universe, we will protect you from a culture that has told you there's something wrong with you, because you're competitive. And what's wrong with this picture. If you're a male, and you're competitive, you're put on a pedestal. And if you're a female, and you're competitive, you are excoriated by your own culture, like there's something wrong with you. No, there's nothing wrong with you. And so the sort of athletes that come in here that have that sort of disposition, they finally realize they are home. [PB8]
So trust me, the kids coming in, most of them have a pretty good idea of what's going to happen. But I think the positive side of all this is I've had the incredible privilege this semester of being asked to co teach in a course titled The Art and Science of expertise. And we have two absolutely brilliant UNC professors that I've joined, that are teaching this course. And one of the wonderful things we're teaching actually is deliberate practice, the Unders Erickson idea of how you can become extraordinary by practicing the right way. And there's sort of a formula to it, you know, you set a goal. And then you sort of get after it. And then with maximum repetition, but another piece in there that most people don't appreciate, is the feedback. The feedback is also critical for successful deliberate practice. And the feedback we give our kids is extraordinary. And this is one of the things I stole from Dean Smith. When I was a young coach, he was just such a wonderful man. And I didn't know anything about anything. And all of a sudden, this coach of Michael Jordan, comes up to me and says, you know, Ansan if you like, I'd certainly love it. If you and your staff came in, if you want to watch them practice, we'll set it up for you. And I'm thinking, Are you kidding me? So, of course, I jumped on his offer. And I went to one of his practices. And first of all, right off the bat, I was completely stunned. Back in those days, when Dean Smith invited me in to watch him train his basketball team, I was coaching two teams. And so when I prepared for a practice, I sort of had a general idea of what the men were going to do that day, it was going to be, you know, heavy, medium, medium, light or light. So I sort of had a general idea of what the practice tempo was going to be like, and women the same thing. And all of a sudden had come into this Dean Smith practice. And I'm handed like an agenda. Are you kidding me? So basically, to the minute, Dean Smith has written down to the minute what's going on in his practice, I was thinking, Oh, my gosh, this is unbelievable. And so I'm looking down and sure enough, you know, every, you know, two and a half minutes or however long whatever that session was, a noise would go off and you'd see the players go from one section of the gym to the other, and there was even a noise before they went to a water break and they're all jogging off for water. The noise would erupt itself again and they'd have to run back to a different station and and then I'm also noticing under Nice every single basket in the gym is a very formal looking manager with a clipboard and a pen. And he's recording stuff underneath that basket. And I'm looking at all the different baskets. Yep, it's a three point shooting exercise actually back then, I don't think there was three point shooting. So if it was a two v two with the bigs underneath a basket, you know, points were scored and recorded, the guy boxed up for the rebounder failed to that would be recorded. If it was a free throw shooting event that was recorded. If it was shooting in general that was recorded as a three v 344. Or five V five, the results were recorded. And I'm thinking this is absolutely amazing on I'm seeing all this data being collected, then all of a sudden, the practice is over. And I'm looking down at my sheet. And sure enough, on the sheet, I can see that he has followed everything to the minute. So this guy, in my opinion, was an organizational genius. So then all of a sudden, he calls the boys together at the end, and he's chatting with him a bit. And while he's calling the boys together, I'm seeing all the assistant manager sprint, and I'm not exaggerating, sprint to the Scores Table. Hitting it, the scores table was the head manager and you would see him grab one, you know, clipboard and then another and you would see him you know, with a calculator, I guess, assembling that day's practice data. And then by the time Dean Smith had finished addressing the troops, you'd see Dean turn around by this juncture, the head manager would hand Dean Smith, a practice ranking. Basically, the first five guys would get to leave the shower immediately, because through their algorithm, the top five guys had the privilege of leaving practice. Basically, before everyone else was doing sprints, the next five are lined up on the end of the court, you know, foul line and back. midcourt and back other fine line and back, other end of the cord and back. And then the last five guys, I assume are doing sprints until the end of recorded time. And I was thinking this is extraordinary. And this is basically deliberate practice unders Erickson stuff on steroids, because the feedback was immediate. But it was also ranked. And I was thinking, You know what, that's the way I'd like to go. I'd like to go to that kind of practice, I would like for all of my peers to acknowledge that this alpha was, again, the most dominant force in practice, because that's just the way I'm built. And we took Dean's stuff, we sock arised. And we took it to a completely different level, and they get feedback. And now we're at a completely different level, even from the Dean Smith's days. Because now I have seven analytics people, an analytics team, who are all studying statistics at The University of North Carolina. So these are people that are used to numbers, and they're taking a practice and they're turning it into numbers. And so even though we have pre designed, you know, one on one ladders, and heading ladders and shooting exercises, and you know, you name it, we've got everything under the sun course the kids come in, they've got a beep test, they've got a you know, a 30 meter dash for acceleration and speed. They've got agility, agility testing. I mean, we test them every conceivable way, I know everything about my athletes by the end of that season, including where they rank in the cauldron. But what they're getting now, which is even more advanced is my analytics team is sending them results from that day's practice in minut detail how many times they gave the ball away how many times they wanted to how many key passes they made, how many times they shot, and what percentage of the shots hit the frame. I mean, the shots were across the frame, which is where most good shots go, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, I mean, the detail they're getting at night, because it takes them about two or three hours to assemble this. And by the way, the university gives them six hours credit. So they've looked at my our data collections and my analytics, my analytic stuff is so detailed. The data analytics department at the University of North Carolina gives them six hours credits. So there is a long waiting list for these statistics people to join my program. And so we're in this luxurious position of selecting the best of the best. So we will actually ask the data analytics department, well, who's your best student? And they'll say it's, you know, it's John Doe. And we'll look at us. Yeah, well, John Doe has applied. Yep, we're gonna embrace Him. So. So anyway, so these people that are working for us now that are turning, basically, soccer performance into data. And that's just part of the data.
