Pioneers: Stacey Enos, the National Team's First Tar Heel

INTRODUCING: Stacey Enos

COLLEGE: The University of North Carolina

PLAYGROUND PASSION: With no youth soccer or school teams to play for, Stacey started her athletic life on the softball field with girls and on the playgrounds with boys playing pickup soccer games. By age 14, Stacey found her way to Frisch’s, a soccer club team of mostly college-aged women. Though she has a twin sister, Romney, Stacey loved soccer so much she was prepared to move from Tampa to Miami to live with her aunt until Hillsborough County in Florida added girls soccer in to their school curriculum in 1980 in response to the landmark legislation known as Title IX.

Stacey Enos, horizontal in the center, keeps it light with members of the 1986 U.S. Women's National Team (photo courtesy of Cindy Gordon)

THE TRYOUT THAT ALTERED HER COURSE: Stacey said she had her heart set on playing soccer at the University of Central Florida in nearby Orlando, where she might have joined future National Teamers Linda Gancitano, Michelle Akers, Kim Wyant and Amy Griffin. When UCF coach Jim Rudy turned her down — “I think he probably figured he couldn’t tame me,” said Stacey — her high school coach pointed her toward Chapel Hill, where the new coach at North Carolina was holding an informal tryout. “Anson (Dorrance) wanted to kick the living shit out of everybody and I thrived in that environment,” said Stacy on Page 134 of Raising Tomorrow’s Champions. “I did run into Jim Rudy about 20 years later and he told me he knew he made a huge mistake in not bringing me in.”

THE PLAYER WHO CHANGED EVERYTHING: Among the most infamous stories in American women’s soccer history, thanks to nearly four decades of telling and re-telling by Anson, revolves around Stacey’s sophomore year when April Heinrichs — named the American player of the decade for the 1980s — arrived by way of Littleton, Colo. As detailed in our book and numerous other publications through the years, some of the older Tar Heel players visited Anson’s office to express objection to the new recruit’s brashly relentless style of play — but Stacey makes it clear she wasn’t one of them. She sees a life lesson for young players everywhere in her approach to her tougher-than-nails teammate. “I absolutely loved it, because April Heinrichs made me a better player,” said Stacey. “Anson always matched us up in practice and me training against April every day, in preparation for match day, was more physical, more demanding than anything I was going to face from any of the teams we played.”

THE NATIONAL TEAM: Between her junior and senior years of college, Stacey was among the approximately 70 women who traveled to Baton Rouge, La., to attend what unknowingly became the first-ever tryout for the National Team. With fellow Tar Heel Emily Pickering Harner injured for the first game in Italy that summer, Stacey carried home the distinction of being the first of more than 60 of Anson Dorrance’s North Carolina players to have played for the National Team in the past 36 years. She was also instrumental in another major team legacy that has endured from 1985 to now: the chanting of “Ooosa, Ooosa, Ooosa AH” prior to every game. As detailed in Chapter 13 of Raising Tomorrow’s Champions, Stacey was, as ever, the instigator. “I think if there was a role that I played, it was to keep things light hearted,” she said. “We focused on the job at hand, but it’s also important to have fun along the way.”

Stacey, right, with her wife, Annie, and their son, Gabriel

TAKE ME HOME, COUNTRY ROADS: When leg injuries suffered in a car accident ended Stacey’s playing career after she had started 10 of the first 11 games in team history, she said her life was shattered in more ways than one. For a long while, she said, she felt shunned by the game as a gay woman attempting to enter what seemed like an exclusive coaching fraternity. Her National Team resume, however, helped her land her first coaching gig at Utah State University from 1996 to 2001, and then her longest-standing appointment of 16 years as the head coach at Warren Wilson College in Asheville in western North Carolina. In 2018 she became part owner and coach of the Asheville City Soccer Club, a member of the Women’s Premier Soccer League that boasts 130 amateur adult teams across the United States. Though North Carolina isn’t known nationally as the most enlightened place for two married women to raise their son, Stacey has found personal and professional fulfillment in the city formed around the confluence of the French Broad and Swannanoa rivers. “Asheville is the kind of small city where there’s no judgement; people here just don’t care about someone’s orientation,” she said. “People are just people, accepted for whomever they are and whatever choices they make as long as they’re kind.”

