What the Fields Teach

For 25 years, Anson Dorrance ‘74 — graduate of an all-boys boarding school — has been the unlikely conductor of the greatest athletic social experiment since women began playing college sports. It’s what you don’t see in games, however, that keeps the whole thing brewing.

Published in Carolina Alumni Review, November/December 2004

I had to suppress a smile recently when my 9-year-old niece’s soccer troubles were revealed by her mother during dinner. “She comes home from practice crying,” said my sister, amused as well. “She doesn’t like all the running they have to do.” Don’t be mistaken; I take no pleasure in her struggles as part of a new “challenge” team she recently had been invited to join – a kind of all-star or advanced squad to which recreational youth players can graduate. It’s just that I had spent the past two weeks at the practice field with the UNC women’s soccer team, watching freshmen who had played the game all their lives – well enough to be recruited by the most complete and successful program in the nation – bring up the end of a starting line and then, as punishment, complete five one-arm pushups in 90-degree heat and humidity before lining up to sprint 10 consecutive lengths of a soccer field and jog back to the beginning just as many times – a test that is known infamously in the champion-training business as “doing 120s.” I’d seen them wince from the physical and psychological pressure of trying to make it to one end in 18 seconds and back in 30 on each run. Two-thirds of the entire defending national championship team failed that benchmark. The eight players who did not fail got to sleep in while the others met for “breakfast” at 7 a.m. each morning thereafter – not to share a bagel but to run until they did pass the 120s.

Years ago, if you were a little girl who came home crying from an activity, it was probably from ballet practice, and not because of the strenuous nature of the hour but because one of the other girls was better than you or prettier than you or just didn’t like you. Today, if you’re a young girl shedding tears from the physical intensity of a lot of running, you’re in pretty good company.