I love the discipline of it — the camaraderie of a team, the excitement of it — it's a tremendous rush to play on a great team or to coach a great team... the ballet of it... how people move together, the unselfishness that's generated by great teamwork... I was crazy about it and I still am.
It wasn’t easy for Tara VanDerveer to love basketball. She grew up in West Hill, New York, a rural hamlet outside Schenectady, where girls had no opportunities for organized sports. To get around this, she made her own informal chances to play with the boys: “I always brought the best basketball. So, if they wanted to use my ball, then I got to play.” The tactic earned her respect but not legitimacy. Her ninth-grade yearbook carried a note from the boys’ coach: To the best basketball player in the ninth grade, boy or girl. The praise, she says, “was really a Pyrrhic victory … I didn’t get to play on a team, and it was really painful.” Early on, VanDerveer was obsessed with the craft. “I passed 10,000 hours when I was 14,” she’s joked, and identifies herself as a lifelong “basketball junkie.” As a ninth-grader, the school librarian noticed that she’d read every single book on the sport in the library. She took this as a sign that something was off, and called VanDerveer’s father.
Although she didn’t get to play on a high school team, VanDerveer went on to compete in college—one year at SUNY Albany and three years at Indiana University. She also sought every opportunity to immerse herself in the game. While at Indiana, a coaching class with the legendary Bob Knight allowed her to watch the men’s team practice. The invitation was life-changing for VanDerveer, who came in with her homework every day for years, soaking up lessons from one of the nation’s best coaches. She left Bloomington convinced that for a team to excel, practice should be harder than the games.
Title IX created jobs as she graduated in 1975, and at just 24 she became head coach at the University of Idaho, then moved to Ohio State, where she led the Buckeyes to the 1985 Final Four. That spring, Stanford called. Her father, a teacher, knew what it was like to struggle financially. He warned that coaching such a small program would be “a graveyard job.” But she saw potential: “The job does involve digging, but I think it’s really a gold-mine job.”
VanDerveer practically willed Stanford’s success into being. In recruiting for their still-unknown team, she says, “I was a little bit of a broken record. I said, ‘Our goal is to win a national championship, we’re going to fill Maples Pavilion.’” Her conviction in the possibility of winning big convinced her players, who believed in themselves and their team. They organized their own workouts, practiced as hard as they could, and five seasons later, cut down the 1990 championship nets. A second title followed in 1992. After that first championship win, VanDerveer was named Naismith National Coach of the Year, an honor she’d earn again in 2011 and 2021—a testament to her persistence and unprecedented dominance as a leader in college basketball.
The only interruption in her Stanford tenure came in 1995–96, when USA Basketball—shaken by a bronze medal in Barcelona—asked her to rebuild the women’s national team. “It was a message to the world: we’re going to be serious in this Olympics. We’re not just going to show up and practice for two weeks and then see how it goes.” For nine months, she traveled with a team of American players who’d returned from abroad—where women’s leagues already existed—to train to play for their home country. They racked up more than 100,000 air miles and 59 wins before defeating Brazil for the Olympic gold in Atlanta. “We were 60–0 that year,” she puts it simply. In a letter to VanDerveer, Bob Knight called the final one of the best basketball games he’d ever seen.
VanDerveer’s success was a proof of concept for women’s basketball in the U.S. While other countries already had established leagues, she says, “this was before the WNBA and before the ABL, so in some ways I think we were a little bit of a guinea pig.”
Back at Stanford, she continued to drive her team to excel, running it as a cohesive, dynamic squad. “Great players don’t win championships,” VanDerveer says. “Great teammates win championships.” She likens a roster to an orchestra: “Some nights it’s going to be a piano solo, some nights it’s going to be a violin solo. But we’re all playing, we’re all keeping the beat.”
But it’s not all discipline for VanDerveer, who describes herself as propelled by both the joy of winning and the pain of losing. Her teams’ most hard-won victories, she says, are worth “crawling on glass for.” The excitement and surprise that motivated players have brought her—even when she herself couldn’t see a way out—have changed the way she sees the game.
On 21 January 2024, VanDerveer broke her final record, becoming the “winningest” coach in the history of the NCAA. She seemed unstoppable—though three months later, she announced her retirement, explaining that “someone else could do the job better. It takes a lot of energy to recruit and travel.” She finished with 1,216 victories, three NCAA titles (1990, 1992, 2021), and 14 Final Fours. It’s difficult, though, for such a hard worker to stay truly retired. She consults for Stanford’s coaches, studies game film “for fun,” and now teaches Basketball: A Masterclass through Stanford Continuing Studies.