Stacey was happy to point out her club team can boast of its own beer . . .

Stacey, left, with team co-owners Lydia Vandenbergh and Meghann Burke

Recognize the tall guest to Stacey's right? That's America's all-time leading scorer, Abby Wambach.

GRASS ROOTS SOCCER: With deep roots in the game, Asheville has become one of the Premier League’s true success stories, averaging 1,500 fans per game in a non-pandemic year and even selling out the municipal stadium for Pride Night with more than 2,200 people in attendance. Stacey was thrilled when one of her team’s star players from the 2018-2019 seasons, Jennifer Cudjoe, earned a spot on the New Jersey Sky Blue team of the National Women’s Soccer League. A native of Ghana, Jennifer had taken a circuitous route through the American educational system, with two small college teams in Oklahoma, another one in Ft. Kent, the northernmost town in Maine, before Stacey fielded a phone call from her coach Alex Smith, with whom Jennifer had just won a national Division III championship. “Without our team and our league, Jennifer probably would have had to leave the country to continue pursuing her dream,” said Stacey. “She developed into a better player here and look at her now. That’s what this is all about for me . . . growing the game I love.”

Pride Night filled the Asheville municipal stadium with fans in 2019.

Abusive Behavior: When Does a Coach Cross the Line?

Coaches can be demanding without being demeaning, according to Joanna Lohman, co-author of “Raising Tomorrow’s Champions.”

I stood on a sideline this weekend and rolled my eyes at an opposing team’s coach just before I moved as far away from him as the stands at the soccer stadium would allow. Even from the top row I couldn’t get away from the sounds of his constant hollering, badgering and criticizing of his players. “Damn, that dude needs to just chill out,” said my friend, who had come with me to watch my daughter play an otherwise quiet game.

We interviewed more than 20 coaches for our book, “Raising Tomorrow’s Champions,” including Anson Dorrance, Chris Petrucelli, Lauren Gregg and Becky Burleigh, some of the most successful men and women in the history of soccer. If there are two common denominators Joanna Lohman and I uncovered as we spoke to the coaches — as well as the National Team players who experienced their behavior along the way — it’s that they often win, and they occasionally make people cry. It just happens. The celebrated phrase, "There's no crying in baseball," doesn't apply when you're talking about young players with soccer dreams and coaches who dole out playing time and advice, sometimes loudly and colorfully.

We shared dozens of coaches' stories amongst the book’s 20 chapters and, to at least one potential reviewer, some of the anecdotes we shared seemed uncomfortably close to an unacceptable threshold. “Don’t you think you should have called out these actions for what they are: abusive treatment?” asked the journalist.

Except for a few notable exceptions that you’ll see if you read “Raising Tomorrow’s Champions,” Joanna and I consciously steered clear of making these kinds of value judgements when we retold the stories of the National Teamers and their coaches. We left that to our readers, the parents and players, to decide for themselves; we wanted anyone dreaming of a high level soccer career for their child to understand that demanding coaches are part of what you sign up for when you start writing checks to soccer clubs in hopes of getting money back in the form of an athletic scholarship — yet those demands should not include constant screaming and demeaning of players.

When does a coach cross the line? Anoher phrase, “I know it when I see it,” infamously first invoked by Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart in a landmark 1964 case that first attempted to legally define obscenity, seems to apply in the same way to coaching abuse — which means that, unless the abuse is physical, it’s often unclear if truly unacceptable behavior is happening. It’s also true that situations that can feel abusive to one person are perfectly acceptable to a teammate.

