Right here is a few sports activities trivia for you: Do you know that the legendary faculty basketball head coach with essentially the most wins within the historical past of the game, and who additionally reignited USA Basketball, was about to get their file bested by a legendary faculty basketball coach who began world domination for Crew USA Basketball?
The reply is greater than seemingly, no.
The individuals I’m referring to are Mike Krzyzewski and Stanford’s Tara VanDerveer. The icon is just a few wins away from dethroning the previous Duke legend, and it’s time extra individuals began speaking about it. As a result of if VanDerveer have been a person this is able to be a a lot larger story — that is how misogyny works.
In the identical approach that Coach Ok’s unbelievable run with the Redeem Crew put the boys’s Olympic workforce again on the worldwide map, it was VanDerveer who was the pinnacle coach for the ladies within the Nineteen Nineties that has led to arguably one of the best and longest run by a rustic in a single sport in Olympic historical past. It is smart that she’s about to cross Coach Ok, they’ve so much in frequent, all the way in which right down to succeeding at “nerd schools.”
“We’re not really focused on that,” VanDerveer said about approaching historical past. She will be able to cross Coach Ok if Stanford beats Oregon and Oregon State this week, making her faculty basketball’s all-time wins chief as Krzyzewski stands on the 1,202 win mark. “Honestly, we’re just trying to play well each game.”
Based on a current report from The Athletic, VanDerveer achieved her first win when she was at Idaho when her squad beat Northern Montana, 70-68, on December 1, 1978. In her twelfth season at Stanford, VanDerveer received her first nationwide championship after they knocked off Auburn, 88-80, on April 4, 1990. She received her second title in 1992 in a 78-62 win over Western Kentucky, and her third in 2021 when Stanford squeaked by Arizona, 54-53.
“I don’t think Tara’s ever been somebody who makes it about herself, although she’s been the steady drumbeat, heartbeat of this program for decades,” stated former Stanford guard, and present sports activities broadcaster, Ros Gold-Onwude recently. “You can’t deny her, you can’t deny what she’s meant, not only to the women’s game, but the men’s game. You can’t deny her statistical significance, her historical significance, her significance over eras, her significance in the WNBA, the transfer of talent from college to the professional level.”
In a current interview with the New York Times, VanDerveer listed hiring appropriately, having a imaginative and prescient for her gamers, not being the focus, outworking her gamers, understating that each habits is communication and studying the artwork of the managed meltdown as a few of her guidelines for main a profitable workforce. And in a 12 months during which a girl — Iowa’s Caitlin Clark — is the largest star in all of school basketball, as she’s approaching all-time scoring marks, it feels proper that VanDerveer is about to turn out to be the sport’s winningest coach. Now, if solely the protection and a spotlight would rival, and surpass, what we see within the males’s recreation when these accomplishments occur.
