Anson Dorrance and the 69th Annual NSCAA Honor Award

Every now and then it happens that human beings are privileged to live on the same planet as a superhuman – possibly an extraterrestrial man or woman – who rises above all other great achievers. An example is Dr. Roger Bannister who not only broke the 4-minute mile barrier, but broke mankind’s deeply engrained bias that it was impossible for a human being to run a mile in less than four minutes. We know that to be true because since the Dr achieved the feat at Oxford on May 6, 1954…1,755 people have run the mile in less than four minutes. Indeed, as of June 2022…that record has been lowered by 16.27 seconds and is now held by JAKOB INGEBRIGTSEN who accomplished the feat at the 2023 Bowerman Mile at the Prefontaine Classic & Diamond League Final.

Today’s post features a man (superhuman?) who I consider the greatest soccer coach ever who ever existed. When I was coaching at SPU, we played a semifinal game in the NCAA semifinal game that ended after four Ots (5-5) defeating host FIT, on penalty kicks in the 13th round – at quarter to one in the morning. (Two nights later we went on to win our 5th NCAA championship 1-0 vs S Connecticut State. The point of this reference is: the English sportswriter – in attendance to cover the almost dozen English players (including the all-time NCAA career scoring record holder - Richard Sharpe…) – wrote an article posted in the English press the next day – that began with this quote: “I just witnessed a game of ‘football’ which is not the GREATEST football game I have ever seen: “IT’S THE GREATEST ‘FOOTBALL’ GAME EVER PLAYED! To that end the article you are about to read is about the GREATEST SOCCER COACH – EVER –ON THE PLANET! Just before the current season began…he announced his retirement after 47 years! Read on!

Secretariat.  Moses. Noah. Napoleon. Gibraltar. Everest. Kobe. Nero.  Churchill. Rocky. Dempsey. Ali. Tiger.  

All are legends. They are known simply by their name.  By everybody.  Whether schoolgirls in Nebraska or knights in Newcastle.  And everywhere. Whether muddy fields in Missouri or the Halls of Montezuma.  No further explanation. They transcend the ages! 

Circus acts are exciting. Human cannonballs are wild and crazy and sometimes comical. Wild animals jumping through flaming hoops can be scary if not chilling, while high wire acts are spellbinding if not electrifying.   

So, what does all this have to do with the National Soccer Coaches Association of America’s 69th Honor Award presentation?

The ride we are about to take is a full-length movie, a 947-page Tom Clancy novel and 47 Harry Potter segments all rolled into one! And, the most challenging high wire to traverse is just identifying the recipient ... please ride along … 

His name is ANSON! It’s all that's needed. It’s stand-alone.  A desktop icon. But there are serious questions about whether he is one man or a legion? Or even human? For sure, the question endures: What makes him tick? Or maybe the better question is: How does he do THAT? Surprisingly, he is not the first Anson. 

He was born ALBERT ANSON DORRANCE IV. But all reports point to the fact that he IS NOT A HUMAN.  HE IS A QUOTATION. HE LIVES ON QUOTES. HE LOVES QUOTES. HE IS A QUOTE. HE'S A WALKING THESAURUS OF WHOM TIM CROTHERS IN ‘THE MAN WATCHING’ SAYS: “…HE IS ALWAYS ON THE VERGE OF AN ANECDOTE.”  

“He is an old-school orator who thoughtfully measures rhythm and cadence and vocabulary …  as well as the attention span of his audience.” 

ALBERT ANSON DORRANCE THE FOURTH WAS BORN IN AN EARTHQUAKE … IN BOMB-BAY, INDIA, long before there was a MUMBAI.  And perhaps ~ in his very bloodline ~ there is a tiny clue to his matchless success, his peerless conquests and his relentless pursuit of perfection. Normally, we talk about wins and losses … and surely, we must; but stroll along his genealogical path for a moment …

As Peggy Peoples Dorrance barreled along the narrow streets of Bombay in the middle of the night she couldn’t distinguish between the effects of the earthquake and the tremors in her belly. And, as Nathan Dorrance awaited the birth of his first child on April 9, 1951, he was reading the startling accounts of Harry Truman firing General Douglas MacArthur.

