How does Princeton beat Carolina in soccer? Blame Anson.

Some of you may be wondering how Princeton defeated Carolina in the NCAA women’s soccer tournament. Well, that’s an easy one. It’s all Anson Dorrance’s fault, and not because he’s a lousy coach or over the hill. Just the opposite.

Back in the day, as they used to say, UNC had cornered the market on smart, athletic young women soccer players who were also very, very competitive. If you remember, that combination was rare in girls playing sports — back in the day.

Other schools began studying exactly what Dorrance was doing in Chapel Hill, and as more girls were playing soccer more of them became college prospects. So, Princeton and Stanford, for example, said, “Hey, North Carolina has these swift young women who can handle the ball and knock you on your butt if you get in their way.” They heard they were pretty smart, too, because girls are smarter than boys at that age.

They still are, which is why UNC has 60 percent women in its student body. So the Princeton and Stanford coaches, and every coach in the ACC went to work.

At some schools, they played the smart card. They said to the young ladies who had a shoebox full of scholarship offers, “Look, we’re not a soccer power yet because we have had really smart girls but not great players. So do you want to attend the best college in the country and win championships, too?”

By now, there were enough high school players with a straight A’s and a helluva cross over move. And enough of them bought into playing for a great academic school and playing on nationally ranked teams. UNC was doing that for years, but now there were too many players with potential to be “the next Mia Hamm” out there to get them all.

That’s why Dorrance doesn’t win the ACC every year anymore, or get to the Final Four every year anymore, or add to his 21 national championships every year. While he’s disappointed when his season ends, he looks back at his mentor Dean Smith and remembers that he created a similar monster.

Girls are smarter than boys coming out of high school and more of them are college soccer prospects. The smartest, best and toughest of them go to the top schools in all those departments. It’s called parity, and Anson Dorrance is to blame for it.