Women's Soccer
- Title:
- Head Coach
- Email:
- wsoccer@princeton.edu
- Phone:
- (609) 258-5092
Shackford finished with a record of 203-115-29 at Princeton and a 245-136-33 overall record adding four seasons leading a startup Carnegie Mellon program from 1991-94. Shackford's 200th career win came Oct. 10, 2009 in an overtime victory at Brown, making her the 33rd active Division I coach at the time with at least 200 wins as an NCAA head coach.
Inheriting a team that had four straight non-winning seasons prior to her arrival in 1995, Shackford has built a consistently successful program that had 10 winning seasons in a row and 16 in her 19 years.
Outside of Princeton, Shackford served as an assistant coach for the U.S. Under-20 national team as it trained in Mexico in February 2007. She has also worked with the U.S. Under-21 national team. On campus, Shackford has served as a member of the Princeton athletic department’s Coaches’ Council.
In 2012, she led Princeton to the fifth 7-0-0 season in Ivy League history, equaled the Ivy League record for most NCAA appearanced by one coach, and guided the Tigers to the progam's first road victory in NCAA tournament play. The 2008 season was Shackford’s fifth Ivy League title while adding two other NCAA at-large berths for the seven postseason bids during her Princeton tenure. Off the field, 100 percent of Shackford’s players have graduated.
Since the 2004 NCAA College Cup semifinal run, after which Shackford was named the 2004 national Division I coach of the year, Shackford has coached three more Ivy League Players of the Year in Emily Behncke ’06 (2005), Diana Matheson ’08 (2007) and Jen Hoy '13 (2012). The latest honor made it five Ivy League Players of the Year that Shackford has coached, after Heather Deerin ’03 (2001) and Esmeralda Negron ’05 (2003, 2004).
A total of 37 times in Shackford’s 19 seasons, Princeton players have been named first-team All-Ivy League. Heather Deerin ’03 and Matheson were named to the first team in all four years, while Behncke and Esmeralda Negron ’05 earned the honor three times each.
While 2008 marked Princeton’s return to an NCAA tournament in which it participated annually from 1999-2004, the final year of that streak remains Shackford’s career highlight. That year, the Tigers posted a 19-3 overall record, a perfect 7-0 in the Ivy League and 4-1 in the NCAAs, winning their way into the national semifinal. Princeton finished the 2004 season ranked fourth in the final NSCAA coaches’ poll. The team was the first Ivy League program in any sport to reach the final four of a 64-team tournament.
The unprecedented run made Shackford just the fourth female to be named national Coach of the Year in the history of the honor and the second Ivy League coach to be named national Coach of the Year, 20 years after Brown’s Phil Pincince won the award. She was also named national Division I Coach of the Year by SoccerBuzz Magazine.
Princeton’s season ended with a 2-0 loss to UCLA in the Women’s College Cup in Cary, N.C., in a game televised nationally by ESPN2 and seen by 8,325 people in the stands. Princeton’s final game at its now-former home, Lourie-Love Field, was a national quarterfinal win over Washington attended by 2,504 fans.
In the 2004 national semifinal, UCLA was coached by Jillian Ellis, Shackford’s best friend and one of the other three women to be named Division I Coach of the Year. Princeton defeated Central Connecticut, Villanova, Boston College and Washington to reach the Final Four.
The 2004 run was the realization of what was hinted at the year before, when Princeton posted an 11-3-3 record in 2003. The Tigers finished 23rd nationally in the RPI rankings after being polled in the NSCAA Top 25 for more than half the season.
Princeton’s 2002 team won the first outright Ivy title in program history a year after Shackford was also the 2001 Mid-Atlantic Region Coach of the Year following a 14-3-2 season. In 1999, Shackford led Princeton to the NCAA tournament, ending a 16-year drought for the program.
Before coming to Princeton, Shackford put together a 42-21-3 record in four seasons as the head coach at Carnegie Mellon University, where she built the women’s soccer program from scratch. She also earned a masters degree in public management while at Carnegie Mellon.
