Tara VanDerveer: Redefining Excellence in Women’s Basketball

Guy Kawasaki:
I'm Guy Kawasaki and this is Remarkable People. We're on a mission to make you remarkable, and helping me in this episode is Tara VanDerveer. Tara recently retired as the head coach of the Stanford University Women's Basketball team. She led that team for thirty-eight years. She took over at Stanford in 1985 and quickly built the program into a national powerhouse.
She led Stanford to three NCAA Women's Division One basketball championships in 1990, 1992 and 2021. She is a ten-time Pac-12 Coach of the Year and has won over 1,200 games in her career, the most of any coach in college basketball history, men's or women's.
Tara also served as the head coach of the 1996 US Olympic women's basketball team. That team won a gold medal. I'm Guy Kawasaki, this is Remarkable People, and now here's the remarkable, most winning Tara VanDerveer. What happens the day after you retire?
Tara VanDerveer:
Let's see, my email and phone blew up, letters. I got some amazing, just beautiful letters from people, probably honestly over a thousand of them, and I'm still working on catching up, writing people back, emailing, texting, and then a lot of different opportunities to do things, whether it's books, movies, podcasts, speaking.
And at first it felt honestly pretty overwhelming, and I'm going to be working part-time in the athletic department as an advisor to our athletic director and a coach's coach. And so, I think I'll just get into that groove and basically during the summer, I'm going to be working remotely, but I'm excited about a new role.
Guy Kawasaki:
Wow. And I don't want to cause PTSD, but can you go through the basic seasons of a D1 college coach, the season ends and you take off or does recruiting start immediately and it's never, ever you're off?
Tara VanDerveer:
It's the latter. You are never ever off. I would say as an example, our calendar year was we would come back to Stanford. We would start with our team September Fifteenth. So basically, the coaches would meet in person around September First and just get everything ready for our players to come back because they'd been in summer school.
And then, we would start working out the Fifteenth. We would do a team bonding exercise usually. We started school maybe a week later and you're working out, you're doing some kind of workout with your team, plus recruiting, and all kinds of things just starting up the school year meetings.
And then, you have your whole season and you're also doing recruiting during your season. And then, as soon as your last game ends, you are again, doing recruiting, going to high school tournaments and basically all spring. And then, so yesterday was our first day of basketball camp.
We have basketball camp in the summer, recruiting in the summer, and even there are two dead weeks where you're not allowed to recruit, one is in May, and one is in August. So those are your two-week vacation times really, but it's become really twenty-four/seven, fifty weeks of the year.
Guy Kawasaki:
Wow. I saw something in your background that I found so fascinating. So can you explain your connection to Bobby Knight?
Tara VanDerveer:
I went to Indiana University. I transferred there as a sophomore and I took Coach Knight's basketball class, which he taught the X's and O's and philosophy and things like that, and in his class, he said that anyone that attended his class had permission to watch their basketball practice.
I don't think he thought I would come every day, but I did, and I'd watched every day of practice for basically three years. I loved it. I learned a lot. I didn't have any idea that I would be a basketball coach because really, growing up, there were not basketball teams for women to coach. So I just really enjoyed watching practice. I majored in sociology, I thought I'd go to law school, but I just kind of fell into this coaching a little bit backwards.
Guy Kawasaki:
Outside looking in at Bobby Knight, all that I picture is him picking up chairs and throwing them across the court and abusing players and all that, but what's the real story of Bobby Knight, because my other impression is that people who played for him loved him?
Tara VanDerveer:
He was great to me. He was very generous with his time and knowledge and I watched their practices. There were times where he would raise his voice. I never saw him throw a chair or do anything crazy, but I think that the pressure on college coaches, I think he felt that, and I learned maybe some things obviously not to do, but my experience with him was always very positive and I'm very thankful to have that opportunity to have been able to watch, and I loved watching Indiana basketball.
It was really a different game then in a way. There's no shot clock. There was no three point line. The rules have changed so much that the game is really different, but I learned a lot and I loved it.
Guy Kawasaki:
Can you trace any of your coaching philosophy to his coaching philosophies?
