Anson Dorrance shares thoughts on character in his Last Lecture

Campus Updates – The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s women’s soccer coach Anson Dorrance performs the same ritual before each National Championship game his team plays (a whopping 24, with 22 of those victories). It doesn’t have anything to do with superstition. It’s all about appreciation.
“I spend the entire day and half the night before the National Championship game writing a note to every senior on my roster, thanking each of them for the incredible human contribution they’ve made to my team,” Dorrance told the Carolina seniors attending the Last Lecture on April 20.
The next morning, Dorrance delivers the letters, often “bleary eyed and honestly half asleep.”
“Rest assured the letters are more powerful and valuable to my team than me actually being awake during the game,” he said.
Dorrance uses the letters not only to let his senior players know how important they are to the team, but he also shares copies of the letters with the rest of the team so that they remember the special women they are playing for.
“What we are consciously trying to do is to construct real connections where our players, emotionally, play for each other,” the coach explained. “And this stuff works.”
Dorrance was selected by the Class of 2017 to deliver the Last Lecture on the west lawn of the Morehead Building, as the sun began to set. The talk is based on the premise, “If you knew this was the last lecture you would ever give, what would you say?”
The talk had long been a tradition at Carnegie Mellon University, usually for professors nearing retirement. But the Last Lecture received national attention in 2007, when computer science professor Randy Pausch, dying from pancreatic cancer at age 46, gave a funny, upbeat message that got millions of viewers online.
Soon other universities, like Carolina, were also hosting Last Lectures.
In his ...

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