Nathan, a former soldier, pondered what he knew to be true that “…no leader, no matter how decorated, is ever bigger than the war itself!” Had Truman known some Dorrance family genealogy, he might have enlisted all of them: Anson’s great-great-great-great grandfather Samuel Dorrance fought for the Continental Army in the Revolutionary War. Samuel’s older brother Lieutenant Colonel George Dorrance led the troops in the Battle of Wyoming where he was wounded and captured by Indians near Pennsylvania’s Forty Fort. He refused to surrender his sword, so the Indians wrestled it away from him and used it to cut off his head. He died on Independence Day, July 4, 1778.  

His son, Captain George Dorrance, fought for his country in the War of 1812 and his grandson, George, fought for the Union Army at the Second Battle of Winchester in the Civil War. Anson’s paternal grandfather Albert Anson II flew arms from India to China ~ over the Hump ~ until he was shot down captured and charged as a spy. He spent two years in captivity during which time he and a fellow POW survived by drinking each other’s urine. 

HIS son Nathan, known as Pete, served in the Pacific theater as a Navy submarine navigator and would name his son after his late brother Albert Anson Dorrance III, who perished on D-Day when the C-47 he piloted was shot down behind enemy lines in Normandy. 

Pete, following in his father’s footsteps as a Standard Oil executive, was transferred regularly and moved often. Such moves included frequent trips to his father-in-law’s farm in Louisburg, NC which may explain why Anson Albert Dorrance IV, without the drawl, has always been linked to North Carolina. He loved those visits and longed for Louisburg. But he is a nomad ~ a child of the world but the offspring of greatness. Before he was seven years-old ~ when they left Bombay … and by the time he was 14 … he had lived in Nairobi; Addis Ababa; Singapore and Brussels, Belgium.  At that time, he was shipped off to La Villa St. Jean a catholic boarding school in Switzerland. 

He shunned contact sports but loved war games … so he turned out for every sport in the school. The smallest and scrawniest kid on the team, he was accustomed to getting bullied and beaten, arriving home many times with blood leaking from some or another part of his body. But therein may lay the secret we all desire to know.

Most of the fights he got into were because he was an American “Quote…standing up for my country.” Unquote. (This came from the mouth of a kid who rarely stepped foot on U.S. soil except when in Louisburg.)  He fought regularly … almost always with bigger kids, but never backed down.  For a man who loves quotes the one for the ages comes from Anson himself:  He said, “I’ve never been afraid of fighting. I didn’t win that many because I was never very big. But I would rather fight and lose than not fight at all!” 

Ironically, he seemed destined to fight whether physically, philosophically, emotionally or verbally.  And when he did visit the Louisburg farm he slopped hogs and toted bail and befriended the tenant laborers ~ most of whom were black.  And, therefore, got sideways with the white kids. In Ethiopia, at St. Josephs’ school, he was the only white kid in a school of 500 black kids who threw stones at him for being white and defending America. Anson said, quote: “I developed this wonderful understanding of how it works on both sides of the divide. I’m beat up by the blacks for being white in Addis Ababa and beat up by the whites in Louisburg for hanging out with the blacks. At the time I didn’t see the irony because I didn’t know what irony was, but I had a suspicion that there was something very wrong about it.”

This may be another insight into what makes Anson tick. And, if that can be determined, there might just be a tiny opening to the DNA mystery of his coaching mastery.  Maybe it’s the fact that from the time he could walk, and think, he loved war games. Crothers tells us that as a ninth grader he stood just four feet eleven but because of his attitude he seemed much larger. He had a competitive, chip-on-the-shoulder approach that was fun for him but terrifying to his opponents. He spoke it as he saw it, and if you didn’t like it he didn’t much care. He didn’t mind being one against ten and he felt compelled to participate in almost every sport.  