Tara VanDerveer:
I would say that yes, I can, not in temperament as much as he ran a very organized, quick practice and the use of your time in practice, how you go from one drill to the next, why you teach certain things, the order that you teach them in, the importance of fundamentals, and I learned a lot. And I would just say there's no one that has had more of an impact on my basketball coaching than Coach Knight.
Guy Kawasaki:
How would Indiana players practice free throws?
Tara VanDerveer:
Usually, what they did, they would do a drill where you're really going hard, you're playing, and then you would break for free throws and then you would do another drill and then you would break so that your free throws was your water break and your chance to shoot free throws while you were tired.
And we would pretty much shoot free throws the same way in our practice where you'd go hard, you'd be scrimmaging, you're going up and down the court, and then you take a break, and you're going to make ten free throws at a basket. Then, you're scrimmaging again or you're doing a really tough running drill so that when you're shooting your free throws you're tired.
Guy Kawasaki:
So just the logistics of that, so you scrimmage and then you have obviously players on the court, at Maples, how many baskets are there for people to be shooting free throws after a scrimmage?
Tara VanDerveer:
Well, there's eight baskets. So during practice, usually there's their two main baskets and then you've got six on either side, and that's pretty much true of I would say most practice courts.
The arena will have your main baskets, and actually in the old days Maples, the baskets would swing down, so you'd always have eight baskets to practice on, which I loved because we would do a lot of shooting drills where you would divide up, you would go with a partner and maybe a manager and do shooting with a partner for five minutes and then come back and do another full court drill.
Guy Kawasaki:
Okay. So you explained the influence of Bobby Knight, but how would you describe the core of your coaching philosophy?
Tara VanDerveer:
Maybe that started with my parents. Both of my parents are teachers and I view coaching as maybe forty public exams. You're coaching and teaching and you're a mentor for young women, and it's more than just teaching Xs and Os, but it's getting to know them as people. It's really trying to help them navigate college and a competitive environment, and it's very challenging.
Guy Kawasaki:
I noticed that it took you about three years to blossom at Stanford, and do you explain that as finally after three years, it's the players that you recruited or finally they got the system or took three years?
Tara VanDerveer:
Like you said, the first year, for the most part, if you're hired as a coach, the team is not very good because the coach in front of me at Stanford was fired. So they'd won five games the year before, and it was a team that was really struggling.
So my assistant coaches and myself, we worked very hard. The first year you don't have any of your own players, and the second year, your players are freshmen. In the third year, then we really had a great breakout season and went to the NCAA tournament and then we got it going right away.
Guy Kawasaki:
And how do you recruit a first year coach when your five and twenty or whatever it was?
Tara VanDerveer:
I had coached at Ohio State and had success at Ohio State and had success at Idaho. So we knew the type of players that we needed. I had great assistant coaches who were excellent at evaluating players. And for Stanford, it's not just they have to be great players, but they have to be great students.
The Dean of Admissions explained to me that, "Tara, the students that you recruit for basketball need to be able to jump through the same academic hoops as other admits." And so, I think coaching at Stanford is the ultimate challenge and it's even become more challenging with the portal and collective money and NIL.
Guy Kawasaki:
So do you think that the portal is improving the game, it's giving players options or it's ruining the game because it's giving players options?
Tara VanDerveer:
I think that players should have the opportunity to play where they want to play, and the portal basically allows them to transfer, and I think that transferring, I would hope it would be after the season, but sometimes what's happening is if someone has a bad day, they just get mad and then they're like, "I'm out of here," which I think in some ways is hurting both teams and players when they're not developing the resilience and the competitiveness that would help them later on.
But I think that, I transferred as a freshman, I realized I was not in a place I wanted, and I transferred and got to play right away. The challenge now is not just the portal, but the combination of collective money, which is boosters at a certain school, will then call players and poach top players off of really good teams with very high incentive money to go to different places.
Guy Kawasaki:
And that's all legal and okay now?
Tara VanDerveer:
It is. It is right now, yes.
Guy Kawasaki:
But wouldn't a school like Stanford with your history and its infinitely wealthy alumni, wouldn't you benefit from the portal and that collective thing?