Even outside of basketball, VanDerveer has lived a life defined by effort. After the Olympics, she tried to teach herself piano—then, realizing the impossibility of getting good enough alone, she found an instructor and threw herself into the art. Within two years, she had recorded two self-released CDs. “A great teacher,” she says, “could take me to a place I couldn’t go by myself. That’s what I try to do for players.”
And she has. Over her 45 years of coaching, VanDerveer took not just her own players, but all of women’s basketball, to new frontiers—transforming it and earning it respect as a serious game.
Growing up before girls had their own basketball teams, Tara VanDerveer had to make her own way in the game. She never had the chance to play on a high school squad, but she did go on to compete for four years in college—one year at SUNY Albany and three years at Indiana University. Determined to learn everything she could about the game, she moved from neighborhood pickup contests with boys to studying coaching with Bob Knight at Indiana, remaining relentlessly resourceful and uncommonly disciplined, approaching the game with rare seriousness.
When VanDerveer graduated in 1975, Title IX had just begun to open doors for women in college sports. The opportunities she missed as a player were suddenly becoming available to the next generation. While she couldn’t fully benefit as an athlete, she was quick to seize the moment as a coach. By age 24, she was already leading a Division I program—first at Idaho and then at Ohio State. In 1985, she took over Stanford’s then-unremarkable program and quickly transformed it into one of the nation’s strongest. The team went on to win NCAA titles in 1990 and 1992, launching a dynasty that would eventually include 14 Final Four appearances and a third championship in 2021.
In 1996, tasked with reviving the U.S. national team, VanDerveer led it on a 60-0 international tour that ended with Olympic gold in Atlanta and helped pave the way for the WNBA. In 2024, after nearly half a century of turning talented players into unbeatable teams, she retired with 1,216 victories—more than any coach in college basketball history.
Now off the sidelines, VanDerveer still teaches the game, convinced that a coach’s highest art is taking people where they cannot go alone.
Breaking College Basketball Records
Tara VanDerveer: Well, I never scored a basket, so I didn’t win anything, but the teams I’ve coached have been great teams, and I’ve coached really amazing, amazing young women, and I’ve really had fun doing it. So, it was really exciting, it was fun, but it was never anything that I set out to win games. I’m really more about the process and the journey—really enjoying each practice, being with the players on the team, getting to know them, trying to be a great mentor for them, helping them in their careers beyond basketball, and being a great friend for them.
The Impact of Sports on Youth Development
Tara VanDerveer: Well, growing up, I didn’t have the opportunity to play organized sports. I always loved sports, I always loved basketball, but our family, you know, Friday night was going to the Y, jumping on the trampoline, swimming. We skied, ice skated, we did everything, and I played with the boys all the time when I was little. But not having a team to play on, not having a uniform to wear, was really painful for me. It was before Title IX, and it was something that I really feel like I missed out on. So, in some ways, as a coach, I lived through the students that I coach in terms of, you know, really enjoying the practice, enjoying playing on a team, the camaraderie, and helping young women develop skills of discipline, of teamwork—things that you get to do through sports. But, you know, it might be just a different learning process than an academic learning. And having to work with people, getting to know people, playing with people of different backgrounds, and all of that—I missed out on, and it was really hard for me. But I think that now, through the process of Title IX, young girls have this opportunity, and they’re benefiting from it.
Title IX and Its Current Challenges
Tara VanDerveer: I do not worry that Title IX is under attack. I just think that we’re so far down the road with women’s sports—the acceptance of women’s sports. The young, young people don’t know any other way, in terms of… if I talk to young girls about the fact that I didn’t play sports, I didn’t have a scholarship, didn’t have club teams, didn’t have basketball camp—all these things—they look at me like I have two heads. And I think it would just be, you know… I think it would be really, really sad. But I think there would be some people really standing up for women’s sports. So, I would like to be one of the optimists.