Joanna tells the story on Page 195 of RTC about a psychologically abusive coach who had no business being on the field. On Page 117, Jessica McDonald defends her club team coach, who had eventually been fired from the club due to inappropriate use of profane language. Throughout our seventh chapter, on the subject of coaching, Marian Dalmy Dougherty details her complicated relationship with Santa Clara University coach Jerry Smith. Put off by his bluntness, she loathed him as a teenager, yet came to think of him as one of the most positive influences in her life by the time she graduated. On Page 59, Joanna tells the story of a young girl who nearly quit soccer because her club coach’s behavior was literally giving her nightmares.

Santa Clara University head coach Jerry Smith is profiled in Chapter 7 of “Raising Tomorrow’s Champions” (photo courtesy of Santa Clara University).

“I know that, for myself, I needed to feel safe around my coaches or I would walk away,” said National Team pioneer Denise Boyer Merdich, who became a coach herself. “There were situations with certain people that just didn’t feel right to me and that would be my advice — that if the coach doesn’t feel right to you, doesn’t feel safe, then walk away.” Yet Denise also noted that tough practices and constructive criticism are all part of the package of a competitive environment. “Having a coach ride your tail, or running extra sprints? That’s not the kind of behavior I would be worried about. But if a coach is doing something you really think is inappropriate, then talk to your parents, talk to your safe person, and leave that coach if you have to.”

I know I wouldn’t allow my daughter to play for the coach I observed this past weekend. No amount of winning or on-field development would be worth listening to the heap of obnoxiousness being spewed the entire game. But was I witnessing abuse? At the end of the game, his players were all smiling and, from the outside looking in at that moment, one might conclude that I was the one being overly sensitive. That’s why these answers are rarely black and white.

Pioneers: Denise Merdich, the Selfless Teammate

INTRODUCING: Denise Boyer Merdich

COLLEGE: University of Puget Sound

INTRODUCTION TO THE GAME: Denise never considered herself athletic until John Dunlap, the father of a fellow future National Teamer, Joan Dunlap-Seivold, invited her to play soccer shortly after the Boyer family moved from California to the Seattle area. “I wasn’t competitive and I might have even been considered slow,” said Denise. “But somehow, when there was a soccer ball to chase, suddenly no one could catch me and stop me.”

Denise, playing as a member of the Tacoma Cozars

THE SALVATION: Denise’s father had served in the military during World War II, the Korean War and also in Vietnam and she said she believed he was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder by the time she was 10. When her father moved out of the home, Denise, her mother and brothers moved to Tacoma where, much to Denise’s surprise, a local soccer coach knocked on her door a week later. “Mr. Dunlap thought I should keep playing soccer, so he made a phone call and here was this man asking me to join his team,” she said. “I appreciated that. For those two hours on the field a few times each week, I was able to forget about everything at home.”

Denise, front of the line, in the Cozars’ team photo

RIGHT PLACE, RIGHT TIME: In those days, the University of Puget Sound fielded a women’s team, but the part-time coach had never actually played the game and the competition was less than stellar. Fortunately, Denise had already caught the attention of the Dunlaps and the rest of the Washington area’s immense pool of other soccer talent that would form the cornerstone of America’s earliest women’s national teams: Lorraine Figgins Fitzhugh, Michelle Akers, Sandi Gordon Yotz, Cindy Gordon, Amy Allmann Griffin, Lori Henry, Denise Bender, Shannon Higgins-Cirovski, Gretchen Gegg Zigante, Kathy Ridgewell-Williams and Sharon McMurtry. Denise also played for a bevy of renowned coaches through the years, including Greg Ryan, the first National Team coach, as well as Berhane Andeberhan, Clive Charles, Larry Feir and Booth Gardner, a two-term governor of Washington.

THE NATIONAL TEAM: Denise was first selected for the National Team in 1984 when it existed only on paper and made it again when the infamous selection occurred in July of 1985 at the Olympic Sports Festival in Baton Rouge, La. She played in all four of the National Team’s games in Italy in 1985, then took 1986 off. She agreed to try out again in 1987 and appeared in three games — scoring the only goal of her National Team career on July 7 against Canada — before retiring from the team just prior to it leaving for an international tournament in Tianjin, China.

