GoHeels Exclusive: A Chance To Say Thanks

By Pat James, GoHeels.com

Upon graduating from North Carolina in May of 1974 with a bachelor's degree in English and philosophy, Anson Dorrance was unsure what he was going to do with his life.

One thing he was certain of, though, was where he and his wife-to-be, M'Liss, would live.

The son of an American oil executive, Dorrance was born in Bombay, India, and grew up constantly on the move. Kenya, Ethiopia, Singapore, Belgium and Switzerland were among the other countries in which he resided. But he always considered himself a native of North Carolina, where every three years he spent three months on his grandparents' tobacco farm in Lewisburg.

Dorrance's five years as a UNC student further solidified his connection to this state. They also led him and M'Liss to settle in Chapel Hill. And although he eventually discovered his calling, one that could've taken him elsewhere, Dorrance never did leave.

"This is home," said Dorrance, the 22-time national championship-winning head coach of the Carolina women's soccer program. "And it's home in the right way."

Now in his 43rd year of service to the UNC soccer programs, he is set to become forever memorialized at the stadium that he's always wanted built in the heart of the town he loves.

On Monday, the University announced that it is naming the field at the new UNC Soccer & Lacrosse Stadium for Dorrance. The stadium, which opened in March, has already hosted three Tar Heel women's soccer games. But Sunday, Dorrance Field will be officially dedicated before the team plays long-time rival Notre Dame at 1 p.m.

Dorrance will surely make his latest honor about all the players he's coached, as he's done at every opportunity in his journey to 1,027 wins. They're quick to say he deserves it, though – and it's not only because of his unparalleled success.

"You think of all the people he's touched," said Janet Rayfield (1979-82), "and I think this opportunity kind of gives us an opportunity to say thank you."

'Something really special'

Growing up in Dallas, Rayfield became enamored with soccer, but she never thought she'd have an opportunity to continue playing it after high school. No one, at least, had presented that option to her. So, she started making plans to walk on to the volleyball team at Regis College, now Regis University, a small Jesuit school in Denver.

Then she met Dorrance.

Entering his third season as the Carolina men's soccer coach, Dorrance had just added duties as head coach and founder of the women's program when Rayfield graduated from high school in 1979. After learning about Rayfield from some youth soccer contacts and looking into her soccer background, Dorrance invited her to visit campus that July.

It didn't take long, Rayfield said, for Dorrance to start talking about his vision for the program and how he thought the Tar Heels would win a national championship. He didn't have any data to back that up. Still, she trusted him. And he offered her an opportunity she couldn't pass up.

"I say all the time Anson could sell ice to Eskimos," said Rayfield, who became Dorrance's first recruit. "I think he knew that we were going to be innovative in the sense that we were getting ahead of the game; there wasn't a lot of collegiate women's soccer. He knew the kind of school that Carolina was. I think he certainly believed in himself as a coach. And I think the belief in the school, the belief in himself as a coach and obviously his experience (convinced me).

"I really didn't have the opportunity to be exposed to someone who had the sort of experiences that he had, even just at Carolina. So, it was exciting for me to go in and kind of be a part of something that had at least the chance to be something really special."

Two years later, UNC captured its first national title in 1981, under the AIAW banner. Carolina won its first NCAA title a year after that, during Rayfield's senior season. She finished her career with 93 goals, which still rank as the second most in program history.

Initially, Rayfield said Dorrance was a bit distant with his players on the women's team, who he called by their last names. But that changed over time.

"It was much more about our technique and some of those things and much less about maybe the person (early on)," she said. "And I think he grew, even in the four years that I was there, to be a little bit more relaxed in that environment.

"It was the first time he'd coached women, so I think he was learning what those dynamics were like. I think it took a while for us to really get to know him and for him to sort of be himself in that environment. But his knowledge of the game and his willingness to let us compete was something that I hadn't experienced."

