Anson dorrance biography of michael
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Anson Dorrance, The Legendary North Carolina Women's Soccer Coach, Is Sure He Understands What Makes A Female Athlete Tick, And He Has 15 National Titles To Prove It. So Why Are Two Former Tar Heels Suing Him For Sexual Harassment
There was a time, Anson Dorrance will tell you, when he knew
nothing about women. Sure, he had been exposed to them: At age
seven he came home a schoolboy boxing champion, and his younger
sister, Maggie, promptly pulled on the gloves and drove one of
his teeth down his throat. Around that time, too, he saw that
his mother was the best athlete of all the adults he knew,
defeating everyone in tennis and, he says, regularly "beating
the s out of my dad in golf." But that kind of power only
broadened the mystery, and attending an all-boys boarding school
didn't help--though Dorrance did notice that when he donned
makeup and dresses to play women in school plays, the boys
became more attentive. Always a Juliet, never a Romeo: His first
year as a student at Nor
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The Pan-Pacific championships are as good as it gets for swimming in the middle of an Olympic cycle. It&#;s not the Olympics or the world championships, but it&#;s a chance to see a U.S. national grupp in action.
And because we&#;re living in the Michael Phelps era, it&#;s also a chance to see him in action. Sort of.
It&#;s a relief in these budget-strapped times that the Pan Pacs drew an actual media presence, calling attention to the feats of Ryan Lochte, Dana Vollmer et al. But Phelps, whose out-of-pool life has been in the news in the past, will always be beneath scrutiny.
So it&#;s no surprise that The Washington Post&#;s Amy Shipley went into great detail about Phelps&#; wayward practice habits. Basically, he&#;s not showing up all the time.
Thankfully, Shipley put Phelps&#; efforts in perspective, noting that several swimmers take extended breaks. (Are we sure Gary ingång Jr. didn&#;t hibernate between Olympics?)
My longtime USA TODAY colleague Vicki Michaelis says Phel
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The Front Porch
In front of a crowd of 1, in the shadow of Interstate 25 in Colorado, the North Carolina women’s soccer team kicked off its season Thursday with a victory against the University of Denver, putting home the game-winning goal in the 62nd minute.
In a vacuum, the win only means so much, particularly for a Tar Heels program with historical expectations that go far beyond a random mid-August night halfway across the country.
This particular game, however, carried a different, more visceral kind of significance. North Carolina’s players came together to pull out the win just four days after their coach, Anson Dorrance, informed them that he would be retiring effective immediately.
For even those with a passing knowledge of American soccer, Dorrance is more than just a coach. For 45 seasons, going all the way back to , he was the Tar Heels’ coach, carefully and brilliantly molding the program into as dominant a force as any college team has been in any sport at an