YOUR VISION OF A CHAMPION
Anson Dorrance might be the greatest coach in American sports history you’ve never heard of. Having just concluded his 42nd year leading the University of North Carolina women’s soccer program, Dorrance’s career numbers are staggering. He’s won 901 games against only 80 losses (plus 45 ties) and a mind-blowing 22 of the 38 National Championships in the history of collegiate women’s soccer. (He's won 22...only five other schools in the country have won two!) If anyone knows what a champion looks like, it’s him.
He painted a clear picture of that image many years ago. In this short video clip, Dorrance tells the story of driving past a park on his way to campus one day when he spotted his star player, Mia Hamm, sprinting across an open field, training on her own. He was struck by her effort, her commitment, and her self-discipline, and when he got to his office he scribbled her a note commending her hard work.
A few years later, after Mia Hamm had become a household name as the star of the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team, she wrote a book called Go for the Goal: A Champion’s Guide to Winning in Soccer and Life. In the breastplate of the book was the note her coach had written her many years before, a powerful picture of what winning looks like:
For any of us committed to becoming our best in any important area of life, creating a vision is important. It’s critical, really. A vision gives us something to strive for, something to aspire to, something we can work to become. We all need that. So it’s worth asking today, when you picture yourself winning, what do you see? What is your vision of a champion?
Typically, the image we create in our mind is of someone celebrating on the podium, hoisting the championship trophy, or climbing a ladder to cut down the net. We see the confetti falling and the crowd cheering as the final buzzer sounds and victory is assured. There's nothing wrong with those images, of course. But there is an important lesson I think each of us can learn today from one of the great coaches in sports history, a lesson we can apply to the vision we create for ourselves.
While the naive vision most of us create focuses on the winning outcome - our moments under the bright lights of the big stage, with everyone watching - a realistic vision, like the one created by Anson Dorrance, focuses on who the champion is and what it is they’re doing in the dark, with no one watching. While a naive vision is centered around some celebrating, a realistic vision is centered around some suffering. And while a naive vision sees the champion being exalted, a realistic vision sees the champion being exhausted. There’s a contrast there that’s pretty striking.
Dorrance’s vision challenges us to recalibrate the reality of what really makes a champion a champion. It validates that champions aren’t who they are because they win. That actually, in fact, just the opposite is true. Champions win because of who they are. Champions are committed. They are driven and self-disciplined and willing to push themselves to the point of exhaustion, even when no one is watching and long before they ever set foot on a podium, hoist a trophy, or cut down a net. Hall of Fame football coach Bill Walsh famously said, “Champions behave like champions before they are champions.” That’s so true, and it validates Anson Dorrance's belief.
I think Coach Dorrance's experience has clarified for him what real success requires. Everyone says they want to be a champion, but he knows what he saw from Mia Hamm in the park that day is what separates those who merely talk about winning from those who actually do it. He knows that more times than not, we don’t get what we want - we get what we earn. And he knows that when our big moments come, there under the bright lights of the big stage when everyone’s watching, it’ll be the work we’ve done long before, probably alone in the dark, that will determine just how worthy we are of winning.
I want to challenge you today to clarify a realistic vision of what you, the champion looks like. And while I don’t think there’s anything wrong with envisioning your moments of triumph, I do think that vision better also include the harsh, uncomfortable, inconvenient reality that real success requires. Once you've clarified for yourself what that effort, that commitment, and that self-discipline look like, then it’s time to get to work. It’s time to take what Anson Dorrance taught us and put it into practice. It’s time to turn that vision into reality.