So basically, what we're trying to do is you're trying to drive performance with posting the data, because if you're an alpha, you're not going to want to see your name low on a list.
In fact, one of my favorite moments of all time, we brought in this sweet, sweet kid from Dallas, Texas by the name of Carla Overbeck. And in my opinion, she was one of the As players in the country, but she was just exceptionally kind and thoughtful and sweet. And we brought her in. And it was one of those years where she had to play. We lost the whole defense, she was the center back. So we didn't have a choice we had to throw out there on the field. And it was terrifying for her. She was telling me, obviously, three or four years after she graduated, she hated starting in her freshman year, she hated the pressure of having to win games for a team that had been winning national championships. And she hated the cauldron. And the fact that every single day in practice, you know, she was asked to beat all of her teammates to death, she just wanted to, you know, hug them all, and get along with all of them. And so this was, this is so far out of her comfort zone. And then all of a sudden, we're posting the stuff on a regular basis, and all of a sudden, I'm seeing her change a bit. In her freshman year, we have five different one on one ladders. her freshman year, she didn't win one game, in any of the five ladders. Her senior year, she didn't lose the game, in any of the five ladders. I read this interview she gave to the daily target, which is our student newspaper. And she said when they asked her about this transfer Meishan, she had made this a player, she just came out and bluntly told them I was sick and tired of seeing my name at the bottom of a list. So this gave her permission to compete. Because the way she had been raised all of her life was to not compete. So now there's this coach and the value system and structure that was driving her to compete. And it did. And she became one of the greatest leaders I've ever coached. And one of the greatest players of the United States in the history of the United States Soccer she was one of our best players in 1991. When we won the world championship for the first time, she was the captain on a traditional gold medal teams and world championship teams. And but I love that I'll never forget that interview she gave.
Paul Barnett 37:10
When you said something really interesting that I'd like to delve into a little bit. You talked about values. Now, you've described this amazing philosophy at your school. And I say it's amazing because it's been tested and tried. And it's produced results. And it's produced great leaders and great people that have gone off into society and done wonderful things. And you've described this philosophy, I think I read somewhere as steel sharpens steel, but at the same time. Caring and gratitude are part of your team's core values. And I'm really intrigued. How do you balance these potentially contrasting ideas, particularly with young people who are impressionable and are at a time in their life when great change is going on around them?
Anson Dorrance 37:57
First of all, absolutely wonderful question. I guess I have to share the only other academic award I've ever won the English award and African school. Well done, Anson absolutely brilliant. And the only other academic award I won I won the a religion award at LaVilla sensual, a boys boarding school in Fribourg, Switzerland. And why did I win the religion award? Because I was insufferable in debating all the priests and brothers and nuns at this boarding school for all the policies in our church that I thought were absolutely ludicrous. So as a result, talk about steel sharpening steel, the people I was debating, were a seminarians going to the University of Freeburg. This these are some of the brightest minds in Catholicism that were teaching in this boys boarding school. And I decided to fence with them cerebrally as if my tiny little undeveloped brain would have a chance against any of them. But since I shared with you earlier, that confidence has never been a personal problem for me, thanks to I think a loving mother. I went after all of them. And at the end of the four years that says all they actually recruited me for the priesthood, which was very flattering, I wasn't interested but I was certainly flattered that they would recruit me.
