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.