While at La Villa St. Jean he starred on teams in softball, tennis, track, ice hockey and was one of the best basketball players on campus. He practiced alone for hours dribbling around pillars that lined the court; was the quarterback on the football team; earned a green belt in judo; and he treated mountain climbing fieldtrips as competitions, delighting not in the scenic alpine vistas but in rushing to be first to the summit. On Villa ski outings he would careen down the slopes out of control, enduring catastrophic crashes and once he ‘flew’ off the side of a mountain, surviving only because he was caught in a net suspended over the gorge.  As a senior his recklessness won him the school’s giant slalom competition, even though he wasn’t a member of the ski team. 

As a freshman, he was cut from the soccer team but returned to make the team for the next three years. It wasn’t his talent; it was his “boundless stamina, his thirst for practice, his distinctive tip-toe stride, and his acid commentary.” Often, when a teammate misplayed a ball, you could hear him shout: “You might try passing to someone in our colors!”

UNC teammate Kip Ward described him as a “combination of pride and arrogance and determination and very little talent!” Other teammates called him H & H for “Hack and Hustle.” His father, Pete, once stared his sixteen-year-old son in the eye and said, “Anson, you are the most confident person without any talent that I have ever met.” One reporter said Anson was “quote…the kind of guy that if you can’t win the game, win the fight in the parking lot.”

But if you think it is all war games and Patton-like expressions, come back with us to the first meetings between Anson and M’Liss, his bride of 36 years. It was at a family outing in Addis Ababa; he was eight … she was seven, and she always wanted to be around him because she thought he was cute. They were playing hide and seek, and Anson was ‘it’. She tiptoed a few feet away and ‘hid’ in the shadow of some bushes with thin darkness her cover. As soon as he finished counting Anson sneaked over and sat down beside her. “How’d you find me?” asked M’Liss.  Anson replied, “Your hair was shining in the moonlight!” M’Liss has carried this through her life. For his part, Anson was merely answering the question.

M’Liss is spelled: M ~ apostrophe ~ capital L- i – s – s! She was named after the heroine of a Bret Harte, turn-of-the-century short story by the same title. Later, the book was turned into a silent movie starring Mary Pickford as the Wildest Wild West Girl. And as a talkie in the '30s starring Anne Shirley as the heroine. 

When Anson next caught up with M’Liss she was an accomplished, professional ballerina in New York. He watched her dance as Mary in the nativity scene and “squirmed in his seat” as she cavorted with Joseph around the cherry tree. As soon as the show ended, he went backstage, led her outside and asked her to marry him. M’Liss laughs and says: “He didn’t even have a ring but proposed in a fit of passion because he was jealous of Joseph!"

They were married August 31, 1974, in an English-style chapel that sits above Arlington Cemetery! Together they have three children; Michelle, a graduate of New York University and an internationally renowned rhythm tap dancer on the faculty of the Broadway Dance Center; Natalie, a graduate of UNC ~ currently on leave from the Greensboro Public Schools ~ who, with attorney husband Dave Harris ~ presented M’Liss and Anson with their first grandchild Finley Dorrance Harris … and, finally, Donovan, a sophomore at UNC. 

M’Liss has continued to dance and teach dance at the Ballet School of Chapel Hill, which she co-founded in 1980. She was recently awarded emeritus status following her 2007 retirement from Duke University where she taught and served the Dance Program for 32 years. And, she is Anson’s best friend. She is the gas pellet of his universe and a great achiever in her own right. M’Liss is more than an apostrophe; she’s a punctuation mark. In fact, she’s the exclamation point of the Dorrance family! 

Incidentally, lest you think all was serious in the Dorrance family, a follow-up note needs to be made about the matron of the Louisburg farm. Rafaella Dorrance first married Albert Anson Dorrance the II but later divorced him and married Peggy’s Dad, Lewis Jack Peoples. Overnight Peggy’s mother-in-law became her stepmother…which, I think means that Anson the Fourth became his own grandpa! There’s more: After both men died, Rafaella placed both of their pictures on her mantle. 