Tara VanDerveer:
I would not say that Stanford has benefited from the portal. First of all, the portal has, again, I think the NIL is a great thing for college students. The combination of the collective and the portal is not beneficial to Stanford. There are players that are great players at Stanford that are being recruited and poached by other schools at the direction of their coach, which to me, is legal, but it's not really legal because the coaches are not supposed to be involved, but they are.
And I think it's something that teams are becoming stacked, which that's interesting too, but the money is just, I don't know, I think it's unsustainable, and we do have very wealthy alums at Stanford that give money to libraries and laboratories and like the Doerr School of Sustainability, and just handing over a million dollars or two million dollars to a basketball player doesn't seem rational, but that's what's happening.
Guy Kawasaki:
Okay. You mentioned the word recruiting four or five times already. So what exactly do you look for in a recruit?
Tara VanDerveer:
For someone at Stanford, they have to have the academic background so they'll be accepted, so that will be something really important. If I see someone, if I'm out recruiting, that will be the first thing I want to know is I want to see their high school transcript. Are they in AP classes? What are their SAT scores, ACT scores? So that's coming back in.
Then once, if in fact, they're in the ballpark, then are they skilled at basketball? Do they shoot the ball well, are they athletic? Do they run the floor well? What is their strength? How would they fit in with the players that are already on our team? And then, you just go from there. If you can check those boxes, then a lot of times, if they're interested academically, then you have a really good chance of getting them.
And now, it's a combination of are they interested academically and do you have collective money. Some of the top upcoming juniors and seniors in high school and women's basketball are asking for 100, 200, 300, 400,000 dollars per year guaranteed.
Guy Kawasaki:
Those words pass through their lips. They literally ask for the money.
Tara VanDerveer:
Yes, no, they just say, "This is what it will cost for you to recruit me. I'm interested, but that's what is happening now." Yes.
Guy Kawasaki:
I guess a case, that's good because basketball programs make money off the players, but there's a part of me that says, "Wow, that just sounds like total commercialization of a sport."
Tara VanDerveer:
It's a whole new world, a whole new landscape. I don't know yet that there are very many women's basketball programs that do make a lot of money. The money, for the most part, in college athletics is in football. I would say 85 to 90 percent of the money that comes in is because of football, and for some of the top football quarterbacks, especially the marquee type players, their price tag is maybe one, two, three million per year.
And I think that that's where the NCAA we're hoping that in some way there's some regulation of this so that it's not just crazy wild west giving cash money in McDonald's paper bag because that's what's happening. It's really out there right now.
Guy Kawasaki:
Wow. So, obviously, you've coached many winners and with your hindsight, can you break it down? Is it talent, is it attitude, is it luck? What makes a winner?
Tara VanDerveer:
I think individually, like you said, I have coached some amazing players including twelve Olympians, but the great players that I've coached at Stanford or Ohio State, I would say and the very best players, it starts with discipline. They really see the end game. They're not trying to be an amazing player in one day because that's not going to happen.
Basketball is like a steel cut oatmeal; you've got to cook it. It's not instant oatmeal. Being a great student, you're not going to do it in one day and the people that are great athletes, they enjoy the process of getting better and they buy into improving. They're very coachable. They want to hear, how can I get better, and they really enjoy coming to the gym. They put in extra time. They're people that are really fun to work with.
The very best players are your hardest workers. They're great teammates. Some of the best players I've coached, just honestly, I just cry when they graduate. It's awful, but they're great teammates, they're leaders, they're disciplined, hardworking, and they just really want to be great, and they'll put in the time and make the effort. They're not going to just talk about it. They're going to, I call it, some people want the sweatshirt without sweating, but the great players want to sweat.
Guy Kawasaki:
And you can determine this in recruiting and scouting when they're sophomores and juniors?
Tara VanDerveer:
No. You hope to. You talk to their coaches, their high school coaches and what's amazing is whether it's sometimes their high school coaches or sometimes their parents, they're like, "My daughter's the hardest worker ever," that's a red light for me because people aren't always realistic, and they don't understand the commitment involved in a great college player.
