Interview: Erica Dambach and Ann Cook, Penn State Women's Soccer Coaches
In this interview, Amira talks with Penn State Women’s Soccer Head Coach Erica Dambach and Associate Head Coach Ann Cook about their long time friendship, creating paths for more women coaches, and cultivating team culture in their championship-winning program.
This episode was produced by Tressa Versteeg. Shelby Weldon is our social media and website specialist. Burn It All Down is part of the Blue Wire podcast network.
Transcript
Amira: Hey flamethrowers, Amira here, and I’m so pleased to bring you a continuation of our conversations in coaching. Back in episode 175, Much Ado About Coaching, we all kind of dove deep on the matter, but we didn’t want the conversation to stop there. Since then I’ve hosted a conversation with Dr. Derrick White on Black college football coaches. I most recently talked to the CEO of WeCOACH, Megan Kahn, and high school football coach and the LA Rams’ scouting apprentice Mickey Grace, about their experiences with coaching and athletic administration. We also previewed the BreakThrough Summit, sponsored by Hudl and WeCOACH, dedicated to getting more women into coaching ranks. We also have a bonus Patreon segment on good coaching, that if you’re a patron I highly recommend you listen to. If you listen to that you’ll know that there’s a snippet of the conversation in there that I was pleased to have, that I teased, from this interview that I’m bringing to you today. That is my conversation with Penn State women’s soccer coaches Ann Cook and Erica Dambach.
Now, I’m so pleased to have this conversation because of course these are my colleagues here at Penn State and I have seen up close what rockstar coaches they are. So I could not be more happy to have them join me on the podcast today. Just so you know how phenomenal these women are, let me give you such a little, brief taste, rundown of their accomplishments, because we would be here…The whole episode could be their accomplishments if I really went through all of them. But Ann Cook is the associate head coach and director of player development here at Penn State. She gets a lot out of those girls, let me tell you. She has had a long career of coaching in the college ranks. She’s also really involved with the organization Soccer Without Borders – she serves as the board member and she has been involved in trips, sometimes with Penn State student athletes, to Nicaragua, to Egypt, playing soccer across the globe and opening up points of access to the game. She also has her own illustrious playing career: she played with the national team and was also in the WUSA, an early professional women’s soccer league here in the early 2000s. She has been here at Penn State for 14 years.
Also who’s been here with her for 14 years of course is Erica Dambach, who’s the head coach of the Penn State Nittany Lions. She has been coaching college for many years and over her entire illustrious career she has accumulated 259 career wins, which is a .706 win percentage, which is just phenomenal. [laughs] Like, seriously. Two time national coach of the year, four time Big Ten coach of the year. She’s been to 16 tournaments, ten Big Ten titles that her and Ann have brought here together, and of course that 2015 national championship. Erica also coaches at the national level, currently serving as assistant coach to the women’s national team. And of course, Erica and Ann were both teammates at William & Mary where their friendship blossomed, and here they are going into their 14th season at Penn State as friends and colleagues, and I cannot be more excited to have this conversation about coaching, about friendship, about the joys and the pains of it. So, welcome to Burn It All Down. I guess the biggest place to start is…I think about this all the time. So many athletes I know, it’s the sport, it’s the game, and then I’m really curious about when something goes off in your head to say, “Hey, I wanna coach.” Like, “I actually wanna be a coach.” When was that?
Ann: I feel like you need to go first, because you knew well before I did. I still don’t actually–
Erica: Well, because you had other choices. I think for me, you talk about why people get into coaching and for some…You know, like people that start a coffee shop, they love coffee. Or an ice cream parlor, they love ice cream. I don’t think it was necessarily that way for me. I certainly loved the sport but I loved playing the sport, and once I wasn’t good enough to continue to play I did go on and try to pursue other things. I think what I missed when I tried to go into the biology field and these other areas was just team – that feeling of connectedness in teams. I had a former coach that kind of brought me back in and offered me an opportunity to get back involved in the game, but in terms of when I really realized that I would coach, I think, happened after I had already started coaching for a little bit. Coaching was a means to work on my graduate degree, still thinking I was going to be this marine biologist or something crazy that was never probably really going to happen. But it wasn’t until probably my third year in coaching when I started to kind of feel the connectedness with the players and the impact and just that feeling of…You know, you talk about giving back, but it really was that feeling of the coaches that I’ve had were absolutely the most incredible, you know, had the most impact of anybody in my life besides my parents. So that was probably what brought me into it, was that group probably in year 3 where you felt, “Wow, maybe I had a small impact on their careers.”