Dorrance managed to do that while also making sure his players valued cooperation. That, Rayfield said, is "something that you have to cultivate every day." Currently in her 18th season as the head coach at Illinois, she's strived to do that over the course of her coaching career.

"To kind of see that process," Rayfield said, "and be able to go, 'Yeah, that's the kind of process I think is important to put into place as you're building a college program,' I think was so beneficial for me. And certainly his drive in that and his vision in that is something that has been really important to me in my career as a coach."

Leadership lessons

By the time Lorrie Fair Allen (1996-99) arrived in Chapel Hill, the Tar Heels had won 12 of the first 14 NCAA championships and established a pipeline to the U.S. women's national team (USWNT). The best of the best played at UNC. And Allen, who'd already made her USWNT debut, certainly had the potential to be among them.

Because of all that, Allen made the assumption that many outsiders still make to this day. That Carolina was a factory in which people just eat, sleep, live, breathe and dream soccer. But she quickly learned that wasn't the case.

"There are these moments of extreme focus on the field," she said. "Once you cross those lines it's all about training, all about getting better, all about pushing your teammates to be better, all about the team. And then off the field, it's missing plane flights and I don't know who booked the hotel and leaving a rental car at the airport in front of the terminal because we were late, like, 'Oh, the rental car company can come pick it up.'"

She affectionally describes it as a yin and yang of extreme focus and utter chaos. It's also like life. She said that, along with Dorrance's insistence on not enforcing any rules so as to allow his players to make their own decisions, encourages growth.

"I think what he has done in a really amazing way," Allen said, "is he's created this environment where people can choose to determine their own futures, where it's like, 'Look, this is all here for you. If you want to be the most fierce competitor ever, you can do it here. If you want to float by, that's your decision.'

"He gives you the opportunity to serve others. With all the off-field development, too, he provides the opportunities for you to gain experience and learning and readings and things just to learn how to become sort of that servant leader."

As a Tar Heel, Allen claimed three national titles and was named the 1999 National Player of the Year. As a member of the USWNT, she excelled on the 1999 FIFA World Cup championship team and was an Olympic silver medalist in 2000. She then ended her national team career in 2005 after earning 120 caps.

Fourteen years later, she hasn't stop benefitting from the leadership lessons she learned at UNC.

As a sports envoy for the U.S. Department of State, she supports U.S. diplomatic missions abroad by leading soccer clinics for young people around the world. The clinics are meant to show key decision makers why it's important to provide children with opportunities to play sports and engage youth in a dialogue on the importance of leadership and respect for diversity.

Allen is also the program director for the Charlize Theron Africa Outreach Project. In that role, she's involved in identifying and working with community-based organizations in South Africa that engage young people in HIV prevention and awarding grants to help them accomplish their goals.

Three years ago, Allen began pursuing an online master's degree in public administration through the UNC School of Government. She recently finished her portfolio and performed an oral defense of it. She has one class left and hopes to graduate in May.

"Every day I'm trying to figure out ways to be better and learn more," she said. "I think everything was reinforced from the way my parents brought me up and then the reinforcement from coaches and mentors and then the environment at Carolina – that striving to be a perpetual learner, a perpetual kind of skill gatherer – and knowing you can learn something from everybody regardless of age or gender or whatever.

"Carrying that forward with the national team, everything was just magnified more and more and just made more obvious and more clear that, one, you will never learn enough and that you need to always serve others better. I think that's definitely something that Anson really helped foster in everybody, in all of his players."

Developing players as people

Anna Rodenbough (2005-08) never truly considered going anywhere else.

Her parents met at the UNC School of Law and her older brother also attended Carolina. Like them, she wanted to be a Tar Heel. And as much as she wanted to follow in their footsteps and get her education here, the Greensboro native wanted just as badly to play for Dorrance.

When she finally met him late in her high school career, he told her she likely wouldn't see much playing time at a crowded goalkeeper position. Initially, she said she was a bit stunned by his honesty. But she also appreciated it, and realized his directness could help her become the best player she could be. So, she joined the team as a walk-on.