College athletics, for whether if you're a football men's or women's basketball, if you're a great basketball player, when I said we started September Fifteenth, you are in the gym, you're committed at least five hours a day. Everyone is.
You're coming to practice, you're going to the training room, you're going to watch film. You're allowed quote twenty hours a week, but that's just the time you're on the court. So you're on the court for twenty hours and honestly, another ten hours a week, you're getting treatment or you're maybe in the weight room, you're in the gym extra, getting shots up, working on your skill to get better.
And there's some huge motivation for some of these pro-athletes, for a pro-basketball player, and now for women too, they're very motivated.
Guy Kawasaki:
And at Stanford, they're also carrying an academic load?
Tara VanDerveer:
They are and some of our players have graduated early. We had a set of twins, Lexie and Lacie Hull who are fabulous basketball players and equally fabulous students competing with each other in engineering, which they got their master's degree in four years. This was during COVID also and like three point eight or three point nine GPA.
It was just incredible grade points. I had a professor say to us, "Coaches, I've learned more from Lacie than she's learned from me. They're amazing athletes and students." And we've had a number of those, and that's the extreme. They're just fabulous, but others are equally good.
Guy Kawasaki:
And where are they now?
Tara VanDerveer:
Lexie is playing professionally in Indiana. She's in the WNBA and Lacie is in Corporate America, living in Austin, Texas.
Guy Kawasaki:
Can we switch gears now to Olympic basketball, because you've been a coach, you've already coached players who played in the Olympics. So how does that differ? How does that even work?
Tara VanDerveer:
For me, it worked differently than anyone else. In 1992, the USA men's team was the dream team and won a gold medal easily. The women's team did not win a gold medal, got a bronze medal, and the 1996 Olympics were in Atlanta, the next Quadrennial and USA basketball basically said, "Hey, we want to win a gold." So we're going to put in a yearlong training and we're going to ask a coach to leave their job for a year and train our team to win a gold medal.
So I was the coach in the 1996 Quadrennial, which I left Stanford for a year, and we trained and traveled all over the world and played a total of fifty-two games before the Olympics. So we traveled over a hundred thousand miles. We went to Russia, we went to Australia, we went to China, we played in tournaments, we played college teams all over Barnstorm, the college teams, and then, in August of 1996, we played in Atlanta and won the gold medal.
Guy Kawasaki:
And so, the members of that team, they basically took a year off academically too?
Tara VanDerveer:
No, they were professional. They were paid.
Guy Kawasaki:
Oh, excuse me. Okay.
Tara VanDerveer:
They took a pay cut. They took a pay cut to play for USA basketball. Some of them earned 200, 250. Now again, this is over twenty years ago, and USA basketball paid them 50,000 dollars to take a year off and not play in Europe, not play in Italy or Russia where they were paid over 200,000 because there was no professional women's basketball in the United States before the 1996 team.
Guy Kawasaki:
And when basketball is involved in this, are you picking your team or are they handing you the players and saying, "Tara, take it from here?" How does that work?
Tara VanDerveer:
They pick the team. I did not.
Guy Kawasaki:
You don't have any say in it?
Tara VanDerveer:
I might say something, but I had no vote.
Guy Kawasaki:
Wow. And is that true today?
Tara VanDerveer:
Yes. I think it is pretty true today.
Guy Kawasaki:
USA Basketball that picks this, how do they do it?
Tara VanDerveer:
They have a committee. So this year's committee is someone like Dawn Staley who was a former coach, Bethany Donaphin, who's a Stanford basketball player, but she worked for the WNBA, the head of the, it used to be Carol Callan who I worked with. They have a USA basketball representative. Seimone Augustus is a former USA basketball Olympian, and I think there's a couple other people, and I can't remember right off the top of my head who's on the committee.
Guy Kawasaki:
Okay, so now I'm an outsider and I just don't understand. So I read all this controversy, Caitlin Clark is not on the Olympic team. She shouldn't be like, how does that work?