Ann: The first time I remember you speaking passionately about it was actually when you were doing your MBA at Lehigh, and you and I had big plans to start a business, right? We were gonna take over your family camp, and I was all excited. I was like, “Sweet, I don’t have to figure out what I wanna do, she’s gonna figure it out!” [laughs] And then you started talking passionately about coaching. I was like, well, crap! [laughter] “I’m gonna have to figure out my own path. What!?” But as it turned out for me I didn’t even really have to figure out my own path. She pointed me in the right direction from the get-go. I was still playing, and so when the first league dried up, the WUSA, I tried to get out of soccer altogether. I actually accepted a seat in law school, and Erica called and was like, “What are you doing?”
Erica: “You don’t even know you!” [laughs]
Ann: “You don’t wanna be a lawyer!” And I was like, well, you’re right. I don’t wanna be a lawyer but I do wanna go to law school, sounds great. I had done some work when I was in the league, and politics a little bit, and everybody on Capitol Hill has a law degree so I just thought that’s what you do. But she very wisely talked me into taking a coaching job, take some classes, see what you wanna do. So I deferred and then I deferred again and then here I am.
Erica: Deferring. [laughter]
Amira: I mean, you touched on something that I love so much. When everybody was doing the like, “How it started/How it’s going” challenge a few weeks ago, I love that you put up the picture of when you guys were playing at William & Mary together, right? and of course holding the Big Ten trophy…Or was it the national trophy? I don’t know what picture you put up. You have a lot of trophies. [laughs] How much of this journey in coaching has been sweetened by doing it together?
https://twitter.com/EWalsh7/status/1314032040451416065?s=20
Ann: Well, I can say for sure that I wouldn’t still be doing it if I wasn’t doing it with Erica. I think that’s pretty certain in my walk, anyway.
Erica: Yeah, and I think initially when this all started we weren’t doing it together because I was following her playing career. I did fall in love with it and I knew that it was something that I wanted to do, but now after 13 years and the conversations that we have, I just absolutely couldn’t imagine doing this without Ann by my side. It’s just so much more enjoyable. I mean, coaching does bring a lot of joy, but nothing in the way that doing it with somebody you love and your friendship and just laughing through the hard times, right? That’s what we look back on. So many of our coaches…And those lonely times are so lonely as a coach, and we just don’t necessarily experience it to the lows of our peers because we’re able to kind of pick each other up and put our arm around each other and remind what we’re doing and why we’re doing it.
Ann: The big picture is so important, and I think one of the things when we start talking about the pipeline and about trying to get more women involved, one of the things where I feel a little bit like a hypocrite is we have such an amazing situation. She talks about making the coaching world more fun – it’s also more manageable. Like, it’s such a demanding, from time and from energy and from all of those things, but because of our working relationship as well as our long friendship those times are just more manageable, where if she were a traditional boss I wouldn’t probably be able to manage hard times in my family or a death in the family or a time that I need to step away in a way that has allowed, I think both of us to do this for a longer term maybe than otherwise would be manageable.
Amira: I think that's such an important point because I remember when my best friend’s husband got into coaching, he’s a former NFL player, and it was like looking at the prospect of frequent moves and jumping around and it was really challenging. One of the things that comes up of course when talking about women is not only their relationships but also what happens when it comes to parenting, right, with that situation. Erica, you have to beautiful little girls, and I can imagine, like for so many of us in State College, this is a place where it becomes easier to juggle some of these things just because of the way the town is kind of structured. But what do you see out there in terms of barriers for women in coaching when it comes to child-rearing and things like that?
