Winningest VanDerveer retiring
Stanford women’s basketball head coach Tara VanDerveer is retiring, she announced last week.
“Basketball is the greatest group project there is and I am so incredibly thankful for every person who has supported me and our teams throughout my coaching career,” VanDerveer said in a statement. “I’ve been spoiled to coach the best and brightest at one of the world’s foremost institutions for nearly four decades.”
VanDerveer started her 45-year coaching career at Idaho in 1978. After five seasons at Ohio State, she arrived at Stanford in 1985 and coached the team for 38 seasons. With 1,216 victories, she’s the leader in all-time wins for an NCAA college basketball coach. Connecticut head coach Geno Auriemma is three wins behind her at 1,213.
VanDerveer took Stanford to 14 Final Fours and three national championships. Stanford also won 26 Pac-12 regular-season titles and 15 Pac-12 tournament championships and has 35 NCAA Tournament appearances.
VanDerveer is also known for her success coaching the U.S women’s national team. She took the head coaching job in 1995, and as a result of preparing for the 1996 Summer Olympics, she took one season off from Stanford to focus on the national team. That team — with players like Lisa Leslie, Katrina McClain and Sheryl Swoopes — is regarded as one of the greatest national teams in women’s basketball history. The U.S. was 52-0 in exhibition games and had a perfect 8-0 record at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics to win gold.
She was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2011. “The joy for me was in the journey of each season, seeing a group of young women work hard for each other and form an unbreakable bond,” she said. “Winning was a byproduct.”
Stanford said Kate Paye, who played under VanDerveer from 1991-95 and has been on her coaching staff for the past 17 seasons, is in negotiations to succeed the legendary coach.