"For me in my life, personally, it was a great fit for me to be at Carolina in general," said Rodenbough, who went on to start 64 games and record 108 saves during her career. "But in terms of my development as a player, there's no doubt in my mind that that was the place where I was able to reach what my peak potential would have been."

Like the majority of freshmen before her and every one since then, Rodenbough remembers receiving the booklet Dorrance sends to all newcomers the summer before they enroll. In it were a list of drills and exercises that she needed to do to prepare for the season.

It also included the team's core values, an essential part of the fabric of the team.

Each core value has a corresponding statement from Dorrance that describes it. Some statements feature a passage from a philosopher, author or poet. Other include a note from a former player. Every season the players memorize the core values and core value statements. They're then each randomly asked to recite them during preseason training.

"Having that kind of ingrained from day one, I think it's very obvious that Anson, both in what he says and in his actions, really wants to develop his players as people," Rodenbough said. "I think using those core values and stressing the importance of those is part of how you get there. I think that it's clear that to excel in the environment, excel in the program, you really do have to buy into those things."

She still does.

Rodenbough earned a master's degree in public health leadership and a doctoral degree in medicine from UNC. She then served as a pediatric resident at the University of Chicago before starting a fellowship in pediatric critical care medicine at the Emory University School of Medicine.

"We choose to be positive" and "we don't whine" are among the core values that remain a part of her life. She can still recite the passage that accompanies the latter word for word:

"The true joy in life is to be a force of fortune instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy." – George Bernard Shaw

"I think those are some of the things that I have really taken with me," Rodenbough said, "in terms of my outlook on life and on whatever situation is at hand and how to really adapt and be successful or be as successful as you can be, regardless of what the circumstances are."

Creating confidence

Although she grew up in Mill Valley, Calif., just outside of San Francisco, Kelly McFarlane (2010-13) was always a Carolina women's soccer fan.

Dorrance once recruited her mother, Marilou. She ran cross country for the Tar Heels instead. But she didn't hesitate to send McFarlane to Dorrance's soccer camps, and the family even hosted his team for dinner during one of its trips to the Bay Area.

At one point, McFarlane said she wasn't sure if she was qualified to play at Carolina, based on what she'd seen from the outside. But those thoughts dissipated once she joined the team and was thrust into the competitive environment.

"I think on a fundamental level," McFarlane said, "being a part of that program and being tested and pushed to try to improve every day and being in that competitive cauldron really allows you to ultimately build up confidence that you can work hard and you can be in tough environments (and also) survive and thrive."

Upon graduating from UNC, McFarlane played for the Houston Dash in the National Women's Soccer League before becoming a healthcare analyst at Huron Consulting Group in San Francisco. She was admitted to Harvard Medical School in 2016. Although she's still working toward a medical degree, she's currently taking a break from that to pursue a master's degree in business administration at Stanford, where she's a Knight-Hennessy Scholar.

She hopes to become a physician who will advocate for healthcare innovation to improve quality, access and cost.

"I think my experience on the UNC team and everything I learned from Anson," McFarlane said, "kind of gave me the confidence to pursue some of these dreams and the confidence to know that I can work hard and come out on the other side better for it."

McFarlane said she still remains in touch with Dorrance "fairly often." He's written letters of recommendation for her, and whenever something new happens in her life, she always makes sure to update him because she knows "it's something he'll be proud of and he cares about for us."

That sort of support goes a long way.

"I'm fortunate to have a really great family who is always around me and always supportive," McFarlane said, "but it means a lot to have someone else who is a soccer coach and doesn't have to care about us the way he does. I think it means a lot.

"The way that he cares about his players is what fosters such a great family and such a great alumni community in that everyone looks forward to seeing him and seeing the team and each other because of this community he's created where he really cares about us and shows us to really care about each other."

And on Sunday, several members of that community will gather in the town he'll always call home to show how much he means to them.

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