Erica: I think that probably the biggest thing is just the way that you want to raise your children, how you want to make yourself available as much as you possibly can, how you want to include them in what’s going on, you know? You look at the situation that Coach Franklin is in right now, and I have a tremendous amount of respect for the sacrifices that he’s making for his program and for his players, and I don’t know that that’s necessarily a gender difference in that I absolutely couldn’t imagine going through that type of months upon months of not seeing my children. I’m not sure I could do that and make that ultimate sacrifice. That doesn’t make me a better parent or him a better parent or whatnot, it’s just a difference that I feel. But on the flip side I do know that if I had the opportunity to go away for a couple of days and be a part of a national team camp or something, I also…Ann and Kara jump in and this village jumps in and helps with these girls and I’m able to do things because I know not only is it good for me but the girls’ lives are enriched. They get more of the people that we love to be around, so, I think it is tremendously challenging for men or women with children. But obviously that village makes all the difference in the world.
Amira: Yeah. Now, you guys are coaching college kids and it always seems to me…I mean, I get very emotional because I know I only have these kids for a semester and then they go, or four years, right? At most five. But it also means that you have a new team all the time, that you have to reconnect with and instill your philosophy and values on. How hard is it coaching at the collegiate level and what do you think makes you all so successful as a program when you have people coming in and out and it’s just a carousel?
Ann: I mean, I think first and foremost it’s that this is where we want to be, right? We love this age range of kids. It just is such a cool time in these young women’s lives when they’re trying to figure out understanding who they were with their parents and back home and then have these years to figure out who they are, you know? That’s a part of their identity, but is it all their identity? And all these experiences that kind of meld into the person they become as they leave here. It’s just a really cool, awesome time to be involved in. So I think we’re all pretty good at foregrounding that in the way that we interact with them, I think for the most part, at least we try to be, and keep that big picture in mind that it’s a whole lot less about whether we’re playing a 3-5-2 or a 4-4-2 or the tactics involved in our particular game plan. It’s a whole lot more about what they’re doing off the field and how we can kind of help mold them into who they’re gonna be. So I think for us we try really hard to keep that in perspective. I don’t think we always do a great job, but we put a big emphasis on culture and on those pieces and try to weave it through everything that we do.
Erica: Yeah, and I think also a big part of our program that we’re so proud of is that we do recruit culture over talent – and hopefully in cases you don’t sacrifice one for the other, but if we are having to make a choice in any of it we’ve learned that that culture piece is everything for us. So yes, anytime you put 26 women in a room and try to call them a team and make them, we call it “our big dysfunctional family,” just like we have at home, right? [laughs] We don’t try to disguise it, you know? We’re incredibly dysfunctional and we work our tails off at trying to be as functional as possible. But yeah, it’s what makes you so proud when you do lift that trophy, is you kind of look at the story of each of these students and you go, “Let me tell you about her story.” Not let me tell you about her playing time, let me tell you about her ability. Let me tell you about her journey. Because every one of them makes you so proud because all of them come with these ups and downs through the four years as they grow and begin to learn who they are.
Amira: I’m mostly amazed at, like…I’m somebody who’s not calm on the sidelines, like, it pains me to watch sports but especially sports I played. So, soccer was my number one sport that I played up through college until I had Samari. I just, even on the sidelines, I’m a yeller. I look at y’all and you’re fairly zen! I know that that’s not just the only emotion you’re having, but how do you learn how to not…Like, everybody has their own sideline tactics. Have you felt like your sideline tactics have evolved? Did you use to yell? Is it just calm? Is it like a one-two punch? I’m very intrigued about the thought process, because I know for me I’m losing my mind. I’m like, hello! [laughter] “CRASH THE NET!” I literally scream that way too much at games.
