When hiring for a soccer coach at in the Triangle, you're bound to brush up against serious chops: from recreational leagues to collegiate soccer to the North Carolina Courage, the region has long been an incubator for remarkable achievement in the sport. Even so, when Duke School Athletic Director and Middle School Physical Education Teacher Brian Greene put out the call for a middle school girls' soccer coach last year, and Heather O'Reilly's name landed in his inbox, he did a double take. "I thought, 'Surely it's not that Heather O'Reilly," he said.

It was, in fact, that Heather O'Reilly (see coach O'Reilly and DS soccer team picture at the end of this article): the three-time Olympic Gold Medalist, three-time World Cup medalist, infinitely decorated midfielder with strong soccer roots in North Carolina. After retiring from the Courage at the end of the 2019 season, O'Reilly began assistant coaching with her alma mater, UNC-Chapel Hill's powerhouse women's soccer program. She'd been envisioning her own mentorship program - focused on combining on-field work with off-field leadership skills - targeted toward young women to add to her growing coaching portfolio.

(Re-)enter Duke School. "There was a mutual interest in what each party could provide," Greene said. "I think Heather felt comfortable on campus and saw [coaching the middle school team] as an opportunity to do things a little differently."

Part of what makes Duke School athletics so unique is the way its ethos matches that of the entire school: valuing process and creative exploration over product, and, particularly for athletics, focusing on the holistic learning experience to seek joy and celebration within a traditionally competitive arena.

Anyone can sign up for a given sport; there are no tryouts and no cuts. "We don't see the overall record of a team as the measurement for success," Greene said. "If a team loses every game, but the students on that team have a positive experience and find joy in the sport and being part of the team, I view that as a success."

Would this approach gel with a player and coach of O'Reilly's stature? From their first conversations, Greene knew it was a no-brainer. "It's not about hiring great coaches in terms of the amount of experience or the level of knowledge within a sport. It's more about hiring good people. If I can hire an Olympic and World Cup champion to do things the 'Duke School way,' that goes to show this [combination] could and should be possible."

O'Reilly, whose academic background at UNC-Chapel Hill is in education, leaned fully into the "Duke School way" and found a transformative opportunity to inspire autonomy and self-possession among the middle school girls' team. "From the start, I wanted to give the players a sense of ownership of the squad," she said. "They were in charge of the team motto; they chose to get t-shirts and to have snacks after games. I wanted them to feel like it was their team, and Jake [Axelbank, the assistant coach] and I were there to facilitate them."

"Sometimes in sport, I think we are told what to do so much that you lose your autonomy. With a school like Duke School, I thought that sport and soccer should be no different to their educational ethos, which gives individuals and groups the freedom to explore."

For both participants and spectators, the results of O'Reilly's coaching method were palpable. One student on the team was most struck by O'Reilly's energy, describing her enthusiasm as "the glue for our team." Another credits O'Reilly for teaching her "the real magic of sports: teamwork." Greene recalls a tightly-knit squad, bound together win or lose. Anecdotally, he said, he "never saw more smiles on the faces of our girls' soccer team."

O'Reilly herself even recalled one game when she and Axelbank were nearly late due to traffic. But it was "no big deal," she said, because "the girls led warm-up and knew exactly what to do and were ready to coach the game themselves!" She was especially proud of the team's "ability to lead and galvanize their peers."

These are the same skills that O'Reilly aims to build in her mentorship program HOME 14 (Heather O'Reilly Mentorship Experiences), which kicked off with a two-day clinic this summer at Duke School. Focusing on the social-emotional transition between middle and high school and the significant stress young people face today, HOME 14 aims to offer "young women real strategies and techniques to face adversities head-on," O'Reilly said.

By the time this story hits print, O'Reilly will have completed her stint as a studio analyst with Fox Sports in Sydney for the Women's World Cup and will transition to her weekly SiriusXM show Played In. Also on tap for the fall: more coaching for a U-16 boys team at the North Carolina Football Club.

O'Reilly's connection to the Women's World Cup offers Duke School students, and her 2022-23 team in particular, a unique opportunity to watch the power of teamwork, communication, and athletic creativity play out in the largest of arenas. "If they're watching the World Cup this summer," Greene said, "they're making the connections between what they experienced at Duke School with Heather and what they're watching with the U.S. Women's National Team on national television. That's a really cool dynamic."

A dynamic that rhymes with O'Reilly's, and Duke School's, overall ethos: the goal is always bigger than the goalpost.