Tara VanDerveer:
The Olympic team is not necessarily picked the Olympic year. The team trains together and works and plays games four years leading up. So it is an interesting positive dilemma, I think, with the Caitlin Clark controversy because she has, through her college record setting, great career that she had at Iowa, she is really for a lot of people the face of women's basketball. And so, it's hard to understand how come she's not on this team.
The problem is other people have put in a lot of time and they're really good professional players and people don't know about them. I think that there's an argument that she should be on the team. She is good enough, but it's what I call musical chairs. There are probably fifty players that are good enough to play on the Olympic team, but only twelve chairs, and she's one of the people that is good enough.
The controversy, I think, much more than Caitlin Clark was when Nneka Ogwumike was left off. So Nneka Ogwumike played for four years, was hurt in the spring before the Olympics, and she was left off, but she was healthy by the Olympics. And so to me, that was much more of a controversy, but people don't know the name Nneka Ogwumike, the household name that Caitlin Clark is.
I think that there is merit to the argument that Caitlin Clark would bring great attention to the women's basketball team and the Olympics, so that would be a reason to include her on that team. And for the marketing and promotion of women's basketball for one person, when, who's your twelfth player on the team, maybe why not have Caitlin Clark who would bring such a great notoriety?
I think the first question at the press conference when the USA team goes to Paris will be, "Why isn't Caitlin Clark on the team?" So she will generate a lot of enthusiasm, but she won't be there right now.
Guy Kawasaki:
And what do you think USA basketball is going to say when they're asked that question?
Tara VanDerveer:
I think what they've said is basically there's players that are more experienced, and in some ways, I think that USA basketball has hurt itself not having younger players, not developing younger players for those big moments.
The Olympic team that I coached in 1996, we had, for the most part, I would say ten new players as opposed to this year's team, maybe has five or six new players. I'd have to look at the numbers exactly, but I think it's good to have young, enthusiastic and to teach them the way it is to understand the pressure of playing with USA on your jersey.
Guy Kawasaki:
And what motivates someone like you who's so successful at Stanford to take a year off to do this? Is it just patriotic duty?
Tara VanDerveer:
I think it was just another challenge, and I had coached the younger teams coming up and I was ready to do it. I've been prepared and groomed to do it. And then, it was different. It was hard to leave Stanford for a year. I think our program suffered at Stanford, not the year I was gone.
My assistant coach did a fabulous job, has the winningest percentage at Stanford and was awesome, but our recruiting suffered after that. And it's when you go away, you take a year off, basically. It really takes time to get it back going again. It did.
Guy Kawasaki:
And when you walk into the athletic director's office and say, "I want to take a year off to coach Olympic basketball," does the AD say, "Hallelujah, Tara. Such a great opportunity. Absolutely."
Tara VanDerveer:
There was probably mixed, they worked with USA basketball and it worked out, but I had to resign basically. I've "retired twice."
Guy Kawasaki:
So now looking forward at women's basketball, Caitlin Clark and this rivalry and stuff, is it just a great time for women's basketball?
Tara VanDerveer:
I think it is a great time for women's basketball, but then I thought it's always been a great time for women's basketball since the Olympics in 1996 and 1997, two basically pro-leagues were established, the ABL, which since has folded, but the WNBA and in the Bay Area, now we're going to have a pro team in San Francisco that Joe Lacob is the owner of the Warriors and the Valkyries. It's very exciting.
I think it's a great time for women's basketball. The television ratings are way up. For the first time ever in history, the women's television rating was higher than the men's television rating for the NCAA basketball tournament, and I think that's a lot to do with Caitlin Clark and they call it Clarkonomics. She has impacted television ratings, selling of gear that sell out crowds, but then exposing more people to women's basketball. I think it's a really good thing.
Guy Kawasaki:
Did you try to recruit her?
Tara VanDerveer:
I saw her play. She's a great high school player, but again, I think she was pretty much set on a staying in the East Coast or Midwest.
Guy Kawasaki:
And this may be an insensitive and you can punt on it, but do you think if she were black, it would be the same phenomenon?