Playing Basketball with Boys as a Young Girl
Tara VanDerveer: There was no organized sports. There was play days. There might be an occasional sport, you know, game. I played field hockey. We played against another school a couple of times, but there was no practice, no uniforms. You wore your gym suit. It was nothing like it is now. Well, when I was younger, you know, I played with boys all the time. And, you know, we just played, like, in the park or in the driveway or something like that. And when I was like, you know, maybe 10 years old or 12 years old, and as I got older, fewer girls played. And when I was the only girl, boys were kind of like, “Well, you know, this is, you know, for us.” I always brought the best basketball. So, if they wanted to use my ball, then I got to play. That was my way onto the court. But I could play with them. And so I had, in my 9th grade yearbook, our gym teacher—who was also the boys’ basketball coach—wrote, “To the best basketball player in the ninth grade, boy or girl.” And that was… it was really almost like a kind of a Pyrrhic victory in that it was, yeah, I was best, but I didn’t get to play on a team. And it was really, really painful for me not to have a team to play on. But, you know, obviously, the boys—and as they got older and, you know, their bodies changed and they matured—then, I mean, probably like in high school, I probably could have played on the boys’ varsity team, but I don’t know that I would have been the best player as a senior. But in college, you know, then there’s a huge gap between kind of the size of the guys in college and the size of the women on the women’s team.
Overcoming Financial Hardship
Tara VanDerveer: Well, I’m the oldest of five, and both of my parents are in education, and so that’s not very lucrative. But I feel like I was very wealthy in experiences, but not—you know, when I grew up, it was a different time. You know, everyone was a middle-class person, it felt like. You know, even… you know, there might have been some real rich people and some real poor people, but, you know, pretty much everybody—you know, we did what everyone else did. But in going to college, being the oldest of five, and there would be three in college at the same time, my parents basically said, you know, “We’ll pay for a third, you can work for a third, and you can loan a third.” And so I’m like, well, that would be… you know, going to Mount Holyoke was really expensive. And I’d gone to a private girls’ high school, and I wanted to go to a coed—I wanted to go to a coed school. But I ended up—I ended up being at Indiana University, which was a great opportunity for me. They had a great sociology department, which I majored in. And I spent a lot of time watching the men’s basketball practice and playing on a team in Indiana, which I loved.
Lessons from Legendary Coach Bobby Knight
Tara VanDerveer: I took a coaching class. I’m very proud of the fact that I got an A. And in the coaching class, Coach and I said that anyone that took the class could also come and watch practice. And I watched every day. I don’t think he meant for us to come every day, but I did, and I would do some of my homework sitting in the stands. I didn’t sit really in the front. I kind of sat up a little bit, you know, where I could really watch. And I took more mental notes, probably, than physical notes. But when you watch every day for three years, you—I learned a lot. And I’m very thankful for the time that I spent there, and I’m very thankful for the opportunity to learn from one of the arguably best coaches ever in Coach Knight. And then, when I went to graduate school at Ohio State, I took class—a basketball coaching class—from Coach Knight’s coach, whose name is Fred Taylor. And Fred was a fantastic man, and I had an opportunity to learn from him, too.
Coaching, to me, is something that you can be trained by someone. Like, I don’t know that you can go into coaching and just have all the answers. And I felt like I was an apprentice by, you know, watching practice over and over. I watched how you run a practice. How you, first of all, how you teach fundamentals, how you break down skills and teach skills, and then how you drill those skills, and how every minute of your practice is timed, and the pace of practice, and just what—what championship basketball looks like, what it feels like. And I’d always watched practice since I was, you know, a young girl, basically. And I watched games with my dad when I was, like, in the 4th and 5th grade, just, you know, watching the Celtics play the Knicks, and we would talk about basketball in a strategy form. So, I was just always thinking about the game. I was a better thinker than I was a player. But I really enjoyed the strategy and learning from a great coach—watching how you develop that strategy, how you develop your philosophy of basketball, how each team has its own DNA, so to speak. What are the strengths of the team? What are the weaknesses of the team? How do you develop the players that you have? And also, the rapport that you developed on the court during practice—how you… what you say, the corrections you make, the feedback you give your players, and the tone that you give it in.
What was so special about Coach Knight’s approach?
Tara VanDerveer: I can picture how he would run practice. He would basically watch at one end, and the practice would go on, and then he would walk down and he’d make his comments. And a lot of people, I think, have a misconception that he was like a rage or screaming, and he was an excellent teacher. And he was very, very direct about what he saw and how he wanted it corrected, but he was also very short. He didn’t go on and talk and talk and talk. You know, he would—you know, just—he would say to the player on the court, you know, “This is what I want. This is what I want to see you do,” and, you know, make a correction that way. But it was more the style of, you know, how you give feedback, when you give feedback, what you correct. Like, not stopping all the time, but letting, you know, players play and make some—some mistakes—and then having them do it correctly. You want to give correct feedback in practice so that, then, in fact, you make practices more challenging than the games. So that then, when the games come, you know, the players feel confident and they are—when they’re playing in a game, they’re not… they’re not intimidated by the situation. You’ve already created that tough situation in practice for them so that then they’re successful. And I think also the build-up of, you know, starting with easy kind of movements, cooperation with players, and then making it more complex—doing drills that, you know, are easier and then get harder; doing movements and sequences of things that then become automatic for players—so then, in the games, they’re not thinking about, “Well, what am I supposed to be doing?” but they just know what to do.