BETTER HER THAN ME: Denise said she always considered her soccer teammates sisters and found it difficult to watch players get cut from the team when Anson Dorrance began to make significant roster changes, including the addition of teenagers Mia Hamm, Kristine Lilly and Julie Foudy in the summer of 1987. “I’d watch my teammates come out of a meeting with Anson and they’d be crying; it was just so sad,” said Denise. “I went in and told Anson, ‘They want this more than I do. Give one of them my spot.’ And that was that. It was the right thing for me to do, for me and for them.”

ENDURING MEMORIES: Denise said she cringes when she hears people say the first National Team in 1985, with its record of three losses and one tie, wasn’t very good. “We went over there to Italy after just three days of training together in New York, suffering from jet lag, and were competitive against every single team; we had a lot of moxie,” she said. Some of her favorite memories came off the field, including receiving what amounted to her first soccer paycheck — $10 a day in meal money. “I was so excited for that $10,” she said. “I couldn’t imagine why they were paying us after they already paid for the plane ticket and gave us uniforms. That was my mindset, honestly. I bought an Italian bathing suit and two pairs of sweat pants, and a bunch of us rented those paddle boats out on the Adriatic Sea. We had it in our minds that we were going to paddle to Yugoslavia!”

*Denise, accepting her flowers and plaque from the Denmark national team in 1985 . . .*

After the game against Denmark on Aug. 21 that featured the first two goals in American National Team history, by Michelle Akers and Emily Pickering, the two teams gathered for a celebration at a disco in Jesolo. “Our hosts played Bruce Springsteen’s song ‘Born in the USA’ for us. The music was blaring and all of the U.S. team was on the dance floor jumping up and down and bumping into each other, laughing and worrying about nothing.” Later that evening, Denise was presented with a flowers and a plaque with an inscription that, when translated, reads: “To the best American athlete of Denmark vs. USA.” She has held onto it all these years.

HOW TIMES HAVE CHANGED: When Denise called her father to tell him she had just made the National Team in 1985, his response was: “Why are you playing that stupid Mickey Mouse game?” When she gave her fiancé the news, he reacted similarly: “You’re not going to play, are you?” More than 35 years later, she’s proud of the legacy she helped build. “It allowed me to help be a part of laying the foundation for young girls to dream attainable, possible dreams — and for parents to have an idea of what that dream can look like for their daughters.”

LIFE LESSONS: A volunteer assistant coach for several teams through the years, Denise is perhaps most proud of the Washington Premier “B” team comprised of girls born in 1994. After losing a series of games by a lopsided score, the head coach asked Denise, who works in the physical therapy industry, to help out. Team administrators wanted to cut most of the players and rebuild the roster with new recruits, but she proudly protested: “Do you know how much talent we have on this team? They’re only 12 years old. They’re babies. Give them time!” Two years later, with virtually the same group of girls still considered a “B” team, they won Washington state championship and ultimately played for a national club championship. “I helped them stay positive the whole time,” said Denise, who played competitively well into her 50s. “I’d ask them to go ‘make a little magic for me,’ just like Berhane used to say to me. Be creative. Take risks. Make your teammates look good, and they’ll make you look good. Most of all, just have fun.”

Denise, with longtime National Team friend and goalie, Amy Allmann Griffin

Pioneers: Emily Harner, Bound and Determined

Emily Pickering Harner, wearing the captain’s armband in 1986

INTRODUCING: Emily Pickering Harner

COLLEGE: The University of North Carolina

CLUB TEAM: Emily told us it was as if the soccer gods came to find her in her own neighborhood, with Gordon Bradley, the British player-coach of the New York Cosmos moving in just two houses away on Orlando St. in Massapequa, N.Y. Bradley had been instrumental in founding the Massapequa Soccer Club for boys in the winter of 1970 and local women, Liza Gozley and Nellie Haire, along with Gordon’s wife, Vera, soon started the push to allow girls to play, too. Emily was among the first in line at age 9.