So for me, ethics, morality. These are very, very important topics for me. In fact, my undergraduate degree is in philosophy and then by accident, I picked up an English degree only because I took reading lists as courses and that ended up in English degree, I had no intention to be an English degree holder, but the courses I took just gave me an English degree because of a book lists of books I wanted to read. But in philosophy,
I'm very, very Serious about choices that we all have to make. And here's what's interesting about where we are right now, where basically the world is we're becoming a more and more secular culture. So one of the things I knew, we had to establish if we were going to have the right kind of culture is we had to figure out a set of principles to live by. And since we are becoming a more and more secular culture, so the days of my Catholic boys boarding school, I was within a structure at UNC where I was going to Mass on every Sunday, and none of my kids that I had recruited or I was coaching, have that privilege either to basically be around, you know, people that can spiritually guide you to make the correct choices. And of course, I was at the nexus of the final escape from obedience. So a kid finishes his or her senior year of high school, where basically they have to genuflect to the higher moral authority in the home, which is the mother and the father. And they're there and their structure is to genuflect to that authority, with obedience, for the first time in their lives, they don't have to be obedient anymore. And I don't expect them to be. So now I have an opportunity to teach them principles. And so here's what people are shocked by when we sort of dig into this.
My moral imperative is human development. Not soccer development. So the top awarded our athletic banquet is not the end of the P. It's the Kelly Muldoon award for character. And so I want these young women I'm coaching now to develop a principal center, they don't come with a built in principal center. Because if you've been living a life of obedience, your your center is not a principle center. It's basically a structured sort of lack of choice. I guess some, some would call it form of authoritarianism, where you are learning a sort of way to make choices by being obedient, but in my opinion, that doesn't really structure, principle centered living with the right tool. And so we have our kids basically memorize, and try to live 13 principles. And even though you can look at them and say, well, these are basically secular principles in a way they're not. Because almost every secular principle that I select, if you were a real biblical scholar, or even a Jewish scholar, or even a Muslim scholar, you could find a something within your religious works. That would sort of check that box of the different things I'm having my kids sort of memorize. But then the challenge for them is just to memorize these quotations. But it's meant to live them, because twice a year, their teammates are evaluating them against these principles. And then, of course, I get to see everyone's grades, but we will share with everyone the top four on the team. And then we would hope that all of them have a sort of a peer evaluation, principle centered evaluation that's over our standard system, which is basically we do it on a four point scale, the way they're academics are graded. So there's no confusion. And we want all of our kids academically to live above a three Oh, and we want them to have a principle center of having their peer evaluation of over a three Oh, as well. So that is a very important central tenet of, I guess, my coaching philosophy.
Paul Barnett 44:08
It's an it's a, it's a powerful Hansen. I appreciate you sharing it with me I am finding that balance, particularly as a father of two daughters, is a challenging one, that balance between competitiveness and these these very real and human qualities is very important. But could I ask a question about your own family because I was preparing for this interview with at a time when we were considering a major change in our family where we were going to leave in which country and you read that you had this idea which I was reading when we when we were working through and you said the key challenge for any athlete is to find a way to elevate their environment. I really love this idea of always elevating your environment. And if it's if it's not too personal, I would was wondering how you've helped your own And children implement this idea
Anson Dorrance 45:05
for me, well, actually we're even teaching this in the course, their seed and soil. So basically, the seed is basically what your potential is. And I think all of us have extraordinary potential, if we can find the right soil, if we can find the right mentors, if we can find the right environments to sort of grow in. And so this is our challenge. [PB9]
And it's sort of interesting that you're asking me this question because because I've seen, you know, so many bad sides of athletics. I never really forced my kids into sports. Now, they all ended up playing sports. And I think part of it was because I was a coach. But one thing I've really enjoyed about watching my kids grow up the influence of my wife, my wife is a former professional dancer. She danced for Elliot Feld, if you Googled him, he's one of the top American choreographers back in the day. And she danced to the National Ballet Company, and Elliot, Phil's American Ballet Company. And when we got married, we got married pretty young. And so she had to sort of put her ballet career on hold. But she ended up teaching. So she came down here, and she started teaching. And she started her own dance studio. So all of my kids were brought up, you know, playing soccer, but also dancing. And my eldest daughter had an extraordinary ambition to be really good in a dance form that my wife had in her school. And my wife sorted out that the Michelle wasn't going to be a ballet dancer, because the shape of her feet just weren't conducive for that sort of dance form at the highest level. But she had a brilliant tap teacher that was one of the partners with my wife and my wife's dance studio. And she became absolutely extraordinary. And actually, one of my, sort of one of my god, take me now moments was last December, my eldest daughter who's got her own dance company. She's got a wonderful name for it. She called it Dorrance dance about that. And my son, when he was 15, I asked him what he was going to do with his life. And he said, you know, Dad, I think I want to write music. And I was thinking to myself, My gosh, that's interesting. And then I've had a follow up question. I said, Well, why do you think you'll be able to, you know, write music? And his answer was really interesting. And I never forgot his answer. He said, I think I can be a really good composer because I have good taste. And I didn't know what that meant. Until in December, I'm in New York at the Joyce. And my eldest daughter has three world premieres. And in the middle of the three world premieres was performance that she danced and choreographed that my son wrote the music for. And I am in the theater, and I am praying, God, take me now, my life is never going to get any better than this. Because my daughter's choreography for the piece was absolutely brilliant. Her dancing was absolutely brilliant. And my son's music was extraordinarily perfect. I can see my son, he's sitting six rows down from me on the left, and I'm texting him at the end of his piece. And I basically said, Dawn, um, and that was absolutely unbelievable. And then all of a sudden, through the night, because he's texting me back at 3am. We're texting back and forth. We're in New York. And he's explained to me this, because I have good taste, which is why I'm going to be able to write good music, because here's what happens if you have good tastes, and you're a composer. And keep in mind, he's 31 And he told me this 15 And who knows how many songs he had to burn or throw away, but he's been writing music since he was 15. And at the age of 31. He developed a piece that my other child liked my daughter liked and I'm listening to it. And you can imagine the incredible strength that took to basically burn all the other pieces of music that didn't get up to his standard to be able to produce that piece that my daughter liked, that she performed at one of the major theaters in New York City.
