A Coach's Diary

“The vision of a champion is someone who is bent over, drenched in sweat, at the point of exhaustion when no one else is watching.” - Anson Dorrance Would you be willing to push yourself to exhaustion when no one else is watching to achieve your goals? Mia Hamm is one of the best female soccer players in the history of the sport. Her legendary soccer coach, Anson Dorrance, has told an inspiring story about Mia’s thirst for greatness several times. He said one cold, late winter morning while driving to work, he saw Mia doing a grueling conditioning workout all by herself where she ran cone drills, without a ball or teammates and coaches to push or celebrate her, to exhaustion. Coach Dorrance secretly pulled over to watch her, and he said in between each sprint, he saw her bent over with sweat flying off her and hot air shooting from her lungs. He said he was so impressed with what he saw that when he got to work, Coach Anson scribbled a note for Mia that said: “The vision of a cha...

Mia Hamm is one of the best soccer players to ever play, and she played for one of the best coaches and in one of the best college programs in the history of the sport when she played for coach Anson Dorrance at the University of North Carolina. When she was at North Carolina, they won four consecutive National Championships, and her team only lost one game of the 95 that she played on the team. You don't become the best without hard work. Coach Dorrance says, "The final measure of athletic greatness is not what you do in the training sessions with your peers and teammates - it's what you do on your own." In the video below, Coach Dorra nce shares his favorite story about Mia. He was driving to campus one day during Mia's senior year early on a cold, late winter morning. He said he stopped and saw Mia going through their grueling fitness exercise alone in a cold park. She was running through a cone drill where she had to sprint 5 yards and back, 10 yards, 15, 20, ...