Pioneers: Pam Baughman-Cornell, an Outdoor Life Well Lived

INTRODUCING: Pam Baughman-Cornell

COLLEGES: University of Central Florida, George Mason University

Pam Baughman-Cornell at Fairfax High School circa 1980 (courtesy of Pam Baughman-Cornell)

THE CAREER THAT ALMOST WASN’T: Soccer launched at Fairfax High School in Virginia the year Pam entered the school as a freshman and, having played for the Fairfax Police Youth Club for coach Ron Dietrich, she was considered a great area player — yet went unrecruited well past her graduation date in 1981. When the father of Michelle Jardin, a player from the nearby Braddock Road soccer club, recommended Pam to Jim Ruby, the coach at the University of Central Florida, she showed up in Orlando sight unseen and immediately became a college All-American and team MVP with 18 goals and 11 assists. Almost as quickly, she flunked out. “I just wanted to be outside; I really, really had a thing about being inside a building all day,” said Pam. “I just felt like that’s not where you learn; you learn outside. I needed to be out in the environment. Also, in college, there’s a lot of distractions and it was my first time away from home for any lengthy period. The truth is, I just didn’t go to class.”

PUT ME IN, COACH: After a year back in northern Virginia at a community college to get her grades in order, Pam walked into the office of Hank Leung, then the coach at George Mason University in her hometown of Fairfax. The school had just started its soccer program in 1982. “I’m going to come here and play soccer,” she said matter-of-factly. “His jaw dropped, because he knew what I had just done at Central Florida.” Hank had never seen Pam play previously. "I heard about her from all the northern Virginia girls on the team," he said. "She walks in and I think, 'Is this for real?' It was a bit of magic as far as I'm concerned."

The 1985 George Mason soccer team; Pam is on the far right in the second row (courtesy of George Mason University)

BRING ON GOLIATH: Joining future National Teamer Lisa Gmitter, among many others, Pam instantly helped elevate George Mason's status. In their first year together Lisa and Pam led their team to the national championship game against North Carolina, where they were soundly defeated 4-0. The following year they lost 2-1 in the first round of the NCAA tournament to Colorado College and its four-time All-America goalie, Janine Szpara (who is prominently featured in our book, Raising Tomorrow’s Champions). Immediately after that game, Hank raised a lot of eyebrows in the locker room when he pronounced to his players that George Mason would win the national championship the following year. “In that moment, we were just devastated,” said Pam. “He sat us down and said, ‘Start preparing for this tournament next year. You guys are the winner.’ I was just furious. I'm like, ‘How can you say we’re going to win — after we just lost! The pressure!’ How could he safely say what’s going to happen a year from now? But he planted that little seed in our heads . . .”

A SIDE TRIP TO ITALY VIA BATON ROUGE: A few months after that loss, yet just weeks prior to her senior year, Pam was among about 70 women invited to Baton Rouge, La., to the Olympic Festival. Picked for the first-ever National Team after that tournament, and starting in its  fourth-ever game, on Aug. 25, 1985, against Denmark, Pam had already made George Mason history as its first USWNT member – but still had some unfinished business back in the states (Note: Pam scored a goal for the National Team in a 3-0 victory against Canada in 1986).

Pam, in the center, holds the national championship trophy with Sis Koskinen, left, and Meg Romaine (courtesy of George Mason University)

MANY PERSONALITIES, ONE TEAM: Nothing seemed to be going right when Pam got back to campus in the fall of 1985. Admittedly out of shape after her summer vacation, she spent more time in the training room than on the field. With their coach’s proclamation defining the season well in advance, teammates bickered, both on the field and off. They had all the talent in the world — the roster featured Pam and Lisa, standouts Sue Vodicka and Andrea Baines, as well as future National Teamers Chris Tomek, Kim Maslin-Kammerdeiner, Betsy Drambour and Kim Crabbe — but they often collectively rolled their eyes, especially when Hank would have the players practice meditation at halftime. “You don’t let college students lay down and close their eyes or they will fall asleep,” said Pam with a laugh. Pam and the other team captains, however, called a meeting and encouraged the players to listen to the coach, whether they agreed with him or not. The coach's offbeat approach would pay off on the morning of Nov. 25 when Pam hobbled into his office in tears with a leg injury so painful she didn't think she could play in the national championship game that afternoon. In that moment, Hank was going through the roster with Peggy Puig, a therapist who utilized the techniques of applied kinesiology in her approach to healing. "Two minutes later, Pam walked out of my office ready to play," said Hank. "Peggy had aligned Pam's 'chi,' her free energy." As described on Page 134 of Raising Tomorrow’s Champions, it was Pam’s goal, off a cornering pass from Lisa Gmitter — and a misplaced heading of the ball by North Carolina’s injured National Teamer Stacey Enos — that helped beat a Tar Heel team that some thought invincible after 56 consecutive games without a loss. “That (team) meeting made all the difference in the world; we didn’t have to agree on everything off the field, but we needed to accept what Hank was telling us. The life lesson was to have a clear vision of where you were going. It worked.”

Pam being interviewed by ESPN reporter Saemus Malin after scoring a goal in the first nationally televised NCAA women's championship game (courtesy of Pam Baughman-Cornell)

AN OUTDOOR LIFE: Having married her high school boyfriend, Glenn Cornell, in January of their senior year at GMU, Pam has never strayed far from soccer. She has coached either youth, high school and college teams since well before she retired from playing, which included three national 30-and-over women’s club championships. She has also remained true to her life’s mantra that the best environment for learning is outdoors. Pam and Glenn have been involved with vineyards, have taken numerous wilderness excursions — Pam has hiked the Appalachian Trail on multiple occasions — and raised a pair of soccer-playing outdoorsmen, Nick and Brian. The family exudes happiness in its vast collection of experiential photographs; Brian has even turned his passion into a vocation as an outdoor writer. “He is living out of the back of his pickup truck right now, somewhere in Nevada, I think,” she said. “And, yes, I sleep fine at night. We told our sons they were going to be independent, they were going to go away to college, and they were going to be able to take care of themselves. That’s how we raised them.”

Pam and Glenn with their sons Nick, left, and Brian (courtesy of Pam Baughman-Cornell)

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.