Master Architect

Working in her spacious office in the tower of Dillon Gymnasium, Princeton women's soccer coach Julie Shackford thinks of her team's brilliant run to the national semifinals this past season chiefly as it pertains to the task at hand — planning for the future of her program. This, just a few days after being named Division I Coach of the Year by the National Soccer Coaches' Association of America.

"Our season was dragged on, obviously in a positive way, so we are catching up with recruiting, working individually with the kids, scheduling for the next few years," she says. "I think that the whole Final Four thing has helped with recruiting the current junior class. It's given us more exposure."

The idea that the Tigers would be coming off a berth in the NCAA Tournament, let alone an appearance in the Final Four, would have seemed ludicrous a decade ago when Shackford first arrived on campus. She inherited a team that had been more than twenty games under .500 during the seven years before she arrived.

Over 10 years later — thanks to many a long hour in that tower — Shackford has transformed the women's soccer program from a perennial Ivy League cellar dweller into a national power. This fall, the Tigers were undefeated (7-0-0) in the Ivy League and finished the regular season with 19-3 record. They then defeated Central Connecticut, Villanova, Boston College and Washington to become the first Ivy League team in any sport to reach the Final Four of a 64-team NCAA tournament. A 2-0 loss to UCLA on December 3 ended their season.

Less than two months removed from that magical run, Shackford is back in the tower, focused once again on improving what has become her program. It is that focus that makes her nonchalant about individual honors. While she appreciates being named Coach of the Year, Shackford hardly considers it a personal achievement.

"It validates our program more than anything," she says. "It's recognition for the soccer program, for Princeton, for our players. All the people who were a part of [my time here] the last 10 years now feel like they were a part of something special."

Princeton's Director of Athletics, Gary Walters '67, who a decade ago made Shackford his first head-coaching hire, gives her more credit for her team's success: "This is the culmination of a tremendous amount of hard work." Walters considers Shackford a "special coach" who, with her "incredible love and passion for the game," was able to turn a "reeling" program into a powerhouse.

Nonetheless, more evidence that Shackford is not out for individual accolades came at the NSCAA awards banquet in Baltimore where she was named Coach of the Year. Even though she knew she was the Mid-Atlantic Region finalist, Shackford nearly missed the announcement, walking back from the bathroom just in time to hear her name called.

Although the subsequent stroll up to the stage marked her ascension to the elite coaching ranks, the seeds of Shackford's coaching career were planted over twenty years ago in Virginia, by a club team coach named John Ellis. Ellis' daughter, Jillian, was a teammate and best friend of Shackford's both then and later at William & Mary during their undergraduate careers. John Ellis endowed both women with a love for the game and a sense that coaching was a legitimate career option.

Ironically enough, it was Jillian Ellis who coached the UCLA team that defeated Princeton in the semifinals of the NCAA tournament in December. Shackford and Ellis are also two of just four female Division I soccer coaches to ever win Coach of the Year honors.

After graduating from William & Mary in 1988, Shackford coached at Carnegie-Mellon for the first four years of its varsity soccer program's existence before coming to Princeton in 1995.

"My first four years here, especially, were pretty challenging," Shackford says. "There had been a lot of instability within the program and coaching turnover. I think that's when I learned the most about coaching, because the talent wasn't outstanding and there hadn't been a history here."

Get the best of the ‘Prince’ delivered straight to your inbox. Subscribe now »

The lessons of those early years at Princeton — Shackford discovered how to "make athletics an important part of [her players' Princeton] experience, but not in anyway shortchange their academics" — have combined with Shackford's natural tendencies to make her the coach that she is today.

"I can't stand losing at anything," Shackford confesses. "My competitiveness and my enthusiasm are probably my two most important traits. I love being around kids, and I love watching kids develop from the beginning of the season to the end of the season."

During her four years under Shackford's tutelage, senior defender Catherine Byrd often witnessed Shackford's competitive spirit firsthand.

"After we won our game in the Round of Eight," Byrd says, "everyone was so pumped that we were going to the Final Four. Obviously it was a great moment. The next day, I talked to Shacks, and she really wanted the team to know that we weren't going down to North Carolina just to be there — we were going down there to compete for a spot in the national championship."

At the same time, though, Shackford considers herself a "player's coach" and a "facilitator," meaning that her primary goal is to prepare players in practice to make the right decisions on their own during games.

Walters, too, has been impressed by Shackford's ability to exact a positive influence on her charges.

"She is able to impart her own high standards to her players," he says, "without ever losing focus of the fact that the game itself should be fun."

Luckily for Walters and fans of Princeton women's soccer, Shackford sounds like she plans on coaching the Tigers for a long time. In the wake of her Coach of the Year honor, Shackford says she has received offers to coach at larger schools, but her commitment to her children is keeping her in Princeton.

Shackford hopes three of those children — Kayleigh, Cameron and Keegan — will benefit from the fact that Princeton is a great place to raise a family. As for her fourth child — the Princeton women's soccer program — Shackford looks to be spending many days in her Dillon Gym tower in off-seasons to come, continuing to nurture the program she has built.