Tara VanDerveer:
I would hope so, but there are some great young players. Juju Watkins is a superstar coming up and might break Caitlin Clark's record. I would like to think that we live in a world that appreciates excellence no matter their gender or color. I'm realistic. The fact that she is white and she's from Iowa, I think she did generate a lot of enthusiasm for women's basketball, but I think there are other players out there who are getting known and followed in a similar way that Caitlin is.
Guy Kawasaki:
At that level of basketball, men's or women's, it's between Caitlin Clark and someone who's beneath Caitlin Clark in standings and all that. Is it just like an infinitesimally small difference or is it head and shoulders above everybody?
Tara VanDerveer:
She's a superstar college player in the same way that Kelsey Plum who graduated from Washington, and that's the record that Caitlin broke, Caitlin Clark. These are extraordinarily talented players. There is a big difference between the extraordinarily talented players, the Olympians, the NBA all Stars, there is a difference in the same way that Michael Jordan or LeBron James or Steph Curry is a phenom and Caitlin Clark is a phenom in her own way too.
Guy, I would just say this about Caitlin Clark, what's so amazing about her is not her three-point shot, her passing phenomenal. Her three-point shooting from the logo is incredible. Her maturity, she deals with pressure. The pressure on her, she just acts like it's water and rolls off her back. She does have ice water in her veins. She handles this so well.
The incredible media frenzy about her, and I've met her. I had dinner with her and her parents at an event. It's not to say a twenty-two year-old doesn't have their moments. She does, but she is an absolute phenom and I very much respect and admire what she's doing.
Guy Kawasaki:
Okay. Now, maybe my last question is, suppose that you are a freshman or a sophomore, maybe even middle school girl listening to this, and I want to be the next Caitlin Clark and what can I learn from Tara, so what's your message to that girl?
Tara VanDerveer:
I think for a young girl or a young boy, there are a lot of boys wearing the Caitlin Clark jerseys too, it's be passionate. You're not going to be great at something that you don't really love. I'm a big Katie Ledecky fan. She loves to train. You have to love what you're doing. You have to be very passionate about it. So whatever it is, you're going to put your time into it, enjoy it, enjoy the process of getting better. Be a great teammate.
I think that basketball is a team sport, and I think the things you learn as a teammate will help you be a better member of your family, be a better student in school, but being a great teammate, being disciplined, being hardworking, having goals, and really working hard to achieve those goals, but enjoying the process, enjoy the journey. Don't just think, "I want to be this great player," and it's going to happen overnight because it's not.
Guy Kawasaki:
And if you have this kind of aspiration, should you, as an athlete, 100 percent focus on basketball twelve months a year, or should you play soccer and should you play other things to get cross-training and exposure to other skills?
Tara VanDerveer:
Well, I think that's a great question. I think it depends on maybe your age. As a middle school, I would definitely play three sports or four sports and high school the same. I think that sometimes limiting what you're doing and parents feeling well, they've just got to make a decision when they're ten years old, what sport you're going to play.
There are some great young players like Tiger Woods, I know just love golf so much and he focused on golf, but I think that until you really know that I would cross train, because sometimes, we're having young people have a lot of injuries based on the fact that maybe they're overused injuries.
They're doing too much of the same repetition motion over and over, so your knees or your shoulders, whatever, body parts can't take it. There are occasional person that says, "Boy, I want to be this great," whether it's volleyball player or softball player, but for the most part, I would say enjoy different sports.
Guy Kawasaki:
And what's your advice to parents who believe they have the next Caitlin Clark?
Tara VanDerveer:
I think parents need to get out of the way. I think parents need to live their own life, facilitate their children, but not live through their children. What I see are some parents that are so crazy about their kids' success that the kids are not even enjoying it. They're trying to please their parents. And I say as a parent, help your young daughter or young son enjoy whether it's basketball.
Help them maybe put up a hoop in your backyard or get some lights on it so they can shoot at night, or let them go to basketball camp, but it has to come from within the child, not the parent wanting the child to be a great basketball player. And it has to be their goal and their aspiration, not the parents and also parents not pressuring children go practice and go do this. They're not going to love it if they're being told what to do.
