‘Her Reputation Precedes Her’: Erica Dambach Leads Women’s College Soccer Dynasty As Penn State Boss

Erica Dambach’s role in collegiate soccer, and women’s athletics as a whole, began long before she became a coach.
The New Jersey native played for the U-17 National Team and received All-American honors in high school. Dambach was first introduced to the collegiate level in 1993 when she joined William & Mary as a student-athlete.
While with the Tribe, Dambach racked up personal accolades, named NSCAA All-Region and two-time First Team All-CAA. Her team made the NCAA Tournament all four years and won two CAA regular-season and tournament championships. William & Mary honored her efforts in 2010, inducting her into the William and Mary Athletics Hall of Fame.
Also on the Tribe with Dambach was Penn State associate head coach Ann Cook. Cook joined the Nittany Lions in 2007, the same year Dambach became the head coach. The two have been inseparable since and are best friends.
After graduating, Dambach started grad school in 1997 at Bucknell University. She immediately joined the coaching staff as a grad assistant to stay involved with soccer. After a year in the role, Cook said it was obvious that Dambach had fallen in love with coaching.
Dambach even convinced Cook to delay law school to pursue a career in soccer. This was the first time the two had talked about the potential of a team-up down the road.
Following grad school, Dambach was hired at Dartmouth as the assistant coach. She only assumed that role for two years before becoming the head coach in 2000. The Big Green won back-to-back Ivy League co-championships during her two years as head coach.
Taking a step back in 2003, the New Jersey native wanted to pursue a master’s in business administration at Lehigh. While going through school, she served again as a graduate assistant for the Mountain Hawks.
“My plan was always to go back to school. So I decided, after five years up at Dartmouth, to take a step away from coaching,” Dambach said. “At that point, I felt like I was going to go back and pursue a coaching route, but I really wanted to go on and get a degree.”
Dambach bounced around coaching jobs after receiving her master’s, spending time with the United States U-19 and U-17 teams, Florida State, and Harvard before landing her job with Penn State.
By no means did Dambach walk into a struggling program in Happy Valley, but there was still work to be done. Penn State’s women’s soccer team has made it to the NCAA Tournament every year since the tournament’s inaugural season in 1994. A large part of that success is Dambach, who joined the Nittany Lions in 2007.
The Nittany Lions had won the Big Ten regular season championship every year since 1998 and had won the Big Ten Tournament in 2006. Yet, Penn State was still without the coveted national championship. In her first year, Penn State won its 10th straight Big Ten regular season championship and received the first seed in both the Big Ten and NCAA Tournaments.
The Nittany Lions lost in the semifinal in the Big Ten Tournament and then the round of 16 in the NCAA Tournament. The team finished with an 18–4–2 record but without the two most important pieces of hardware.
Dambach’s efforts in the tournament, though, brought attention from the United States Women’s National Team (USWNT). She became an assistant to Pia Sundage in the 2008 Olympics, where the USWNT won gold.
“I have learned that I enjoy the role of being an assistant. Sometimes, I enjoy being the one the players can go to,” Dambach said. “I think that as college athletics are evolving, it’s taking the head coach further and further away from the athletes and more and more toward the donors.”
Since her first season, the Nittany Lions haven’t missed the NCAA Tournament once and won the Big Ten in 2008, 2015, 2017, 2019, and 2022.
Finally, in 2015 Dambach brought a national championship to Happy Valley.
The winning didn’t come without its struggles. In the past 18 years, college athletics has completely flipped on its head. The introduction of the transfer portal, NIL, and the looming House vs. NCAA settlement means Dambach’s job changes almost every year.
Changes in college athletics haven’t changed her coach’s philosophies, though. Dambach said regardless of whether a player is in the program for one week or seven years, she wants to build a genuine connection with them. She feels this is the best way to get the best out of the player and the person.
“I think you’re seeing less and less of that bond with the coach and the players, and it’s more of kind of like a business,” Rowan Lapi, who served as one of Penn State’s captains in 2024, said. “But I don’t feel that with coach, and I don’t think our team has felt that either. She cares so much about those interactions, and how much fulfillment she gets from us, from the players.”
With collegiate coaches struggling, Dambach’s morals, built throughout her journey, have meant continued success and respect in women’s athletics. From when she was a player at William & Mary, putting the person over the athlete has helped her create a legacy.
“Anywhere she is, her reputation precedes her, everywhere she goes. I think everyone knows that she’s the best at what she does, and she’s also the best person,” Cook said.
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