OTHER SPORTS: “You name the game, I played it and I played it well,” said Emily, who starred in basketball, volleyball and field hockey and laments the single-sport mentality that has taken over youth athletics in the past 20 years. Berner High School on Long Island didn’t even add girls soccer as a varsity sport until Emily’s senior year, yet won the New York state championship its first season.

Emily, being hugged by her college and National Team coach Anson Dorrance

NATIONAL TEAM: Emily appeared in 15 games from 1985 to 1992, including the second game all-time on Aug. 21, 1985 at a tournament known as the Mundialito in Jesolo, Italy. Emily assisted Michelle Akers on the National Team’s first-ever goal, and then scored the second goal, giving the American team a 2-2 tie against Denmark. She retired seven years later after appearing in the only two games that year for the U.S., in August of 1992, both of which were losses to Norway.

Six women from the first-ever National Team in 1985: Ann Orrison-Germain, Ruth Harker, Kim Wyant, Linda Gancitano, Emily and Denise Boyer-Merdich

TRUE GRIT: “Nobody messed with Emily Pickering,” said Emily, the second all-time National Team captain, who is now an insurance executive in Potomac, Md. That was a sentiment shared by her teammates at North Carolina and the National Team, including Michelle Akers, who credits Emily with establishing toughness as a core team value. By her junior year, however, a freshman would challenge Emily’s supremacy as ringleader. “April Heinrichs came in cocky and arrogant, and the members of my class thought we were pretty good, too.” Emily still remembers the one and only tackle football — American football — scrimmage among teammates when April came barreling toward her carrying the pigskin. “I was bound and determined to stop her in her tracks, which I did, but not before she plowed me over and I just had to hold on for dear life. Wow, that hurt, but I didn’t let her know. That was the mentality that we established together, that you win at all costs without cheating.”

DIGGING DEEP: Emily shared some conflicted memories of North Carolina’s legendary coach Anson Dorrance on Page 133 of “Raising Tomorrow’s Champions.” Even though Anson was just beginning his more than four-decade career when she arrived in the early 1980s, she said he already had an uncanny knack for motivating the players. “It was interesting. We could be practicing what we thought was pretty hard. And he could step out there and say, ‘Some of you aren’t giving 100 percent.’ You’d find yourself looking around. I’d think to myself, ‘Dammit, Stephanie, get moving.’ But then you’re thinking to yourself, ‘Well, maybe I could give a little bit more, too.’ The next thing you know, the practice has gone from mediocre to this incredible level. For some reason, you played to prove to Anson that you deserved to be there — probably because you knew there was always somebody who would come along and take your place if you didn’t.”

STAKING INDEPENDENCE: Emily said she hated wearing shin guards and preferred to play with her uniform sleeves tucked under her bra straps. By 1985, with the AIDS epidemic causing a global panic, shin guards became the rule. “They didn’t want blood being exchanged on the field. So I cut mine into the smallest shin guards imaginable — and I would start the game with my shirt sleeves down to keep the coach happy, but then I’d tuck them in again a few minutes later.”

LINGERING EFFECTS: Emily offers cautionary tales to parents and players, both from her own perspective and that of her daughter, Avery, a teenager who recently stopped playing club soccer due to chronic injuries related to concussions and iliotibial band syndrome from overuse of the knees. On one hand, Emily said, children who hope to progress to the highest levels of the game need to be practicing frequently with the ball in their own back yards or local parks to improve their skills. On the other hand, she said parents need to be sure the children are not being exposed to too much contact too young — and they’re allowing injuries to properly heal. Emily recently suffered health setbacks due to an autoimmune disorder and wonders if it could be related to frequent heading of the ball all those years earlier. She is among 20 National Teamers, including Michelle Akers and Brandi Chastain, who volunteered for a landmark study of female soccer players’ brains, known as SHINE, at Boston University. “There’s just so much we don’t know,” said Emily, who was inducted into the Long Island Soccer Hall of Fame in 2015. “It’s a great game. I’ll always love it. But I do know we need to be more careful.”