For 38 years, save for a one-season sabbatical when she coached the U.S. national team to a 60–0 record and a gold medal at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, Tara VanDerveer has been Stanford women’s basketball.
VanDerveer. Stanford. Stanford. VanDerveer.
“It’s hard to separate Tara from the success and the history of the program,” Cardinal assistant coach Katy Steding told The Epoch Times. “They really are synonymous.”
Already the winningest coach in women’s college basketball history, Ms. Vanderveer this season stands to surpass a fellow legend, former Duke men’s Coach Mike Krzyzewski, for the all-time record of 1,202 career victories. The Nov. 8 opener against visiting Hawaii will arrive with Ms. VanDerveer owning a 1,186-265 mark during a 44-year career that included earlier stints at Idaho and Ohio State.
Given what Ms. Steding, a key player on Stanford’s initial NCAA championship team in 1990 and a 1996 Olympian, called virtually “unparalleled” longevity, it’s fair to wonder how much longer women’s college basketball fans might be treated to the absolute treasure who leads the Cardinal program.
Ms. VanDerveer, 70, has heard the question before, including not long ago from a Stanford professor of a similar age. He wondered whether the university’s move from the disintegrating Pacific-12 Conference to the Atlantic Coast Conference after this season might present a convenient exit opportunity.
“I said: ‘You know, I’ll make a decision on what I’m doing at the end of the season. I want to put everything into this year,’” Ms. VanDerveer told The Epoch Times. “I said, ‘Are you retiring next year?’ He said, ‘Oh, no, it’s fun.’”
Even after all these years, fun remains a huge part of the equation for Ms. VanDerveer, too.
“You’re around young people,” she said. “It’s exciting. You still get goosebumps. It’s being part of something. So I just really want to put everything I have into each year that I’m coaching at Stanford and just have enthusiasm for it. If I get to the point where I’m like, ‘Hey, I’m thinking about some other things or I want to do other things,’ then I’m going to make that change. As much as I love basketball, and I do love it, at some point, I’ll want to do other things.”
Even the prospect of coaching the WNBA expansion team set to begin play in nearby San Francisco in 2025 doesn’t hold any allure. The professional league’s summer schedule that would conflict with time at Ms. VanDerveer’s beloved offseason lakefront cabin in Minnesota is a non-starter.
“I’ll be ready to pass the baton to somebody else down the road at Stanford, and I feel the same way about the WNBA,” she said. “I have no desire.”
Unlike many coaches, and others, Ms. VanDerveer doesn’t seem to have struggled to continue relating with younger generations.
“It’s not that people are that different,” she said. “I think it’s more that the world they live in is so different, like this is the first generation to only know the internet. When I first went to Stanford, there were no cellphones. There were no computers. I didn’t have email. Young people still want to know that you care about them, that you want to help them, take them to a place they can’t get to by themselves. That’s what I think coaching is. That’s what it’s about for me.”
For all of Ms. VanDerveer’s and the Cardinal’s success, which includes 26 regular-season conference championships, 36 NCAA Tournament appearances, 15 Final Four berths, and three national championships, there have been plenty of disappointing moments along the way. Stanford captured its second NCAA title in three seasons in 1992 but then went nearly three decades before winning another in 2021 despite having been a seemingly constant Final Four presence.
And then last season came a shocking second-round NCAA Tournament loss to Mississippi, on the Cardinal’s home floor at Maples Pavilion no less.
“Falling short at times doesn’t ever seem to really deter Tara,” Ms. Steding said. “The thing is she enjoys it every day. She enjoys it when it’s not what she wants it to look like because then it’s something to work on and fix, and she enjoys it when we’re really good and there’s not much to tweak because we’re doing it the right way and we’ve having success. I think what drives her is that continuing pursuance of excellence. I know that sounds like a tagline or something, but it’s really true. She doesn’t settle for ‘That’s good enough,’ or ‘OK, whatever.’ She doesn’t.”
A five-time national coach of the year, Ms. VanDerveer reacted to last season’s early NCAA Tournament loss by taking “full responsibility for not doing the job with the team” that she “needed to do” and making some changes, on and off the court.
“Really, just looking at everything we’re doing and saying, ‘All right, we’re going to up our game in every single thing,’” she said.
Always challenged by Stanford’s rigorous academic requirements that severely limit the program’s potential recruiting pool, the Cardinal have also struggled in recent years to navigate seismic changes in the college sports landscape.
Stanford’s “conservativeness” and being “slow to embrace” the NCAA’s acceptance of “name, image and likeness” opportunities that create marketing and promotional possibilities for student-athletes didn’t do the Cardinal any favors. Ms. VanDerveer, though, said Stanford “now is all-in on really helping ... students with NIL.”
The NCAA’s transfer portal, which helps facilitate transfers to other schools, especially for players who have fallen down the depth chart, has presented yet another hurdle.
During the just-completed offseason, for example, three members of the Cardinal left for other programs. Stanford, meanwhile, added no transfers.
“We’re not a portal type of team,” Ms. VanDerveer said, citing the fact that the private university doesn’t accept junior and senior transfers and the reality that few transfer prospects would qualify academically.
The impending move to the Atlantic Coast Conference is also something of an unknown. On the one hand, it’s a difficult development for Ms. VanDerveer, long the biggest advocate of Pacific-12 and West Coast women’s basketball. Even with the drastically increased travel demands, however, there is most definitely a flip side.
“The one thing I want to make sure you understand is I’m very excited about being in the ACC,” she said. “I think it adds a freshness for our fans and for our student-athletes to play against that competition. That’s what they want.”
Despite everything, including a depleted roster that now numbers only 12 players, the Cardinal this season boast plenty of talent.
Senior post player Cameron Brink is a two-time All-American. She and guard Hannah Jump, a 3-point sharpshooting graduate student, were both all-conference selections last season.
Sophomore guard Talana Lepolo and junior forward Kiki Iriafen are other returning starters, and junior forward Brooke Demetre and junior guard Elena Bosgana of Greece figure to play key roles. Three incoming freshmen, guard Chloe Clardy and forwards Courtney Ogden and Nunu Agara, are also highly regarded.
Among the big differences for Stanford this season is that pre-season prognostications, usually off the charts, are restrained. The Cardinal are ranked just 15th in the Associated Press preseason national poll and picked to finish only third, behind UCLA and Utah, in the Pac-12.
“Honestly, we’re kind of forgotten on the West Coast anyway,” Ms. VanDerveer said. “I think a lot of times, people like the new, fresh face, and we’re not. But we’re good, and we’re not afraid of anybody. Having a chip on our shoulder is not a bad thing. We’re a confident team, and the fact that other people have written our obituary, we’re enjoying that.”