Ann: Well, because you’re there and doing it, we don’t have to. [laughter] It’s a big part of our secret. Honestly, I think for both of us it is sort of our natural tendency to be a little bit more zen on the sideline. But I will say that we’ve had the opposite modeled for us in our college coach, who we adore and love very very much. We took many many good things from him, but that was something that I very much took towards the end of my college career, I recognized how much I was feeding off of his energy. When he was nervous and erratic and crazy I was playing more nervous and erratic and crazy, so that was a big lesson from before I knew that I was gonna be on the sideline myself.
Erica: Yeah, that’s a great point, and I think it was a part of us before we even started coaching because it just became who we were through that time. I do know that kind of the only time – and Ann will get a giggle out of this and probably add to it – but I find the only time that I kind of lose my mind and my head spins around is mostly out of, I would say, bravery and effort. Those are the two things and things that I feel are very much in their control. Even inside I don’t feel like I have to hold down the emotions if their technique isn’t good or their tactics aren’t right, but if the effort wasn’t there Ann knows I have a huge pet peeve of people turning their backs. You know, just that bravery piece and putting yourself out for the team, that’s trust in my mind, and then somebody that doesn’t put the effort in. Those to me are the ones that I actually can’t control what’s inside of me. Otherwise if it’s the other areas and I feel like they need that fire I’m not sure it can come from me, or else it is a little bit forced at that point.
Ann: Yeah, and I think honestly both of us would put our hands up and say at times it’s a weakness of ours, that we need to be more fiery. The only time I’ve lost my mind twice in my coaching career at Penn State, and both of them were times when I felt the referee wasn’t doing enough to protect our players. Both times, man, did I lose my mind. [laughs] I’m not at all proud.
Erica: I’ll get you the video of them. [laughs]
Amira: Oh yeah, we want that!
Ann: But I do think that there are times when we could do a better job of even speaking up for our players when things are not going the way they should be going or yelling more to get more out of them, because I do think Erica’s right – her triggers are very consistent, and I think that's one of the reasons the players respond to her the way they do, that she’s very consistent with what her expectations are. But I think both of us, when we really sit and evaluate ourselves as coaches, it’s an area that we talk about.
Amira: When Title IX happened women were clearly the dominant…They were close to 95% of what made up women coaching women’s collegiate sports. Now that number’s under 50%. As it professionalized obviously men came into the position, but also what came with it was all of these weird pathologies around, “Well, when we coach women you have to be tender, or you have to do it like this…” There’s all these kind of philosophies that wasn't really grounded in reality but actually just why you would want a strong man in the job, right, because they would be “parental” or “fatherly,” etc, etc. I think that part of the fight now about the sideline is getting women onto the sideline, getting people of color onto the sideline, and reshaping our picture of what it even means to look like or be a coach. That’s why I really wanted to have this conversation with y’all. When you think about that pipeline, when I think about how to get those sidelines to reflect the pitch more, what are some of the initiatives you see happening? What are some of the things you see doing conversations you have with your girls, your team, about the path to coaching?
Erica: I’ll jump in, because there’s something that really stands out in my mind about our path. When we were sophomores in college we had an amazing coach that grabbed us and looked at us in the eyes and basically talked passionately about how she felt that our leadership needs to come out more, and then subsequently down the road even took me to my first coaching course. That moment stayed with me for 20 years, and for her maybe it was a fleeting moment of grabbing a player and putting that confidence in them, or looking them in the eyes and going, “I believe in you that you can do this,” and that’s something that I’ve not done enough of. When I have done it I feel like it has had a very similar effect, but I’ve thought about that more and more of…I see these young women in our program, these natural-born leaders that love the game, that I think would be wonderful as coaches, and just going on not just once but a couple of different coffee breaks and saying, “Hey, I really think this could be a wonderful profession for you, and these are all the reasons why, this is what I see in you.” Ultimately where they go, the path they go on, but I think that would be influential and something we can continue to do more of from my standpoint.
