This article was published in September 2005.

What motivated you to become a coach, and who were your biggest influences on your development as a coach?
Well, I kind of stumbled into coaching full-time. The guy I played for, Dr. Marvin Allen, must have seen something in me because when he was on the verge of retiring he went in to speak to the athletic director here and he advised him to hire me as his successor. I didn't apply for the job. I was a law student, but he must have seen that I had a passion for this. The AD offered me the job, but my only coaching experience was at the rec level. I coached men for three years while finishing law school, then I was given the women's job. Marvin Allen was the driving force as to why I got the opportunity to be a college coach.

How would you describe your style as coach?
I think everyone who ends up coaching emulates their playing personality. At all the conventions they recommend that you adopt your own coaching mentality. We all had mentors and people we wanted to be like. You can't adopt someone else's persona, becuase it's simply not yours. All coaches must find a part of themselves to coach through. I've always had an aggressive temperament as a player, and I took that into coaching. The critical element on my teams is for the players to have a blue-collar mentality through their games and hard work in practice.

Do you have certain coaching principles that over the years you have refused to compromise? If so, what are they?
One thing that's happened to me as a women's coach is I started out thinking that you need to start your shape out with three up top because playing with three up top with high pressure and numbers forward will help you. It creates high defensive pressure early and in the opponent's staging area, which is generally in the back. Having numbers in the box also is a huge benefit. An area that continues to be weak in womens soccer is the ability to clear balls either with our heads or feet effectively. Since there are more numbers in the box, missed clearances result in more scoring opportunities.

What is your formation of choice?
My player personality was to work hard to make something happen. I think the 3-4-3 allows you to play with compactness. The semi-flat back three gives you wonderful compactness. The four midfielders and three forwards take away the opponent's staging area. We don't permit the opposing team to stage anywhere. We try and take away the other team's comfort zone. Whenever you gain something, as we do with the high pressure in their back, you're always going to lose something. We lose our own staging area by having less numbers in the back. We are hoping the opponent is less comfortable without one than we are. The semi-flat three works because it's tough for opponents to break down the compactness of it. The women's game hasn't yet evolved to a level where playing with a flat three in the back doesn't benefit you.

How do you handle teams that try to play the ball over the top of your back three and try to stretch you out?
That is the carrot we're dangling in front of them. We know they see that space over the top, so we spend 95 percent of the time training to defend it. We know how to protect the space. Just before service, the backs go into a full sprint to protect that space. We hope to gain the other team chaning their system to whackng long balls and playing in a rhythm they're not comfortable playing with.

What do you emphasize in training sessions? Has the training process changed over the years?
If you are not changing your training every year, you are going to become stagnant. Loss permits us to change. After we don't win a national championship we have the greatest change in training. So last year, when we didn't win, it allowed us to change everything. We revamped our spring training and our new ideas thrown in permitted us to do some very good things. By the end of spring training we had gone to another level as a team. One of the worst things about winning is the full permission to change everything. Even though we don't actually change everything, we do try to tweak a lot of the stuff we do on a regular basis. You get less resistance to change because we want to evolve with the teams that are getting better and better.

What are the main qualities that you look for in a young player?
it's hard to quantify what you're looking for in an elite player. We can all talk about technical ability, confidence and physical advantage. It's the mix or the extraordinary quality that turns your eye. Herb Greenburg, a guy hred by pro teams to certify whom to draft, gives the athletes a psychological test. It's hard to know and understand why guys who win the Heisman Trophy don't make it in the NFL. Talent isn't the only aspect that allows someone to make it at the highest level. There must be a mix of self-discipline, competitive fire and self-belief. The athletes with these qualities are going to get better evry year and they are the ones who are the margin of victory when the games are close. Those are the types of athletes I want to recruit. Even though you want guys that are quick and fast, the margin ultimately comes down to those three qualities. All of us have had players with great athletic ability who made it. But players with these qualities rarely don't make it.

When offering criticism to the team or individuals, how do you handle that at UNC? Do you do it individually, in front of the team? How do you handle the critical aspects of coaching?
Every athlete is different and must be led and motivated differently. Even though you don't know their hot button the first time you coach that player, the top coaches' platform of leadership is the capacity to explore what buttons are going to work. Rarely will a coach use the nuclear war button the first time he meets an athlete, which is to come our and dress them down publicly to get a change. Even though the button could be used eventually, coaches must explore the psychology of the athlete we're training. We must find a way to motivate and drive the player to higher and higher level. You're in a tag team with the player you're developing, even though every athlete will tell you how he or she wants to be coached. Most of us would love to be coached with positive reinforcement 90 percent of the time with suggestions of how to become a better player, but this doesn't work well for all.

Coaches start out by spending the summer workout for the athletes we're chasing, and sometimes they come in with physical preparation and technical foundation. But some ignore it. From the first introduction of this player when they come in to your environment, you can figure out where they are strong and weak. First, we'll be gentle with the athlete, but the standards need to be drawn in the sand and the athletes must cross the line to join you. You must figure out how to get the most out of your athletes by pushing different buttons until one's found that works. If nothing does, maybe there's nothing you can do to motivate this athlete and you turn it over to an assistant or someone else. That's part of coaching, trying to find out how to drive this unique individual to do his or her best.

