In an early phase sort of way, the Washington D.C. area was a women’s soccer hotbed back in the 1970s and '80s.

It served as a very effective launching pad for a number of leading figures in the game in this country and one of the most interesting is Princeton University head women’s coach Julie Shackford.

Shackford, whose guidance of the Tigers to an NCAA final four appearance in 2004 has to be considered one of the top coaching performances of the American game in recent times, recalls her earliest memory of the game after being signed up for a local league near her Northern Virginia home.

“We had three kids in the family. My dad was an FBI agent and he signed us up for a sport he knew nothing about. I was drawn to it right away and the first thing I think of is our Braddock Road Youth Club team. We won an national championship in 1984 and I played with my good friend Jill Ellis (now coaching at UCLA) and Megan McCarthy (women’s national team player). We all played at William & Mary(w) later. Our coach (at Braddock Road) was a former lacrosse player at Maryland and I’ve always thought soccer is a difficult sport to coach if you haven’t played because it’s so nuanced, but he made it work,” Shackford said. “John Ellis (Jillian’s father and a leading youth coach and camp director) had been going back and forth from England and they came over for good in ’82. He helped with our team and I became immersed in his full soccer paradigm. I worked camps for him and he was one of my two or three mentors. I was a 24/7 soccer kid. My parents begged me to do other sports but I wanted nothing to do with it.”

Another mentor was longtime BRYC coach Gene Mishalow, who at the time played for the NASL’s Washington Diplomats and was just getting involved with youth coaching. Shackford’s soccer obsession included following the Dips and playing on national championship adult teams even while she was in college. Still, her plans were not to forge a career in the beautiful game.

“I really fell into coaching,” she recalls. “When I finished at William & Mary I took a year to work at a law firm and was planning to go to law school. But some things changed. One, I hated the law firm, and two, I got a call from an athletic director at William & Mary and learned about an announcement about a position at Carnegie Mellon. I took a trip there and fell in love with it so I thought ‘What the heck, there’s nothing to lose.’ Right from get go, I was completely sold on it. I had coached camps and with Virginia ODP. I always loved coaching but I never thought I could turn it into a career. I got lucky because at that time, schools were looking for people who had done well as players. I had no licenses, no formal experience other than a year with a club team.”

Shackford led Carnegie Mellon’s squad from club status in 1990 to a varsity sport in ’91 and then into conference play. Through her five years with the program she also coached club soccer at Pittsburgh-area club Beadling SA and with Pennsylvania West’s franchise of U.S. Youth Soccer ODP. During that time she completed a Masters degree in Public Policy and also all of her coaching licenses. She was enjoying life, describing herself as someone who can be happy anywhere, but another unexpected turn was on the way.

The turn was when Princeton began looking for a women’s soccer coach.

“I thought if I was ever going to make a jump this would be the kind of school I’d go to,” Shackford said. “I was used to dealing with intelligent kids already, so I inquired and put a resume together. They decided to wait a year and hire an interim coach and I never really thought about it again.”

But the prestigious institution came calling again in January of 1995 and Shackford was offered the job. Her acceptance, as she put it, “seemed like a no-brainer.”

Fourteen seasons and more than 150 wins later, her instincts have been confirmed. The program serves as a model for stability and the combination of competitiveness and academic excellence.

“I’ve been blessed. We’ve had great athletes, players and people the whole way through,” she said. I can’t say I coach really differently. I’m a big believer that soccer is a simple game. It may have gotten more athletic, but you don’t need to reinvent the wheel.

A self-described soccer purist, Shackford agrees that the 2004 College Cup appearance of her squad was a triumph for soccer being played the right way. Her principles regarding style of play are matched by her expectations for the holistic development of the players under her watch.

“We spend a lot of time over the years to make sure we have the right people in the program,” Shackford said. “I feel strongly you have to have the whole package. Princeton has been consistently ranked as the #1 undergraduate program in the country, so the academic demands are huge. So it needs to be the right kid who aspires to play at a really high level. I want a kid who is really solid about her decision-making on the field and who understands it’s something bigger than themselves. Our goal is to put the program in position to win, but I want them to also be able to say these were four of the best years of their life and they are better for it. That’s pretty much how we do things.”

Shackford, who has an 8-year old daughter Kayleigh and 6-year old twins Cameron and Keegan, said she has adjusted her schedule somewhat with time.

“I’m much more economical with my time now. I used to be in the office just to be in office, but now I’m more efficient. Now there is the technology where I can be in work at other places,” she said.  “Princeton has been so supportive of me and my kids. The fact that they can grow up on a campus like Princeton, well you can’t get much better than that.

“A lot of women don’t go into coaching because of the 24/7 demands and all the travel. But if you really want to go into coaching you can still have a family. You need to remember there’s a lot of flexibility in the job too,” she continued. “We need to see more women getting into head coaching, but I think some are just afraid because of all the time demands. For me, to be able to work at my passion is priceless. How many people get to do that?”