NCAAW
Mechelle Voepel 7y

From career's early days to her 1,000th victory, Tara VanDerveer has been a coaching pioneer

Women's College Basketball, Stanford Cardinal, USC Trojans

STANFORD, Calif. -- It's really hard to picture Stanford coach Tara VanDerveer -- now of 1,000 career victories -- hanging out in her parents' basement, on the verge of the country's Bicentennial year, not sure what she was going to do next with her life.

But that's pretty much where she was in the winter of 1975-76. She'd graduated from Indiana, was running out of money and was sleeping in late, by her recollection. She needed something to motivate her.

Her dad suggested she go help out younger sister Marie's high school basketball team, which didn't have a real coach.

"They had just lost the night before 99-11," said VanDerveer, who'd keenly observed Bob Knight's practices while she was a student at Indiana, trying to learn how to coach. "I said, 'No.'"

But despite her protests, she went to see what she could do.

"And I really loved it," she said. "But I'd come home and my parents would say, 'How come you didn't play Marie more?' And I'd be like, 'Mom, she can't dribble. She can't shoot.'"

So right from the start, she learned two big keys to what has helped her to a Hall of Fame career -- another chapter of which was written Friday, when Stanford's 58-42 victory over Southern California gave VanDerveer a new nickname: Tara 1K.

First, she recognized that she was good at teaching, and she had more patience and perseverance than she had imagined. But second, she also figured out that along with the X's and O's part of the job, which she naturally gravitated to, there was a crucial human aspect to the profession.

"I understood right away," VanDerveer said, "every player is someone's daughter, or someone's sister."

On a joyful night in Maples Pavilion, VanDerveer reflected on a mental kaleidoscope of so many daughters and sisters who were a part of her 1,000 victories and paid homage to them. It's a litany of All-Americans from Jennifer Azzi to Val Whiting to Kate Starbird to Kristin Folkl to Nicole Powell to Candice Wiggins to Jayne Appel to Nneka Ogwumike and Chiney Ogwumike.

VanDerveer thanked her coaching staff, including Amy Tucker, who has been at Stanford all 31 seasons with VanDerveer, and Kate Paye, a former Cardinal player. She praised the administrators who hired her as a head coach: first at Idaho in 1978, then at Ohio State in 1980 and then at Stanford in 1985.

She voiced appreciation for the Stanford fans -- 4,490 were in attendance for an early 6 p.m. tipoff on a rainy evening to see history. And VanDerveer also gave kudos to the media who covered this milestone.

Ultimately, she said she owed the most to her parents, both teachers, for the work ethic and values they instilled. Her father has passed away, but her mother, who will be 90 this year, was at the game. VanDerveer joked that the Cardinal needed to get this win so her mom could return home to Colorado.

She said all this with a lot of smiles, but there were no tears. Even though VanDerveer said, "I'm working hard to keep it all together," it didn't actually look as if she were holding back a big flood of emotions. Even if she was.

But that's one of the charmingly humorous things about VanDerveer, who joined Duke's Mike Krzyzewski and the late Pat Summitt of Tennessee as the only Division I basketball coaches with 1,000 victories.

Simply put: Tara is Tara. She has that grade-school math teacher voice, her sideline wardrobe of muted gray, her obsession with watching game film, her love of scouting reports. If anyone was born to be a coach, it's VanDerveer.

And when she talked about the great timing she has had -- like being on the ground floor of the game after the passage of Title IX in 1972 and getting to coach the U.S. women's basketball team at the landmark-for-women 1996 Olympics -- she also noted that it was the opposite for her as a player.

Things that girls and young women now take for granted -- like going to a basketball camp or having the opportunity to earn an athletic scholarship -- weren't available to VanDerveer, 63, when she was growing up. But rather than spend time lamenting what she didn't have, she focuses on the opportunities she has gotten.

But there are also the ones that she has helped create for others.

Before Friday's game, USC coach Cynthia Cooper-Dyke made a point of saying thank-you to VanDerveer for her work with the national team in 1995-96, which helped build enthusiasm for the launch of the WNBA in 1997.

Cooper-Dyke was 34 then and had been a star for more than a decade overseas. But the WNBA gave American fans a chance to see how amazing she was; Cooper-Dyke led Houston to four WNBA titles and won the MVP award in 1997 and '98.

"Tara's a team player. Yeah, she wants to win championships, but she loves women's basketball," said Cooper-Dyke, who was still playing at USC when VanDerveer took over at Stanford. "Had it not been for her push with USA basketball, the opportunity would have passed me by [with the WNBA].

"All the young women that she's mentored -- words could not describe how many lives she's actually touched."

That's the part that VanDerveer is most proud of, and she watched, beaming, as messages from former players appeared on the Maples videoboard after the game -- including one from someone who wasn't part of the 1,000 wins and didn't play for Stanford. In fact, VanDerveer's Cardinal ended her college career in the 1992 national semifinals.

Yet Dawn Staley, now coach at South Carolina and a former star at Virginia, spoke in tribute to VanDerveer, too. Staley played for VanDerveer on the 1995-96 national team, and said in her message, "When I grow up, I want to be just like you."

VanDerveer said one of the things she's learned is to enjoy the moment, and she did that Friday. But she'll be quite glad to be out of the spotlight. The Cardinal are 20-3 now, and at 10-1 tied with Oregon State for the Pac-12 lead. For so many years, Stanford carried the league's banner, but all during that time, VanDerveer talked up other programs.

Now, success has spread to several teams in the league, and no one is happier about that than VanDerveer -- even if it does make it harder to add to her post-1,000 victory count.

VanDerveer said that things like Summitt's death last summer reminded her to take time to appreciate all the more the people in her life and the great things she's had a chance to experience. And how friendships and memories -- of which she has far more than 1,000 -- are big parts of what makes coaching so rewarding.

But then there's also that bedrock thing that VanDerveer learned way back when she lent a helping hand to her sister's struggling high school team.

She is a conductor, and whether the orchestra is just learning notes or is playing like virtuosos, there is something wonderful about helping make it happen. And very few have done that as well as VanDerveer.

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