CHAPEL HILL, N.C. -- Twenty-one years ago, North Carolina didn't have a women's soccer team. And then Anson Dorrance created a monster.

	Under Dorrance, UNC has won 16 of the 19 NCAA titles.

The numbers border on the ridiculous. His defending champion Tar Heels have won 16 of the last 19 AIAW and NCAA national titles, including nine in a row from 1986-94. North Carolina enters 2000 with a 466-19-11 all-time record. Sixty-two different players have earned 131 All-America honors in 19 years. Ten have been named national player of the year, some more than once. Thirty-seven have played on the U.S. national team. Heck, Dorrance coached the national team from 1986-94.

How did it happen? Where did this monster come from?

It boils down to five keys, like five fingers that curl together to form the fist North Carolina has used to bludgeon its foes ever since. The five keys: the commitment from the UNC administration, superior recruiting, Dorrance's coaching methods, his relationships with his players, and, yes, luck.

The commitment came in 1979 when then-UNC athletics director Bill Cobey made Dorrance, already the men's soccer coach, the head of the fledgling women's program. At the time, the women's soccer landscape was dominated by opposite points of the country: northeast schools such as Harvard, Connecticut and Massachusetts, and west coast schools such as Stanford, California and UCLA. The rest of the country was a virtual vacuum, and North Carolina stepped into it, offering scholarships in women's soccer before most of its competitors.

"It was a huge advantage being the first program in the South," Dorrance says. "That got us off to a great start."

From there, some luck came in. When the women's program was created, North Carolina already had a scoring machine on campus. Janet Rayfield was attending the school as a student, but when the soccer team formed, she tried out -- and became the Tar Heels' first star. She scored 30 goals in 12 games that first season, 1979, which began with a 12-0 rout of Duke and ended in a 12-2 record, the only losses coming against a club team called the McLean Grasshoppers. Rayfield finished her career with 93 goals and 223 points.

While building his first few teams around Rayfield, Dorrance capitalized on the lack of competition to land his first superstar recruit, Stephanie Zeh from Virginia. Led by Zeh and Rayfield, who combined for 66 goals, the Tar Heels won their first national championship in 1981, the program's third year in existence. A second title came in 1982, the first year the NCAA officially sanctioned women's soccer.

When Rayfield and Zeh graduated, Dorrance signed April Heinrichs -- and a dynasty was born. Today Heinrichs is head coach of the U.S. women's national team, but in the mid-1980s she was the best American player of her era. She led the Tar Heels to three national titles in four years.

Along with having superior talent, the Tar Heels also had superior conditioning. Dorrance put his team through grueling six-mile jaunts and post-practice wind sprints, timing every run, creating a team that was better, and better conditioned, than everyone it played. Dorrance also was a superior coach, devising an attacking offense and stingy defense that has produced 10 times as many goals (2,194) as goals allowed (215). Along the way he developed depth with unusual tactics such as using five players for three forward spots in every game.

	Thirty-seven of Anson Dorrance's former players -- including Mia Hamm, far left, and Kristine Lilly -- have competed for the U.S. national team.

"No position was guaranteed, and that makes everyone give their best effort at all times," Dorrance says. "When everyone on the field is playing for their job, you get results."

Tough in some ways, Dorrance also massaged his team in others. He says one of his biggest early mistakes was "coaching the women the same as men." Dorrance, who had a 172-65-21 record in 12 seasons as the UNC men's coach, soon learned women responded to different tactics.

"Anson is very attuned to women's issues, in ways that many women's coaches aren't," Heinrichs says. "He breaks down cliques and builds team unity."

Says ACC commissioner John Swofford, who replaced Cobey as the UNC athletics director from 1980-97: "Anson has analyzed and made a science of coaching female athletes. No one knows the ins and outs of that better."

And then, finally, there is recruiting. Dorrance built a dynasty on the backs of such stars as Zeh and Heinrichs. Then came Mia.

You know Mia. Mia Hamm, star of shampoo and sports drink commercials, not to mention the U.S. Women's World Cup team. Before she became the highest scoring player -- male or female -- in international history, Hamm was simply the finest women's soccer player ever to play in the U.S. collegiate ranks, twice a unanimous selection as national player of the year.

But it was more than Hamm. She played on some of the same UNC and national teams as Kristine Lilly, who has made more national-team soccer appearances -- male or female -- than anyone in international history, high-scoring Tisha Venturini and defensive stalwart Carla Overbeck.

By 1991, Dorrance had the UNC program running so smoothly, it could handle the losses of Hamm or Lilly -- or Dorrance himself. In 1991, that trio took a brief sabbatical from the UNC program to compete in the inaugural Women's World Cup. Dorrance was the U.S. team's coach. Hamm and Lilly were two stars.

In one week that November, the North Carolina women's soccer machine reached its apex. On Nov. 24, coached by assistant Bill Palladino, the Tar Heels beat Wisconsin 3-1 for their sixth consecutive NCAA title. Six days later in China, the U.S. team -- with Dorrance coaching a roster of 18, including Hamm and Lilly among the nine past and present members of his UNC program -- beat Norway 2-1 for the World Cup title.

Eventually Hamm and Lilly would graduate, but Dorrance always found another star. After Hamm it was Venturini, the 1994 national player of the year. Then it was Debbie Keller, the co-player of the year in 1995 and sole winner in '96. Robin Confer was player of the year in 1997. In 1998, it was the turn of Cindy Parlow, a 5-foot-11 forward whose size, strength and leaping ability make her the likely heir to Hamm as the world's best player entering the 21st century. After Parlow it was Lorrie Fair, another World Cupper and the 1999 NCAA player of the year.

Fair is gone, but Dorrance will find someone else to lead the Tar Heels toward a 17th national title in 20 years. He always has. He created this monster. He knows it must be fed.

Gregg Doyel covers the ACC for The Charlotte Observer.