By R.L. Bynum
Watching Anson Dorrance hold court during a postgame press conference on the field named after him was often as entertaining as watching his Carolina women’s soccer team play.
I had the pleasure of covering most of his matches during the last two seasons of his legendary coaching career, and it was a treat for somebody still learning the beautiful game.
There were thrills and heartbreaks for Dorrance, including coming 16 seconds away from his 23rd national championship. That was when UCLA rallied for a 3–2 double-overtime win in Cary in the 2022 national-championship game.
Dorrance is the sort of coach sportswriters dream about covering. He’s honest, sometimes to a fault, such as when he said he wanted Cal and Stanford to “die on the vine” when asked about the possibility of those schools joining the ACC.
He had no interest in adding those California schools to the ACC and made his feelings clear. Dorrance later issued an apology, but he was unapologetically honest on a daily basis.
Once, he questioned whether the referees for the match had graduated from the school that provided the opposition. He had a way of sarcastically getting his point across when he didn’t think the referees were fair to his team.
He often launched into stories that would make filibuster-loving congressmen jealous, and we’d be hanging on every word. It might not be related to the match we just watched, but it didn’t matter. He was holding court, and I was lucky to be there.
How good was he to the small press contingent, which sadly usually only consisted of me and student reporters? Once, after a key victory at Notre Dame — with the help of then-soccer SID Jody Jones — he conducted a postgame press conference, along with a player, using his iPhone.
How many other coaches would do that?
In the middle of one postgame press conference, his wife M’Liss called him. Not missing a beat, he had all of us say hello to her and quipped something about how she didn’t seem interested in talking to us.
In many of his answers, it was evident with his repeated references to Damon Nahas that Dorrance had taken more of a CEO role. Nahas, his associate head coach and now the interim head coach, did most of the game planning and made the halftime adjustments.
Dorrance could have taken credit when these moves worked out well, but he consistently mentioned that it was Nahas’ decision.
There’s no doubt that when it comes to guiding the program, the Tar Heels will be in good hands with Nahas, although there are huge challenges in following a legend. He may not be able to meet those when it comes to entertaining reporters after games, though.
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