Tara VanDerveer’s path to NCAA wins file: By no means cease rising

On the finish of each season, Stanford ladies’s basketball coach Tara VanDerveer thinks she’s performed teaching.

“I give up for a couple of day,” she stated, laughing. “I am like, ‘Oh God, I am unable to take this anymore.'”

Then she performs together with her canine, goes for a swim, soaks on this planet round her. And the sensation shortly passes; she’s already eager about subsequent yr’s workforce and its journey.

A coach the previous 45 years, VanDerveer reached a pinnacle Sunday: Stanford beat Oregon State for VanDerveer’s 1,203rd profession victory, passing former Duke males’s coach Mike Krzyzewski for essentially the most wins in NCAA basketball historical past.

“She’s wired to do that,” stated Jennifer Azzi, who performed for VanDerveer on Stanford’s first NCAA title workforce in 1989-90, in addition to VanDerveer’s gold-medal-winning Olympic workforce in 1996. “There are simply these coaches who’re in it as a result of it is who they’re, what they do and love each minute of it. Not that there are by no means frustrations or ups and downs. However the core of her is 100% in it.

“Somebody like her would not actually get burned out, as a result of finally, they’re all the time going for extra. Not in a nasty approach, or for her ego. It is simply, ‘I am all the time going to problem myself and have a imaginative and prescient for the place my workforce can go.'”

The flexibility to continue to grow and adapting is why VanDerveer is at this peak. She embraced the 3-point shot when it was launched within the Nineteen Eighties. Many years later, she has adjusted to the title, picture and likeness alternatives and the impression of transfers.

For VanDerveer, teaching basketball hasn’t simply been a labor of affection, however a love of labor. She has picked the brains of each basketball guru she has ever been in a position to spend time with, permitting her to grasp teaching completely different offensive and defensive kinds to match the expertise she has.

She has change into a prestigious establishment at a prestigious establishment.

“I perceive now what a trailblazer Tara is and what an honor it’s to be coached by her,” junior ahead Kiki Iriafen stated. “Day by day, I am studying one thing from her, however she’s attempting to study from us as effectively.”

VanDerveer grew up within the state of New York, the place greater than as soon as she heard her well-meaning mother and father ask, “The place is basketball going to take you?” She performed at Indiana within the Nineteen Seventies, on the daybreak of girls’s faculty sports activities as we all know them. She took a basketball class there from males’s coach Bob Knight during which she was his most diligent pupil, even going to his practices each day and taking notes.

She wound up again house after faculty, not sure what was subsequent. When her father steered she assist coach her youthful sister’s highschool workforce, VanDerveer at first demurred, mentioning together with her attribute bluntness that the workforce was horrible. However she did it anyway, and the teaching bug bit and by no means let go of her.

After time as an unpaid graduate assistant at Ohio State, VanDerveer was employed as Idaho’s head coach in 1978 and served there for 2 seasons — “I used to be paid $13,000 a yr, and I beloved it” — then went again to Columbus to be the Buckeyes’ head coach. In 1985, she took over at Stanford, the place she has received 26 convention regular-season championships and three NCAA titles whereas going to the Remaining 4 15 occasions.

That is the short model, after all; it wasn’t that simple. She was 23 with no apparent approach forward within the sport she beloved in a nascent time for girls’s athletics, and he or she made her personal path. She received two NCAA titles earlier than age 40, then got here near profitable one other a number of occasions, however did not get there once more for one more 29 years.

VanDerveer turned 70 in June, and whereas she says, “I do not plan on being an 80-year-old coach,” there’s pleasure and risk surrounding her.

Subsequent season, Stanford and Cal will be part of the ACC. For somebody who for many years has championed West Coast basketball, the demise of the Pac-12 is crushing for her. However VanDerveer needs to be part of the transition and finds one thing to sit up for in it. The ACC, she stated with a smile, can now stand for “All Coast Convention.”

“The ACC is a good league for girls’s basketball,” VanDerveer stated. “Each rose has a thorn, and the thorn shall be among the journey. However is not it thrilling to consider Duke, North Carolina, Louisville, Notre Dame, Miami, Syracuse, Virginia — all of the groups — coming to Stanford?”

With every win, she is going to add to her file, however it’s by no means foremost on her thoughts. She nonetheless enjoys observe and breaking down recreation movie. She is not motivated to pursue what’s simple. Even her down time consists of issues like water snowboarding.

“You are all the time round these younger youngsters,” VanDerveer stated when requested whether or not she feels her age, or no matter 70 is “supposed” to really feel like. “Final yr, I used to be doing a ropes course; I am climbing up on these items with these youngsters. They had been like, ‘Come on, Tara!’ I am considering, ‘I am unable to do that. I should not be doing this.’ However I did it.”

Is that the competitiveness in VanDerveer?

“It is the craziness!” she stated, chuckling. “However once you speak to individuals who do not work, they get depressed. I’ve loads past basketball that I like to do. So I am not fearful about after I retire. However I am very proud of what I am doing now. I am simply having enjoyable.”

A few decade in the past, she discovered herself so drained after the season, she questioned whether or not she ought to step down. However a distinguished Stanford booster inspired her to as an alternative take extra break day in the summertime, and preserve power.

“I consider yearly,” she stated. “I am within the second yr of a four-year contract, and it is an amazing contract. I really feel very supported at Stanford. I really like what I am doing. Final yr was not the ending that we wished. I wish to have an amazing yr this yr, after which simply say, ‘Alright, hey, I am up for this subsequent problem.’ Or say, ‘Effectively, perhaps not.’ I am going to know that.”

VanDerveer’s legacy is about. She may have ridden off into the Bay Space sundown years in the past. However she is firmly rooted within the current of Stanford’s 17-2 season. And nonetheless evolving.

“I believe I’ve preserved the tread on my tires,” VanDerveer stated.

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Tara VanDerveer celebrates tying Coach Ok for many wins throughout faculty basketball

Tara VanDerveer shakes palms with Oregon then celebrates together with her gamers for tying Coach Ok for essentially the most profession wins in NCAA basketball historical past.

For Azzi, a part of the primary recruiting class VanDerveer dropped at Stanford within the fall of 1986, the coach’s longevity and her adaptability are inseparable.

“She’s been by means of all of the completely different generations, the completely different guidelines, the adjustments in society,” Azzi stated. “To cell telephones and texting, to the beginning of social media, to the NIL stuff now. She learns about it, after which embraces it to the most effective of her skill.

“She is a extremely particular coach. In spite of everything this time, she by no means forgets my birthday. And he or she’s all the time that voice that I typically want to listen to.”

That is what issues most to VanDerveer: The gamers who nonetheless name, who convey their youngsters to see her, who reminisce about what they discovered and ask her recommendation.

“I am not a lot of a collector. I could not even let you know the place nationwide championship rings are, or my Olympic stuff,” she stated. “They’re [here] someplace. Off the highest of my head, I could not find them.

“I do have in my exercise room at house a extremely stunning massive collage of the 1996 Olympics and a collage of the 2021 nationwide championship. I believe footage are enjoyable, however I am not a scrapbook keeper.”

It is all saved away in her thoughts, the reminiscences of every thing that led to 1,203 victories and counting.

“I nonetheless love doing clinics, and instructing the sport of basketball,” VanDerveer stated. “I like to ski. I play bridge with my mother and my sister. My mother’s higher than me, however I am higher than my sister. I really like my canine. I’ve an amazing life, and I am a really blissful individual.

“And I actually like to see the advance of our workforce and our gamers. I really like watching them develop.”