Tony DiCicco was a novice gym teacher when Title IX, the federal legislation requiring that equal resources be devoted to men’s and women’s athletics, was passed.
“I can remember talking to the girls’ P.E. teacher about it,” said DiCicco, coach of the U.S. women’s soccer team. “We were doing so much team teaching already. She’d take a group and do dance, or I’d take a group outside and do orienteering.
“I always felt it was the right thing. I saw my sisters, who loved sports but never had the opportunities. This generation of women can’t even relate to what the previous generation went through.”
In the 1970s, DiCicco’s dream of becoming a professional athlete, nurtured on the Little League baseball fields and, later, the soccer fields of his Connecticut hometown, was receding in favor of a different vision: coaching.
“There’s something about ‘team,’ everybody working toward a common goal, that draws me in,” he said. “It’s almost been like a narcotic for me.”
A quarter-century later, the 50-year-old DiCicco still is hooked. Why shouldn’t he be? He is one of the most successful women’s coaches ever. And he rose to prominence at a fortuitous time, working with players who are skilled and sophisticated but still remember leaner times well enough to be grateful for their circumstances.
“I’ve always been a teacher, drawn to athletes who make a commitment and want to get better,” DiCicco said. “This team kind of epitomizes that. Even the biggest stars on the team are very open to coaching.
“This team is so neat in a lot of ways because they share my emotions, my degree of commitment to it. A lot of teams don’t.”
DiCicco grew up in a blue-collar family in the Hartford suburbs. His father owned an auto repair business and his mother, who worked for a tool manufacturer, gave him an early lesson in women’s athletic ability, schooling him in basketball in their driveway.
He became a goalkeeper basically by default, when his high school soccer coach asked for volunteers. “Everybody else was so much better than me that I was about a ninth-string midfielder,” DiCicco said. “It’s something I’ve never ever forgiven my high school coach for.”
He’s kidding, of course. DiCicco is not tall, but he was quick and had some leaping ability. (His chief recreational outlet these days is downhill skiing, which he does every chance he gets at a condominium he owns in Vermont.) He turned his accidental job into a modest franchise, playing in college and professionally, and later started his own goalkeeping camps.
In an odd coincidence, DiCicco and U.S. men’s coach Bruce Arena, also a ‘keeper,’ made their only national team appearances two months apart in 1973, each subbing into one match.
DiCicco joined the women’s team as a goalkeeping coach before the 1991 World Cup and was elevated to the head coaching position after Anson Dorrance’s abrupt resignation in 1994.
Players say DiCicco made the transition easy. In the intervening years, he has made many changes, including the tactical system the team employs, but one aspect of his style has remained consistent–his tendency to operate on Tony Time, which is about 10 minutes faster than just about everybody else.
He wishes people’s perceptions of women’s soccer would run similarly ahead of schedule, but he is realistic.
“Sometimes when I hear people talk about women’s athletics, I say you don’t have to go back too far–certainly in my lifetime, the NBA in the ’50s–where our men’s top sports were barely surviving,” DiCicco said. “If it’s entertaining, it’s going to sell.”
