The vision of a champion by Anson Dorrance. Quotes V

-You go to high school for academics, not for soccer. High school is for developing your intellect particularly if you are pursuing a college education.
-Your first priority should be your academics.
-Internal motivation to become a better player and contribute to your team, versus external rewards, such as a wining record or your name in lights, is the most important criteria.
-It is not productive to be a negative force; it helps no one, and you demean yourself.
-We are more interested in players that are interested in us.
-By dynamic.
-Competitive drive is not governed by innate ability, but by self-discipline and desire.
-Competing in practice is the key. We train competitive instinct so constantly that by the time we play a game it comes naturally.
-I am continually developing as a coach by learning from the game, our players, and the insights of our colleagues.
-The competitive cauldron is about outlasting your opponent, physically and psychologically. That's what fitness enables you to do.
-In order to improve, and to foster competitive drive, you must consistently push yourself to places that are not so comfortable.
-A broken player: he is a step late for a 50-50 ball, he hides when she has an opportunity to be involved. The stronger team, or player, may look fresher, as if they are less fatigued. The broken player seems discouraged, and not as interested in playing anymore.
-You will be more successful if you can work with the type of coaches who encourage competitive behavior by praising players for seeking out duels, taking physical risks, being relentless, and positively impacting on winning. Find coaches who continually reinforce competitive behavior, until it becomes a habit in you.

The vision of a champion by Anson Dorrance. Quotes IV

-The winning mentality is partly optimism, but mostly it is a combination of focus, pride, competitive anger, relentlessness, hardness, fitness and courage, all of the most descriptive words for competitive athletics. This type of mentality is not about your skills or tactics. What it comes down to is intense desire. To get this winning edge, you need to build an indomitable will. This means you must be relentless; you must never give up.
-The winning mentality is not a talent. It is a choice, a decision you make to develop it.
-Ordinary effort is when you are comfortable. That's mediocrity.
-Confidence is a living, breathing thing. It changes every single day. Confidence needs to be nurtured. You should practice it just like you do every other skill, whether it's technical or tactical. Confidence takes work. I am still working hard on it every single day.
-If I had been questioning myself and my confidence while competing, I don't think I would be where I am today.
-I was not going to put pressure on myself by saying: 'I know I am playing great when I score five goals'. Instead, I told myself: 'You are going to gain more confidence every time you close down a defender, every time you win a ball, or make a great run, or set someone up' because those were things I had control over.
-There is an important quality among great soccer players. It is having a soccer sense.
-An ideal team has on each of its four lines at least  one player with a combination of soccer sense and leadership skills.
-The first five yards is in your head.
-You've got to love the ball.
-Your priority should be playing time and experience, and developing your player personality.
-If the boys don't pass you the ball, you will have to go out and get it. Make it happen.

The vision of a champion by Anson Dorrance. Quotes III

-Your attitude affects everything you do.
-What is also nice about these qualities is that you can have them just by a decision you make.
-Everyone has strengths. Keep working on your weak areas, but make your strengths flourish. Focus on what you can control, work ethic and attitude. Don't let anyone ever tell you can't be great. There is greatness in all of us.
-When times really get tough, that's when your true self comes out.
-If it were easy, everyone would do it.
-The ones who deal with tough, competitive, difficult situations in a positive way usually seem to be the ones who move on, or if they don't, they still feel a sense of reward and fulfillment.
-I felt honored to play on that team. It was my job to accept whatever role necessary for the good of the team, but to keep trying to achieve more.
-The hardest problem in making females into great soccer players is trying to get them to excel in the one v. one environment. One v. one is the most important drill for teaching not only optimum soccer skills but the psychological dimension needed to compete. I cannot stress enough its importance.
-Being competitive means being fully engaged in the game, which is actually a sign of respect for your opponent, because to play any easier against an opponent, or against your best friend, in practice is actually demonstrating a lack of respect.
-Enriching your life also means to expanding it.
-What it takes to develop individual soccer skills: the correct technique, and the enormous time commitment required to do it.
-To develop tactically, you have to become a student of the game.
-Pick out your heroes, and emulate them.
-When it truly counts, you are on your own. Your margin of success is based on your inner drive.
-You can solve problems. You make a difference. If you feel cut off, you reconnect with the coach. That is what it means to take responsibility. When faced with challenges, or problems, look within yourself and decide what you can do to make things better.
-What you have to do is to take responsibility, and then, n that declaration of responsibility, you are winning an amazing victory.
-Popularity and respect are different. Being liked is not as lasting as being respected.
-She would speak up on the field consistently, and she also used the correct tone.
-The right voice is a combination of tone and the manner with which you command a group.

