DiCicco’s impact went beyond the pitch

Women’s sports lost a champion this week.

Tony DiCicco was overshadowed by his star-spangled team, which was just the way he liked it. Mia Hamm, Brandi Chastain, Briana Scurry and the rest were the real stars of the 1996 Olympics and the 1999 Women’s World Cup, and DiCicco was content to be the guy with the mustache in the background.

But DiCicco was the coach who guided the team to the pinnacle of women’s sports and, along the way, helped change our culture and sports history.

DiCicco died Monday at age 68, at his home in Connecticut. The cause, according to reports, was cancer.

His passing is a shock. I had an animated conversation with him in Rio de Janeiro in August, where he was doing Olympic commentary. In February, DiCicco introduced Chastain at her induction into the U.S. National Soccer Hall of Fame, at a ceremony at Avaya Stadium.

DiCicco cracked that, when Chastain lined up for the winning penalty kick in the 1999 World Cup, “Brandi, for the thousandth time of her life, stood up to score the winning kick. The other 999 were on the practice field or in her mind.”

DiCicco’s low-key humor helped set the tone for a team that had sky-high ambitions but never took itself too seriously. The former goalkeeper coach, he took over in 1994 from Anson Dorrance. After the team lost in the semifinals of the 1995 World Cup, DiCicco made several changes, including bringing Chastain back to the team as a defender.

Hamm once told him, “Coach us like men, treat us like women,” and DiCicco held onto those words. He valued the intense interpersonal relationships on the team. He was innovative, bringing in a sports psychologist. He empowered his players to take ownership. He became a subject of fascination, of studies of how coaching women’s teams differed from coaching men’s. He fought U.S. Soccer for what he believed his team deserved.

DiCicco’s team won the first women’s soccer gold medal at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. Three years later, it won the World Cup in the largest women’s sporting event ever held.

Afterward, DiCicco told his team, “Not only did you win, you won over America. It changed our lives.”

And DiCicco changed our lives as well.