A native of Burke, Va., Shackford was a three-time All-America midfielder at William & Mary and was inducted into the William & Mary Hall of Fame in the spring of 2000. To cap her sophomore campaign of 1985, Shackford scored both goals in a 3-2 loss to eventual champion George Mason. Shackford was a four-time all-region selection and a three-time member of the U.S. Olympic Festival team. As a collegian, she coached in Northern Virginia with the state ODP program. In 2011, Shackford was inducted into the Virginia-D.C. Soccer Hall of Fame.
Shackford holds an “A” license from the United States Soccer Federation and works with the Region I Olympic Development Program at the state and regional levels. She has also been actively involved with the Princeton Football Club (PFC) as well as other clubs in the area.
She has a daughter Kayleigh, 13, and another daughter Cameron and son Keegan, 11-year-old twins.
Julie Shackford Year-By-Year
| Year | School | Overall | Conference | Postseason |
| 1991 | Carnegie Mellon | 10-4-0 | Independent | |
| 1992 | Carnegie Mellon | 6-10-1 | 0-6-0/7th UAA | |
| 1993 | Carnegie Mellon | 13-4-1 | 2-4-0/6th UAA | |
| 1994 | Carnegie Mellon | 13-3-2 | 4-1-1/3rd UAA | |
| Total at Carnegie Mellon | 42-21-4 | 6-11-1 | ||
| 1995 | Princeton | 9-8-0 | 3-4-0/T4th Ivy | |
| 1996 | Princeton | 7-8-2 | 2-3-2/4th Ivy | |
| 1997 | Princeton | 10-6-1 | 3-4-0/5th Ivy | |
| 1998 | Princeton | 9-8-0 | 3-4-0/5th Ivy | |
| 1999 | Princeton | 12-5-1 | 4-2-1/3rd Ivy | NCAA 1st Round |
| 2000 | Princeton | 13-5-0 | 6-1-0/Ivy Champion | NCAA 1st Round |
| 2001 | Princeton | 14-3-2 | 5-1-1/Ivy Champion | NCAA 2nd Round |
| 2002 | Princeton | 13-3-1 | 6-1-0/Ivy Champion | NCAA 1st Round |
| 2003 | Princeton | 11-3-3 | 4-2-1/2nd Ivy | NCAA 1st Round |
| 2004 | Princeton | 19-3-0 | 7-0-0/Ivy Champion | NCAA Semifinal |
| 2005 | Princeton | 8-6-2 | 5-2-0/2nd Ivy | |
| 2006 | Princeton | 8-7-1 | 3-4-0/5th Ivy | |
| 2007 | Princeton | 8-8-1 | 4-3-0/3rd Ivy | |
| 2008 | Princeton | 12-3-2 | 5-1-1/Ivy Champion | NCAA 1st Round |
| 2009 | Princeton | 7-7-3 | 3-3-1/T5th Ivy | |
| 2010 | Princeton | 9-6-1 | 4-2-1/T2nd Ivy | |
| 2011 | Princeton | 6-10-1 | 2-5-0/T6th Ivy | |
| 2012 | Princeton | 14-4-1 | 7-0-0/Ivy Champion | NCAA 2nd Round |
| 2013 | Princeton | 7-6-4 | 1-5-1/7th Ivy | |
| 2014 | Princeton | 7-6-3 | 3-3-1/T3rd Ivy | |
| Total at Princeton | 203-115-29 | 80-50-10 (6 Ivy titles) | 8 Postseason Appearances | |
| Career Totals | 245-136-33 |
Education
College of William & Mary, B.A. Government, 1988
Carnegie Mellon University, Master of Public Management, 1995
Playing Experience
College of William & Mary, 1984-87
Awards
2004 NSCAA Division I National Coach of the Year
2001, 2004, 2012 NSCAA Mid-Atlantic Coach of the Year
2006 Intercollegiate Officials Association of New Jersey "Spirit of the Game" Award
Coaching Experience
Princeton University, Head Coach (1995-2014)
Carnegie Mellon University, Head Coach (1991-95)
U.S. Under-20 Team, Past Assistant Coach
U.S. Under-21 Team, Past Assistant Coach
State and Regional team coach for Olympic Development Program
Helped start the PFC Soccer Club in Princeton
Coached club teams in Virginia, Pennsylvania and New Jersey