Had you gone to a different school and not met Coach Knight, would you be doing something different today?
Tara VanDerveer: We end up because of all different circumstances. Title IX—my timing with Title IX was great in that, you know, it wasn’t great for playing, but it was great for coaching, you know, because they’re—all of a sudden—they’re putting all these, you know, they’re forming women’s teams, and they are looking for coaches. So, here I am coming up, having played basketball, you know, gone to graduate school, wanting to go into coaching, and they’re looking for coaches. So, I was a head coach when I was like 24 years old, which is really unheard of now. But the background that I had, including being at Indiana, I think really prepared me for that job as a 24-year-old because I’d been mentored by great, great coaches. And throughout my career as a coach, I kind of see myself as a basketball sponge. If there’s a ball bouncing, I’m in the gym watching who it is, what they’re doing. You know, I listen to games on the radio just, you know, watching great players, watching great teams since I was a really little girl, and I don’t know why—I just love it. So, it was just something that was never—it never felt like work to me, but it was always something that, you know, like Malcolm Gladwell will talk about, you know, 10,000 hours. I mean, I passed 10,000 hours when I was 14, you know what I mean? I probably would have flunked out of junior high with all the games that are on television now. I was a basketball—and I am a basketball—junkie. I’m crazy about the game.
Early Experiences with Basketball
Tara VanDerveer: I remember playing, like, in the 4th grade, we had, like, a gym class. They started basketball with a three-player weave drill. They called it a three-man weave. You know, you pass and go behind, you pass and go, you know. And it was like—it was like love. I mean, I was like, I fell off this cliff. I’m like, “Wow, I love this game. This is really fun.” And I mean, I play all kinds of sports, and I’m crazy about all other kinds of sports too, but this one just grabbed me. And so, I was out—I was always either playing by myself, out shooting, or with my parents. You know, I remember in the 9th grade, my dad got a call from the librarian in the school that I was at, in 9th grade, and the librarian said, you know, “Mr. VanDerveer, I’m really worried about Tara.” And my dad was like, “What?” And she said, “Well, she’s read all the books in the library about basketball.” And in the 9th grade, I was out, like, shooting by myself for hours, you know, like—we’re talking 6, 7, 8 hours on a Saturday—and my parents were very confused. They were like, “Well, come on in and do your algebra homework. Basketball is never going to take you anywhere.” You know, I’m like, “Algebra’s not taking me anywhere.” But, you know, I mean, they just didn’t understand that I was crazy about basketball. And my mom one time came to a game we played in college, and back in the very old days, before—again, before Title IX—in college, we ended up playing in New York City here for a national championship. And we played a Thursday night game, we played a Friday morning game, and a Friday night game, because they had to compact the tournament, you know. They didn’t have the money or whatever to spread it out. We were exhausted. We lost our Friday night game, and I just remember just, you know, just being exhausted and just sobbing. Like, my mother was just like, “Well, Tara, it’s only a game.” And I’m like, “Mom, it’s not just a game.” And basketball has been my life, and I love it. I love the passion of it. I love the, you know, just the excitement, all the things I’ve done, traveled all over the world because of it, and the people I’ve met. It’s just—and because of this orange ball—it’s a little bit crazy.
Lifelong Growth and Self-Improvement
Tara VanDerveer: I think sometimes if I’d maybe grown up in northern Minnesota or Canada—I loved ice hockey too—but again, there were no… you know, it’s hard to go out and play ice hockey by yourself. You know, at least you can take a ball and go out and shoot by yourself, or play one-on-one, or play two-on-two. And basketball was more on television. It’s just—I also love… I love a team sport. And what I love about basketball is that you play offense and defense, you know, and it’s a very fast-paced game. I just… I love the discipline of it, the camaraderie of a team, the excitement of it, the—it’s a tremendous rush to play on a great team or to coach a great team. And to see kind of the ballet of it, kind of fitting together, and how people, you know, move together—the unselfishness that’s generated by great teamwork. It’s really… it’s addictive, a little bit. I mean, I just—I was crazy about it, and I still am.