Ann: To kind of jump on, there are two. I think one of the things we’re seeing so much is the dearth of women coaches in the youth game, so it doesn’t necessarily have to be a career but I think we have an obligation to do more than we’re doing right now, even just something that we’ve talked about is try to bring in a coaching course into State College and really encouraging all of our kids to do it, even if they just end up coaching a YMCA team or an AYSO team. That’s awesome, that's a female coach. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a career path for them or a career choice either, and I think that’s something that kind of plays in to the gender stereotypes of a man will apply for a job if he’s got like 5% of the qualifications where a woman will apply for the job if she has 99.9% of the qualifications. I think we can do a better job of actually making sure that our kids are qualified to at least take over their kid’s 5 year old YMCA team.
Amira: That's such a good point, because there’s always a dad who’s really gung ho, and I’m like…Also, I know, I shouldn’t yell at 5 year olds so I probably don’t belong. [laughs]
Erica: Good self-awareness!
Amira: I’m very self-aware about that! Because I can barely watch bumblebee soccer. They’re all floating to the ball, like…Ugh! I’m getting irritated just watching it. Samari, my oldest, was such a natural. She was so good, and she would just be in the field…I just would be like, “Go, do something!” Oh my goodness. But yeah, the other thing I wanted to ask you, the last thing I want to ask you, maybe last, is that it’s easy when we think about these good coaching moments to think of the winning, these winning times. But I also find that sometimes it’s not just that, you know? Sometimes the best moment when you’re looking at it and you’re like, ahh, that was a really good moment for me as a coach, is watching a seed that you planted years ago bloom even if they’re out of the program, or watching a tiny little thing that you’ve been working on with a player over and over and over again finally click. When you think about the corpus of your illustrious careers, is there a moment or moments that stick out as the times when you’re like, this is my favorite coaching moment, this is my biggest moment that I think of when I’m like, “Damn, I’m a good coach! That right there, I did that!”
Ann:
Erica: I mean, certainly that’s a really fun conversation to have, right? Because that brings so much joy, and some of them aren’t as obvious as…I think Ann and I could sit here and talk about raising the 2015 trophy for a long time because we did feel like there was so much more to that trophy and so much work in that entire culture of the program up til that point. But one thing that sticks out in my mind is a local player, Meghan Gill, who grew up in State College, who came into this program and challenged herself in ways that maybe she or the community felt like, okay, she could go and play at these other schools but she’s not gonna play at Penn State. Meghan just put her head down and she worked and she worked and she tore her ACL and then she worked and then she rehabbed her ACL and she worked. She had never left State College, she had never been on an airplane, and then we took her overseas on an international trip and then she graduated and then she left State College. She took a coaching job in the midwest and she kind of removed herself from all of it and she grew, and now she’s the assistant coach down at Davidson and she’s flying, you know? And to hear people come and talk to us about Meghan Gill brings tears to my eyes. This is our Meghan Gill, right? So those are the types of stories, and obviously that goes well beyond coaching as well into other professions, but those are the incredible ones that I…I recently heard somebody come and talk to me at a recruiting event about Meghan Gill and all I could think was freshman Meghan Gill, who had never even been on a bus to Bucknell, you know? That that was a big trip to Lewisburg, and just how proud we are of her and so many of the others.