The vision of a champion by Anson Dorrance. Quotes II

-We dissect the sport: technically, tactically, physically, and psychologically.
-Quality human beings are what create the most essential element of any team: great chemistry.
-The UNC philosophy is to nurture the one v. one artist, the great personalities.
-We set standards. One of them was for fitness.
-Even now, we have some tremendously talented girls at UNC who do not start for us because they don't pass the fitness test and someone else, perhaps not as talented a player, does.
-Everyone involved in athletics has an opportunity to demonstrate that her life has a deeper meaning.
-One of the wonderful life lessons of athletics is that success itself should not be the ultimate reward because there are a lot of people who work incredibly hard and never make it. What it is important, above all, is being in the arena.
-While you cannot control the events of your life, you can control your reaction to them.
-I love the soreness. Julie Smith.
-I don't separate soccer and life.
-Anson's reading list:
. Training soccer champions. Anson Dorrance.
. Man's search for meaning. Viktor Frankl.
. The leadership moment. Michael Useem.
. The road less traveled. M. Scott Peck.
. Go for the goal. Mia Hamm with Aaron Heifetz.
. Standing fast. Battles of a champion. Michelle Akers and Tim Nash.
. The game and the glory, an autobiography. Michelle Akers with Gregg Lewis.
. The champion within. Training for excellence. Lauren Gregg.
. Sacred hoops. Phil Jackson and Hugh Delehanty.
. Greater expectations. Overcoming the culture of indulgence in our homes and schools. William Damon.
-Every single day I wake up, I commit myself to being better. Some days it happens and some days it doesn't. I am still committed to that. There are games I am going to dominate and games I am going to struggle. It does not mean I give up.
-It is your commitment to the quest that is critical.
-What you celebrate in athletics is the struggle. 

The vision of a champion by Anson Dorrance. Quotes

-Winning does not tempt that man. This is how he grows: by being defeated, decisively, by constantly greater beings. Rainer Maria Rilke.

-What is extraordinary  and eternal does not want to be bent by us. And then, what you win or what you become has much more meaning. This kind of victory you carry with you wherever you go; it is what you are. 

-The unique and inquiring UNC world, one which, I would later discover, transcends more sport. It is a world in which women are called warriors; a world in which, even more than their athletic ability, players are valued for traits such as tenacity, resilience, and courage, testimony to the depth and quality of their character. Gloria Averbuch

-After hearing my first Anson pregame team speech, laced with life philosophy, I wept. Gloria Averbuch

-This book shows you that while skill is essential, what makes a true champion is not just physical ability of soccer talent. Victory only begins on the field. At UNC program, it is often outside the white lines that the players' abilities are truly tested, developed, and deepened. You will learn that champions are not born, they are constructed. Gloria Averbuch.

- Victory is never all triumph.

-Team chemistry requires constant attention. Sometimes you have to work off the field just as conscientiously as you do on it. 

-The winning mentality occurs when each and every player steps up to take responsibility. Be a part of the reason your team wins. 

-The will to win is overrated in athletics, because everyone wants to win. It's the will to prepare to win that makes the difference. 

-The vision of a champion is exemplified by heart, athleticism, strength, tactics, focus, and skill. 

-At UNC we do not believe in a sense of entitlement. 

-Let's dream impossible dreams. 