Tara VanDerveer: I think as a coach, I think I really—I didn’t like the pain of losing, but I liked the puzzle. I love figuring out the puzzle of winning. The how-to. Like, as an example, we’re playing a team that has a great player, and, you know, averaging 30 points a game, and like, no—we’re not… she’s not going to score 30 on us. And, you know, working on how to defend this, or how we’re going to score, or how we’re going to take advantage of our strengths. I love the strategy of that part. The pain of losing has always been with me, and more so than the joy of winning. But the—it’s fun. I think it’s really fun to—I took piano lessons as an adult, actually, after coaching the Olympic team. And I thought I… my sister Heidi bought me a keyboard for Christmas, and I thought I could teach myself. And within two weeks, I knew this wasn’t going to work. And so I went out and I researched, kind of in my area, who was the best piano teacher. And I got a fantastic teacher. And, you know, like, right away—I mean, she was teaching me things that I couldn’t learn by myself. And I put out, like, a CD in the first year and a CD in the second year. People that I knew, they were just like, “Wow, how did you do this?” And I said, “I had a great teacher.” And what I learned from having a great piano teacher, among other things, was she could take me to a place I couldn’t go by myself. And that’s what I wanted to do with our team is—as a coach, I want to take players to a place they can’t get to by themselves because of maybe the background I have, the experience I have, being able to, you know, see things and make corrections and help them be—even a better version of themselves.
Tara VanDerveer: I think that one of the things that I learned was that in order to really be—to be a really good coach for other people, to be a leader of our program—it starts with taking care of myself. And that hasn’t always been true of, I think, of me. And, you know, we get so—we’re… As a coach, you’re always doing things for other people. You know, you’re recruiting, or you’ve got—you know, you’re helping your assistants, or you’re—you know, you’re always on call for other people all the time. And one of the things I did actually, also kind of during the Olympic year—it was a little bit different because I didn’t have any recruiting, I didn’t have any phone calls to make. There wasn’t really a lot of video to watch. So I really did get in a great routine of working out, and it was a stress reliever. So I think that since then, I’ve focused more on self-care and my own—having, you know, strong mental health for myself, so that then I can help other people better. And so, yes, working out. I try to either—I walk, like, you know, we walk 5 miles today. Or if I’m at Stanford, I’ll swim in the pool for an hour and, you know, walk my dogs, or I ride—I have a stationary bike. I love to water ski. So, this summer I water skied, I think, close to 100 times. And so doing things like that—things that I love—but being active is really, really important to me.
Tara VanDerveer: I go through kind of different little cycles. When I was—when I graduated from college, I went home and, just to kind of figure out what I was going to do, I was—you know, I was 22—and I would be home, and my brother would come home, and we would play every day when he came home from school. And we would—then he would post the score on the refrigerator. It was 49 to 1. He beat me 49 times. So, finally, when I won, I think we stopped playing, but I actually think I moved away. But, you know, I love board games. I love Scrabble, you know, chess, backgammon, and things like that. But bridge—I started during the pandemic. My mom is 97, and I was really worried about her during the pandemic. And so, this was something we did every single day. We played for two hours with my sister and my bridge partner, and we were—we were on there every day. And I think it really helped her get through the pandemic. So, I’m not going to tell you I’m a great bridge player, but now that I’ve retired, I’m going to try to pick up my game.
Building a Championship Program from the Ground Up at Stanford
Tara VanDerveer: I’ve thought about this and going to Stanford. I loved—I loved playing at Indiana with my teammates, and we had a great team. I loved coaching at Idaho, where, you know, it was my first job. I actually had—my very first job was coaching a JV team at Ohio State. I loved that, and I loved going to Ohio State. And then, going back to Ohio State, I had a great opportunity and loved coaching there. The players were fabulous. Our team was really, really good. But there was something—this was before professional basketball—there was something, to me, really special about Stanford. Besides great weather, besides, you know, the fact that it wasn’t quite… it wasn’t quite where it could be, I really felt like it was a gold mine job, in that for women especially, education was the key. You know, a woman got a chance to get a Stanford degree and play basketball, and we were just gonna go into the PAC-12 Conference at that time. And so, I just thought, this is the—this is a gold mine job. My dad, however, told me it was a graveyard job, you know? So I said, “Well, I think the job does involve digging, but I think it’s really a gold mine job.” And with, you know, four or five great recruits a year—and that’s all you have to get—and I really felt going to Stanford would help me know if I knew what I was doing. Like, it was an ultimate challenge for a coach, and the ultimate challenge for a young person playing on the team. So, I looked at it that way. And it was—it was really challenging. It was really… it was—it was very hard to kind of turn the team around, but we were able to do it. And I’m really proud of the assistants I have, the great administrators I worked with, and, obviously, the players that I got. You know, the players that came to Stanford were fabulous.