So, this is a year of ‘firsts’. A year when the recipient of the Honor Award has been called ‘The Man Watching’.  Such a description suggests inactivity; onlooker; one in the crowd! Not so! This man transcends achievement! He embodies the definition of everything we know about coaching, teaching, guiding, counseling and leadership.  Wall Street spends billions annually on one principle: Getting others to believe it is in their best interest to help it achieve its goals! That is neither nothing more nor less than what lies behind Anson’s success. He gets results. He is not the man watching … he is the man watched … by everybody!

And, yes, there are lists of staggering accomplishments, mindboggling accolades, Halls of Fame, massive Coach of the Year Awards, books he has written and best sellers written about him; movies he has made; movies made about him; helpful videos he has produced to assist his fellow coaches on how to lead, train, influence and guide those players currently lured by the world’s great game. There’s all of that and more. If you have a spare year or two go to Google. And yet, this tribute would not be fitting without reference to a few highlights that set Anson and UNC apart for all ages to come. 

In 32 years, not counting those he won as coach of the men’s team, he has won 715 games, lost 39 and tied 24. UNC has won 22 ACC conference championships and 20 ACC tournament championships and holds a record of 139-10-4 in ACC regular season games. They are 57-0-3 in ACC tournament games and 106-7-1 in NCAA tournament games. And, of course, the record that makes Anson and UNC a sports dynasty ~ surpassing any record in any sport ~ at any level ~ amateur, professional and the world ~ 92 wins in a row (forget Connecticut basketball); a 103-game unbeaten streak, one world and 21 National Championships! And, in 2004 ESPN named him as one of the twenty-five best coaches of the quarter century. Now breathe! 

Another first, this year, is a video component that allows us to hear from the man himself. We, therefore, interrupt this program for a special report ~ after which “news at 11” will provide the conclusion of this tribute: Play video! 

***** 

So what more can be said: Perhaps, this personal note: “Approximately 10 years ago, I was privileged to attend a Hall of Fame induction banquet sponsored by Loyola-Marymount University where one of the inductees was my son-in-law, an All-American basketball player. I was further privileged to be seated at the same table … arm-in-arm … with my good friend John Wooden, the legendary coach from nearby UCLA, a fan of the Loyola program and a very personal friend of Paul Westhead, a former coach of Loyola Marymount who was the feature inductee that night. When the final induction was ready for presentation, a somewhat garrulous, tuxedo-clad emcee ~ who had failed miserably most of the night at trivial commentary ~ while building cacophonously toward the final introduction ~ and knowing that the audience was very aware that Loyola-Marymount is situated in Westchester ~ breathlessly buffooned: “Ladies and Gentlemen…I give you “The Wizard of Westchester!” Some applauded; most squirmed. I can attest that the arm encircling mine did not tighten nor the pulse quicken.  Paul Westhead approached the lectern and stood silent for what seemed an eternity while his first finger punctuated the silence with deafening clarity. Then his hand slowly dropped while his finger began wagging back-and-forth ~ scolding and decrying the buffoonery of the misguided statement ~ until the line of trajectory pointed laser-like at John Wooden ~ at which time he spoke: “Nooooo, THERE IS ONLY ONE WIZARD!!" If you listen carefully, you may still hear the applause. 

Ladies and gentlemen, THERE IS ONLY ONE ANSON … and, tonight the National Soccer Coaches Association of America is privileged to bestow its most coveted award on the man who has fashioned the greatest dynasty in the history of sport. He was my hero when I first met him 53 years ago. He’s still my hero tonight ~ and, guess what? He’s just getting started….  

The paragraph below is added TO INCLUDE THE YEARS FROM 2011 THRU 2023…HIS FINAL YEAR:  

Dorrance, 73, is one of the most successful coaches in college athletics history. 

The Tar Heels’ first and only women’s soccer head coach to date, Dorrance led Carolina to a 934-88-53 record in 45 seasons (1979-2023). He also was head coach of the men’s soccer team from 1977-88, winning 172 games and guiding the Tar Heels to an ACC title and NCAA Final Four berth in 1987. Combined, Dorrance’s teams went 1,106-152-74 over 47 years.