Do you think team chemistry is important? What do you on your team to foster team chemistry?
The most critical thing is developing the leadership of upperclassmen and recruiting extraordinary people. There aren't really any tricks; it all comes down to personal leadership and the kind of character of the leadership you encourage or recruit into the program. There are some extraordinary people you want in your program that light up a room when they enter, but there are also negative players that suck all the light out. We all land somewhere between black holes that destroy chemistry and positive forces that do amazing things just be walking out there. I've been fortunate enough to coach the latter. These are the types of people who are just amazingly positive. Coaches can impact it to some degree, but you've really got to recruit it. Once you've recruited it, then the positive energy can take hold as you endorese the correct behavior through the people who serves as examples of that in your program.

You protect bad behavior by dressing down the ones not good for chemistry. At UNC we do it through a set of core values, of which we have 11. We have the athletes memorize these in the summer before they get here. The first one, which is "we don't whine" to the last, our responsibility to live a never-ending ascension. We have nine others between the two, with a quote we picked out to try and live. We encourage the athletes to live a set of standards through the core values that we've picked. I've selected them through the leadership of the team from the rising seniors and we review them every year to try and create an atmosphere that encourages personal growth and allows a chemistry with which we all treat each other well and work hard to develop and hopefully positive sportsmanship.

If you could mandate two or three aspects of the game that every youth coach should teach or emphasize, what would they be?
What's critical for very young players is playing in small numbers, even in their matches. Playing 3 v. 3's to 6 v. 6's. The youngest should be playing in smaller numbers and as their age increases, so should the numbers of the players on the field. The more times you touch the ball, the more you'll develop as a player. Another thing that would make a big difference is technical training as a youth. I don't think you can spend any better time as a youth player than hitting a ball against the wall and learning to strike it with power and accuracy with both feet, then when the ball returns the kid's learning to prepare it with a perfect touch. Also, play as much as 1 v. 1 as possible. The players who excite us at the highest level are the ones who are comfortable beating and defending players 1 v. 1. Playing smaller numbers with more 1 v. 1 opportunity and any kind of possession game are vital for youth development.

What is the biggest obstacle to player development at the youth level?
We don't create environments that are fun from beginning to end. The job of the first coach is to make what we're doing unbeliveably enjoyable. We have to hook these players with fun. Then eventually the game is going to be a passion for them. Unfortunately we keep losing the kids as they mature, the 13-, 14- and 15-year-olds, I think our job is to capture them and keep them. A part of that is to make the training environment short and fun. Our training environments are long and tedious, and the players try and just survive the environment. The kids think that there are so many more thinkgs they could be doing that would be more fun for them. The main responsibility of youth coaching is making sure the kids can't wait to come to practice, and when they get there can't wait to do things they can enjoy. You can't have the two and a half- to three-hour practices where they're just trying to survive. Make practice one hour to one and a half hours or less and make it well organized and fun so kids don't want practice to end, they want to keep playing. These are the kids we won't lose.

What concerns you most today about U.S. soccer as a whole?
My main concern with U.S. soccer is that we don't spend enough time creating and maintaining our communities the way we should. I would love for top leadership to embrace this. The extraordinary leaders of U.S. Soccer should spend more time creating a community at the highest level.

The leadership of U.S. Soccer contrasts so radically from that of the NSCAA. I think the NSCAA is the best model for construction of community. All the participants in it can see that everyone is serving everyone else. Our leadership is a rotated leadership, and there's not a fight for power in the NSCAA. There is not a preservation of one's individual power at the sacrifice of the game itself. When someone enters the NSCAA at a leadership position, they receive tenure of a few years. And what's wonderful is that everyone who enters into these positions knows they are serving the membership. They know they have their tenure to do positive things for the game and they develop and enhance the game. You work for a postive legacy for the game itself. U.S. Soccer could benefit from looking at how the NSCAA functions. There's some extraordinary leadership in U.S. Soccer, but, unfortunately, most of the leadership is invested in preserving power and moving up the ranks of U.S. Soccer and FIFA. Sometimes, you climb the ranks to the detriment of the game. We need to spend more time creating communities and preserving the best parts of our game.

What tactical trends have you seen in college or international women's soccer the last few years and where might they be going?
Usually the team that wins an international competition is in the position to dictate the women's game. When I was coaching the national team and we won in '91, the platform we brought to the women's game was physical discipline and playing personality. It showed the world how attractively women can play the game and how wonderfully creative they can be in the attack. The personalities we had in '91 -- like Mia Hamm, Michelle Akers, April Heinrichs -- they like to attack. They took the women's game to a fantastic level, where FIFA was convinced it could become a spectator sport. The in in '95 the Norwegians brought zonal organization in the back. It showed the world how classically organized the great women's teams could be. All of a sudden the women's game became one of total understanding. It continued to evolve into a possession game. The Chinese and U.S. final in '99 showed a posssesion game with technical ability continuing to evolve. When the Germans won, they used combination play and sophisticated tactics to set a new standard for the women's game. In the Olympics, the Brazilians proved they could play the game with their flair and creativity. This has been the evolution of the game. Every team that distinguishes itself on the the world platform becomes the exciting team of the period that all of us steal ideas from.

Is there a right time for a young player to concentrate solely on the game of soccer?
I really believe in a lot of cross-training. I'm not big on early specialization. Here at UNC we have four girls who play other collegiate sports. I see huge benefits for young girls playing a lot of sports growing up. The ideal evolution would start out in gymnastics as long as they could last. Being a seasonal athlete, playing every sport they can, helps contribute to their athletic ability. I think as they grow older, basketball and hockey are possibly the best training for a soccer player. Track and volleyball are wonderful as well. Hopefully, they have got another sport they have alongside it that they will enjoy for the rest of their lives. We encourage our players to take a golf class before they graduate. The only sport they can play, if they make the national team, that doesn't risk too much injury or use too much energy is golf. We encourage these athletes to play everything.