Calendar Book #3 March: The Vision of a Champion by Anson Dorrance

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. Quotes X

-All those things you can have now if you do not notice of all the past, and trust the future to Providence and direct the present in the way of piety and justice.
-With respect to that which happens conformably to nature, we ought to blame neither gods, for they do nothing wrong either voluntarily or involuntarily, nor men, for they do nothing wrong except involuntarily. Consequently we should blame nobody.
-If it is not right, do not do it; if it is not true, do not say it. For let your impulse be in your own power.
-The ending of life then is not only no evil to the individual, for it brings him no disgrace, if in fact it is both outside our choice and not inimical to the general weal, but a good, since it is timely for the universe, bears its share in it, and is borne along with it. For then is he who is borne along on the same path as God, and borne in his judgment toward the same things, indeed a man god-borne.
-To those who ask, 'Where have you seen the gods or how do you comprehend that they exist and so worship them' I answer, in the first place, they may be seen with the eyes'. In the second place neither have I seen even my own soul and yet I honor it. Thus, then with respect to the gods, from what I constantly experience of their power, from this I comprehend that they exist and I venerate them.
-What difference does it make to you whether for five years or a hundred? For under its laws equal treatment is meted out to all.

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. Quotes IX

-The soul obtains its own end, wherever the limit of life may by fixed.
-In all things, except virtue and the acts of virtue, remember to apply yourself to their several parts, and by this division to come to value them little: and apply this rule  also to your whole life.
-What a great soul is that which is ready, at any requisite moment, to be separated from the body and then to be extinguished or dispersed or continue to exist.
-Have I done something for the general interest? Well, then I have had my reward.
-What is your art? To be good. And how is this accomplished well except by general principles.
-Regarding those who try to stand in your way when you are proceeding according to right reason, be on your guard, not only in the matter of steady judgment and action, but also in the matter of gentleness. For this also is weakness, to be vexed at them, as well as to be diverted from your course of action and to give away through fear.
-Shall any man hate me? That will be his affair. But I will be mild and benevolent toward every man.
-A man ought to be seen by the gods neither dissatisfied with anything nor complaining.
-A man's character is in his eyes.
-The man who is honest and good ought to be exactly like a man who smells strong, so that the bystander, as soon as he comes near him, must smell the odor whether he chooses to or not.
-Nothing is more disgraceful than a false friendship.
-If these things are according to nature, rejoice in them, and they will be easy to you: but if contrary to nature, seek what is conformable to you own nature, and strive toward this, even if it brings no reputation; for every man is allowed to seek his own good.
-If men do rightly what they do, we ought not to be displeased; but if they do not right, it is plain that they do so involuntarily and in ignorance.
-A good disposition is invincible.
-Correcting errors must be done not in irony or by way of rebuke, but with kindly affection and without any bitterness at heart, not as from a master's chair, nor yet to impress the bystanders, but as if he were indeed alone even though others are present.
-To expect bad men not to do wrong is madness.
-There is no veil over a star.
-No man can rob us our feel will. 

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. Quotes VIII

-Whatever may happen to you, it was prepared for you from all eternity; and the implication of causes was from eternity spinning the thread of your being and that which is incident to it.
-Nothing is injurious to the part if it is for the advantage of the whole.
-What need is there of suspicious fear, since it is in your power to inquire what ought to be done? And if you see clearly, go by this way content, without turning back; but if you do not see clearly, stop and take the best advisers.
-If any other things oppose you, go on according to your powers with due consideration, keeping to that which appears to be just. For it is best to reach this object, and if you fail, let your failure be in attempting this. He who follows reason in all things is both tranquil and active at the same time, and also cheerful and collected.
-You have but a short time left to live. Live as on a mountain.
-No longer talk, but be.
-Let this always be plain to you, that this piece of land is like any other; and that all things here are the same as things on the top of a mountain, or on the seashore, or wherever you choose to be. For you will find just what Plato says: 'Dwelling within the walls of a city as in a shepherd'd fold on a mountain', and milking flocks.
-When you are offended at any man's fault, immediately turn to yourself and reflect in what manner you yourself have erred.
-To him who is penetrated  by true principles, any common precept, even the briefest, is sufficient to remind him that he should be free from grief and fear.
-A brief existence is common to all things and yet, you avoid and pursue all things as if they would be eternal.
-The healthy eye ought to see all visible things and not to say: 'I wish for green things'; for this is the condition of a diseased eye.
-In contemplating yourself, never include the vessel that surrounds you and these organs that are attached to it.