And I can remember sitting when my eldest daughters winning a Bessie in New York, and my wife and I turned to each other. And we said, maybe she is pretty good. And so yeah, there, we have standards. And the thing I have to love about my son, my body's a wreck, it's falling apart. So all I do now is I play pickleball, it's the only thing I can do where I can get some exercise and you know, not have a heart attack or, you know, fall over from, you know, all of my various rugby injuries, by the way. And what I love about playing in this public park, is the different people that come up to me and tell me what a wonderful man my son is. And I really appreciate that. Because for all my kids, I want them to have a principle center, they don't have to be, you know, world class athletes for me. I want them to live principle centered lives. And for me, my kids have just they've overachieved in our eyes. And the reason they have is because they're good, humble people, and they commit themselves to their relationships to their art forms. One I'm one of my three is, you know, raising a family. And, and I think a part of it has to do with the fact that my wife and I are basically in environments where for the first time in these kids lives that we're coaching or teaching is not, that's not good enough. There's another level. Now that's that's not good enough, either. There's another level and so it's what you referred to earlier. I want everyone I come in contact with the live on a never ending ascension. And I think a part of that is for us in the most positive way to let them know there's another level in them. And they have to find it.[PB10]
Paul Barnett 54:13
It's and I have a final question. It's somewhat of an anticlimax given your tremendous and very open and very human answer to the last question, but I, I think I'm going to go ahead with it anyway. And I'd like to before I ask the question, I'd like to start with a quote. And you say, I know that these extra ordinary women are going to have an impact, and it's going to be extra, extra ordinarily positive. So for me, my adventure isn't just a football one. It's a human one. In fact, you alluded to this very, very point earlier in the interview. But I'd like to ask Ansan in the distant distant future when you do retire, what is it if you'd retire? I don't think great coaches ever do, by the way, but what's the legacy that you'd like to leave behind you as a coach?
Anson Dorrance 55:03
I think one reason that I watch all those political shows is because I'm going to turn an optimist. And I think, and I'm quoting someone else, and I'm not going to get this exactly right. But I'll get close to what I'm trying to say.
The arc of human history, I think, bends towards justice. The arc of human history, I think bends in the right direction. And I guess, I want to be a part of that bending in the right direction. I want the people that I've trained to have principal centers, to be positive forces in their own community, I would like my own children, to similarly maintain their principal centers, and have positive impacts in their communities as well. [PB11]
Paul Barnett 59:09
just into it, Hearn the previous one to send a turn. Yeah. Oh, Helen Clark.
Anson Dorrance 59:17
Yeah, these women have through the pandemic. If you look at the countries that navigated the pandemic, the best. They're all led by women. Why? Because their moral center and their decision making is based on how people are affected. I would rather be led by someone like that. So I want to be that sort of leader and I want to develop other female leaders like that. And hopefully, I have the chance in this class. I'm teaching the men in the room as well to make their decisions based on affecting people in the most positive way. So I guess that's the legacy. I'd like to leave Leave is let's make this world a better place. And let's make it a better place by having our leaders care about all of us.[PB12]
Paul Barnett 1:00:14
I think of a better place to finish as the father of two daughters. So thank you so much for your time today and it's a complete masterclass. I really appreciate you being so open and honest and taking the time with me today.
Anson Dorrance 1:00:27
My pleasure. I have thoroughly enjoyed it as I knew I would. And I am a huge fan of that whole population down under so I think you've selected the right place to live.
Paul Barnett 1:00:40
Thank you and I appreciate it and all the best with the season ahead.