Guy Kawasaki:
And while you were at Ohio State and Stanford, did you ever have parents email you or call you and, "My kid needs more playing time. She's better than XYZ?"
Tara VanDerveer:
Usually, Guy, they didn't call me, but they would say that to my assistant coaches and parents, they would say some crazy things, but we pretty much established a rule with the players on our team and said, "Look, if your parent calls me, I'm going to tell you that your parent called me and I'm happy to meet with you and your parent, but I will not meet with just you or just your parent if it's to do with something with your parent."
But I will tell you this, one time, I did have a parent leave a message. This goes back because of your answering machines, right? I had apparently to leave a message that was thinking that he knew more about what his child should do. And then, the next message on my answering machine was the student, and she said, "Tara, I'd like to meet with you." And she said to me, "I play for you. Please ignore what my parent says and tell me what I need to work on so that I can play more and I respect your decision."
It was a mature child and I think a parent that did apologize but was just caught up in the fact that they're at a game and someone else came in and helped us win the game and they didn't, but parents are not realistic and sometimes that is challenging.
Guy Kawasaki:
So any last thoughts? What's the future hold for you? You're young seventy. I'm an old seventy, so what's next?
Tara VanDerveer:
I did retire from coaching, but I call it rewired, not retired. I'm working in the Athletic Department at Stanford as an advisor to our Athletic Director, and I think that the years that I've had at Stanford and with coaching, I'm available to other coaches as a coach's coach, and I probably talk to twelve or fifteen coaches. They'll call me, they'll text me, "I have a question," and I just try to listen and try to help them.
And then, I'm spending more time just with my mom, as you said and I water ski when my boat's in the shop today, and I'm mad about it, but I water ski. I went sailing yesterday. I'm reading a lot of good books and I'm really taking time to invest in my family and friends more so than maybe I would when I was coaching, but really living a good, great life.
Guy Kawasaki:
Okay. Okay. I promise you this is the last question.
Tara VanDerveer:
Okay.
Guy Kawasaki:
I promise you. So now, put your modesty aside and take it as a given that you are a remarkable person. Now, just answer this question, so with your hindsight and with your analysis, what do you think enabled you to be remarkable?
Tara VanDerveer:
You say, I'm remarkable. I don't get up and look in the mirror and say, "Wow, I'm remarkable." I think that I really try to enjoy each day and I really enjoy people. So I like to meet people. I like to talk to them. I like to understand what makes them tick. And as a coach, I think I took piano lessons and I thought I could teach myself and that didn't work. So I got a great teacher and I was making CDs, and people are like, "Wow, you're making these great CDs." I said, I have a great teacher.
So as a coach, I want to help players get to a place they can't get to by themselves and I enjoy that process of improving. I love to see our teams improve. I don't enjoy winning as much as I hate losing. Losing is extremely painful to me, and so I just want to get back at it and do better the next time. I think I'm determined. I'm confident in my own ability, but I think more than anything, as far as coaching, I enjoy being in the gym with the players.
I have a great staff. I love to sit and laugh with them. We have a lot of fun and I just feel very fortunate. I have to pinch myself. I'm like, this is my life and I look up and I see, "Wow, we won all those championships. Wow. How do we do that?" And I just have fun with it. I really try to just really enjoy, and I'm very fortunate. I just have a lot of friends that helped me.
Guy Kawasaki:
I hope you learned a few things about how Tara Vanderveer achieves such a remarkable record. Remember, she's the most winning coach in college basketball history. I'm Guy Kawasaki. This is Remarkable People. My thanks to Kelly Battles. Without Kelly Battles, this interview would not have happened. And then, there's the Remarkable People team. They are Jeff Sieh and Shannon Hernandez. They are the forwards on our team.
And then, there is Madisun Nuismer. She's the point guard and the shooting guard is Tessa Nuismer. Now, who's the center? Maybe I'm the center. Don't forget the other players. They are Luis Magaña, Fallon Yates, and Alexis Nishimura. We are the Remarkable People team. We may not have won an NCAA championship or Olympic medal, but we are trying our best to help you be remarkable. Until next time, mahalo and aloha.