Cardinal return home to savor national title
In a fitting punctuation to Stanford’s extraordinary journey, its championship parade Monday was equal parts traditional and quirky, exuberant and muted, satisfying and a bit strange.
One day after winning the school’s third NCAA women’s basketball title, head coach Tara VanDerveer and her players hopped into several convertibles and took a triumphant spin around campus. Then they briefly veered into downtown Palo Alto before returning to Maples Pavilion.
Their route included circling “The Oval” near the heart of campus. That’s where a couple hundred students and fans — including school President Marc TessierLavigne — gathered, with masks, to celebrate what VanDerveer called the Cardinal’s “COVID championship.”
Stanford survived a taut, tense Final Four, beating South Carolina 6665 in Friday’s semifinal and then edging Arizona 5453 in Sunday’s title game. Those narrow wins punctuated a challenging season in which the Cardinal temporarily relocated to Santa Cruz, given strict pandemic regulations in Santa Clara County, and spent 87 nights in hotels.
So an improvised parade through a halfempty campus made perfect sense, in some ways.
“It is a fitting culmination for a very strange and unique season,” TessierLavigne said. “We hope we’ll never see a season like this again. But at the same time, it enabled our team to showcase its extraordinary grit and resilience, and the teamwork that kept them together.”
VanDerveer, holding the trophy and wearing a black shirt with gold letters spelling “CHAMPS” across the chest, sat in the lead car with associate head coach Kate Paye. Their car stopped momentarily so TessierLavigne could hold the trophy and pose for photos with VanDerveer and Paye.
Tournament Most Outstanding Player Haley Jones and freshman forward Cameron Brink sat alongside each other in the final car, a silver Mustang.
This was the first NCAA championship for VanDerveer’s team in 29 years. The Cardinal won the title in two of their first three Final Four appearances under VanDerveer (in 1990 and ’92), then reached the Final Four 10 more times without winning another title — until Sunday.
“I think Tara exemplifies the very best of Stanford, in her dedication to studentathletes and enabling them to be the best they can be and more,” TessierLavigne said. “She’s a humble leader, but she inspires her players through her humility and her dedication to them.”
Monday’s parade took place amid the lingering impact of the coronavirus pandemic. Stanford’s junior and senior classes are on campus to take springquarter classes, but freshmen and sophomores are taking classes remotely.
A small group of baseball players, fresh from a weightroom workout, vigorously cheered their basketball counterparts as the cars pulled out of the Maples Pavilion parking lot.
“It’s been tough as athletes here during the whole COVID thing,” freshman pitcher Drew Dowd said. “We take it very seriously, where teams in other parts of the country have a lot more freedom.
“So for them to beat teams that really had a regular training schedule, for them to win a national championship without having a home arena (at times), that’s inspirational.”