“Sometimes you have chemistry problems on teams, and we’ve had none, literally none that I know of,” Chaney said. “I really attribute that to all five of the seniors. They never have a negative attitude, and I think that sets a positive example to the rest of the players on the team. They go, ‘Wow, you’re a senior and you don’t play that much, yet you can still be positive.’ Stuff like that really makes a huge difference. It doesn’t leave a lot of room for other people to complain about their playing time when they see seniors on the bench and keeping a positive attitude.”
That attitude has been a key. Chaney said he read “The Girls of Summer: The U.S. Women’s Soccer Team and How It Changed the World.” The book is about the 1999 World Cup winner.
“In there, one of the players told their coach, ‘Coach us like men, treat us like women,’ ” Chaney said. “I always try to do that with my girls. I try to coach them like boys and treat them like girls. Quite honestly, this year, I’ve treated these girls like boys. I really got on them at times if they weren’t focused or they weren’t performing the way I’d seen them perform before. They never took it personally ... These girls never got down on themselves, even though I yelled at them. They’ve believed in themselves all year long.”
