Where does Erica Dambach begin when she reflects on what’s happened to her during the past 12 months?
Is it leading the women’s soccer program at Penn State — her dream job, where her parents went to school and were married — to its first national title?
Is it marrying Jason Dambach, the former general manager of the State College Spikes, after the two had known each other for a few years but didn’t start dating until January 2015?
Or is it the more than 8-pound baby girl, Addison Jeanne Dambach, that she is probably looking at right now and gave birth to on July 8?
“You have a bucket list for life, and I knocked off three of the biggest ones in the same year,” Dambach said in mid-May while she was still pregnant with Addison. “You couldn’t have asked for a better year.”
Part of that year — that national championship — is something she wants to do again this year. And that’s where, for Dambach, there is no rest for the weary — or for a new mother — because this being August it means a new season is about to begin.
Dambach is entering her 10th season as Penn State’s head coach. Her road to Happy Valley included many stops, but it’s the destination the Huntingdon Valley native had longed wanted. She had experience in the college ranks as head coach at Dartmouth for three seasons before she left to pursue her master’s degree at Lehigh University, where she served as a graduate assistant. She was an assistant at Florida State for two seasons and then became head coach at Harvard in 2006. But it was her experience with the United States Youth National Team, serving as head coach for the Under-17 team for three years, where she made a name for herself.
When she was hired at Penn State in February 2007, she took over a program that was the best in the Big Ten but couldn’t get over the hump in its pursuit of a national championship. It had advanced as far as the national semifinals three times, only to lose each time.
Even during Dambach’s first eight seasons of leading the Nittany Lions, the team won seven Big Ten titles, but had just one trip to the Final Four, where it lost to North Carolina in the title game.
Then came last season.
A month into the year, the Lions had defeated No. 2 Stanford in Palo Alto, but they also had suffered two defeats, including one at home to Minnesota. It was around that time when Dambach started to feel as if this team might be the one that could win the program’s first national title.
“After watching a lot of matches — our matches and opponents around the country — and I started thinking no one is better than us this year,” she says. “I felt if we could pull it together with a young backline, give our youth the experience they needed, I felt we were as talented as anyone.
“At that point, we started to focus on the culture and making sure that piece was better than anyone else. Everyone understood their role, embraced their role, and the team- first environment was present every day.”
The Lions won their last 11 games, shutting out their last eight opponents, on their way to winning the national title — a 1-0 victory over Duke in the national-championship game.
“It was the moment. It was one of the reasons I love coaching so much, because it’s one profession that allows you to have the highest of highs and you lose yourself in it,” Dambach says. “I remember looking around and making eye contact with the players that didn’t play as much and seeing the pure joy and ownership of the championship in their faces. It made me proud as a coach and as a program to know that they’ve had the same experience as someone who scored the game-winning goal. That was probably the most gratifying part of winning this championship is to know that nine years of trying to create a championship culture had just come to fruition.”
And those who had been part of creating that championship culture but didn’t win a title still felt joy for their coach and the program.
“As coaches, they say how proud they are of us as players and how much we’ve grown. I never got to say how proud I am of [Dambach] as a coach — I got to say that,” says Maya Hayes, who scored 71 goals during her four-year career at Penn State, from 2010 to 2013. “Some players at other schools, you go through the program in four years and get out. [Dambach] values you as a person, not just an athlete. Every single girl on that field and team grows, not just as a player but as a person. … That makes her an amazing coach and why a lot of people are attracted to come to Penn State, and not just for the soccer.”
Dambach is what attracted Mallory Weber, a senior forward on last year’s team who assisted on Raquel Rodriguez’s game-winning goal in the national-title game, to become a Nittany Lion.
“She was the No. 1 reason I decided to go to Penn State,” Weber says. “A lot of coaches just want the best players. She wants the best players, but also the players who have the best morals and the best attitudes. She creates an inclusive team environment.”
The national title has opened up more doors for Dambach to bring in the top players she wants. She says she can travel to California to recruit, and where previously she might have landed the fourth-best player in the region, she can now have the best player commit to Penn State.
Those opportunities, however, haven’t changed the type of person she wants in her program. She continues to look for players who aren’t just the stars on their teams.
“Maybe the most important quality I’m looking for is a player who makes the people around them better,” she says. “You hear that an awful lot, but I want you to take the three players on the team that may have been the least successful, and I want you to put them on your team and beat everyone else. Embrace that concept of taking those players and giving them confidence and making them better.”
It was toward the end of the title run last season when Dambach was asked to, well, become a Dambach. As general manager of the State College Spikes, Jason Dambach would run into Penn State’s women’s soccer coach from time to time, including seeing her at Medlar Field at Lubrano Park.
The two started dating in January 2015, and the timing, it appeared, couldn’t have been worse. That month, Jason Dambach was hired to be the executive vice president and general manager of the double-A affiliate of the Texas Rangers, the Frisco RoughRiders, in Frisco, Texas.
“I felt I let the air out of both of our balloons,” Jason says. “But we spent a lot of time together the next week, and because of modern technology, we’ve been able to keep in touch and build from there.”
Jason would return to State College every so often and became part of the women’s soccer family as he spent more time with Erica and her team. The relationship built to the point where the day after Penn State had defeated West Virginia at Jeffrey Field to advance to the College Cup, Jason, who was in State College for Thanksgiving weekend, proposed to Erica during a walk the two were on with her dog.
“I couldn’t have asked for a better proposal,” she says. “It was simple and understated, but perfect.”
It almost wasn’t. Dambach admits he was worried about what would have happened if Penn State had lost to West Virginia a day earlier.
“What mindset would she have been in,” he laughs. “It could have been one of those Seinfeld moments.”
Instead, the next week, Jason traveled to Cary, N.C., for the College Cup and to see his fiancée and future wife reach the pinnacle of her coaching career.
In the national semifinal, Penn State defeated fellow Big Ten member Rutgers, 1-0, to avenge a loss from earlier in the season. In the title game, Rodriguez broke the scoreless tie with a goal in the 72nd minute that proved to be the one that gave Penn State its first national title.
“I just remember [Erica] sitting on the floor of the locker room holding the trophy, and she just had this tremendous joy,” he says. “It was such a relief. She inherited a terrific program and took it to another level. … For her, this was her baby.”
Then came July when she was holding another baby — Addison Jeanne Dambach. The newest member of the women’s soccer family arrived at 3:16 a.m. July 8, weighing 8 pounds, 2 ounces.
Dambach’s former players, of course, have no doubt what type of mother their former coach will be.
“She’s going to be an amazing mother,” Hayes says. “I can’t wait to babysit! She’s such a caring, nurturing person. … I can’t wait to witness it all.”
While Dambach is witnessing her daughter growing up day by day, she also can’t wait to see what the 2016 women’s soccer team can do, and if it can repeat what happened last year.
Much has changed since the start of last season. The team, of course, is different with the likes of Rodriguez and Weber gone, and the Lions are now the ones being chased nationally.
“It’s one thing to get there. Sustaining success is a whole other challenge, and one we’re ready for,” Dambach says. “We’re not content with one and done. 2015 was their year. We want 2016, 2017. It takes a decent amount of work to get to this point, but now it feels like it takes a lot more to stay at this point.”
Much, obviously, has changed for Dambach. She recognizes that being a parent changes how one sees things, and how one plans for the future.
“I got this image of after a game Jason handing [Addison] down to me and being with the team in that moment,” she says. “These are her role models. I say that now as I recruit. I’ll say to the mom that this is a really important decision for me in the recruiting process because your daughter is going to be one of the most influential pieces of my young daughter’s life — and that’s true.”