Ann: Yeah, the winning is lovely, but part of why Erica and I work well together – and Tim and Kara and all the staff – is that we’re driven by relationships that we build. So for me the letter that comes after graduation or whatever is kind of what I move for. It’s the recounts of the things in their career that they remember from something that coach said, or something that I said, or something that happened that in the moment we had no idea was a big deal, but left a real impact. Those are the things, those are the stories, whether it comes in a letter or over a beer five years after they graduate or something. Those are the conversations and the moments where I’m like, okay, this is worth it. [laughs] This is why we work these ridiculous hours and do all these ridiculous things, is for those moments when we don’t have any idea that we’re actually doing something impactful but it resonates with somebody. I’m sure there are, for all of those good ones, there are probably plenty of letters that can come with all of the terrible things that they took from us that we had no idea were impactful! But the good ones are what I mean. [laughs]
Erica: And it’s just so interesting because I think so many of those letters include that moment, that a-ha or that tipping point moment that wasn’t a positive moment, right? That had more impact than you felt at the time. You have to keep reminding yourself as a coach that now you’re really coming down on them, you know? But that was actually a really pivotal moment. We had a moment last season where Ann had this really strong moment in the locker room and she called a couple players out and at the time it felt like, okay, here we go, let’s see how this is gonna go, right? But it I would attribute to a huge turning point in our season, was that moment in the locker room, and you just had to remind yourself that you’re doing it for the right reasons, that that talk and conversation came because you believed in them more than they believed in themselves. Sure, they didn't like that moment at the time, right? [laughs] But ten years later–
Ann: I’m still waiting for that letter. [laughter]
Erica: That letter may not come! But the rest of the team will write you that letter.
Amira: Then as we wrap up here, this year…You prepare for a lot of things in coaching, but I don’t think anybody could’ve prepared for coaching through a pandemic. I imagine that it has been a tall order to keep morale up on your team, to train to figure out…I mean, I’ve been watching everybody who’s not on Instagram check out the Instagram and watch how every picture with face masks, right, training in a pandemic. Your team I’ve said very publicly multiple times has been in my opinion one of the most forward thinking teams in terms of mobilizing around Black Lives Matter, around just respect and trying to be oriented towards justice in a way that I’ve been inspired by the work that your girls are doing, and holding all of that together this summer and then moving into a place where your season was in the air and you had girls on the team who were graduating or thinking about graduating who all of a sudden didn’t have a clear path to what they thought their senior season would look like. And it’s all happening while people are only talking about football. I imagine that this has been an unprecedented season of coaching. How have you been navigating it?
Erica: Well, when you put it all that way Amira… [laughter] I mean, for me as we’re coming into our last month period here before the students leave for Thanksgiving, I can’t help but to be just so grateful for the culture that we have worked so hard to put in place, because I look at this program, I look at these players, I look at this staff, and we are bending at every angle and moment but we’re not breaking. That bending, I do think it is making us stronger and I think that people are…I think every member of this program is struggling mightily, but I also look at our peers and I look around in our own department and I know the struggles that are going on and I can’t help but just to be so proud of this program in ways that I knew we were strong, I knew these players were strong and I knew they could accomplish great things, but this is beyond my wildest thought that we could come out the other side of this in the place where we are right now, knowing that we are really struggling, but we are growing through it.
Ann: For me it’s a testament to leadership, honestly. I wish she wasn’t on this call so I could blow her up properly, but Erica’s been amazing. You talk about forward thinking in terms of Black Lives Matter, but also forward thinking in terms of what’s the next thing that this pandemic is going to bring us, and nobody has any idea but the number of conversations that we’ve had to try to mitigate the next challenge I think has helped tremendously. Again, just the consistency and the feeling that our players hopefully have that we are going through this with them. I think everyone kind of wants to blame someone for it, right, and be able to…There’s just no solutions, and to kind of be upfront with that at the same time while offering hope and a way forward has been a real strength of Erica’s and I think honestly of the whole Penn State athletic department in some ways. They haven’t been perfect but we’re in a really fortunate place, for sure.
Amira: Yeah, it feels like it was just this week last year I was in Hawaii for a conference and waking up at 6am to watch y’all play in the tournament, and it was thrilling to watch you capture Big Tens, like, whew! That game! Then the overtime game, all of it. It just feels like yesterday, and I can’t believe it’s been a year and we all can’t wait to watch y’all get back out there and play in earnest. I thank you all so much for coming on Burn It All Down and talking about and modeling in your everyday what good coaching looks like, what it looks like to build pathways and to reach down and pull people behind you and to really just set one of the biggest standards of what it looks like to have a sideline that we all hope for in the future. So thank you for joining us on Burn It All Down.
Erica: Thank you.
Ann: Incredibly flattering, thank you.