STANFORD – Eight television camera operators and a half-dozen photographers jostled for position inside Stanford’s Arrillaga Family Sports Center auditorium on Wednesday afternoon.
Current Cardinal players lined one section of seats, former coaches and athletes dotted the front row, and media members sitting amid the crowd had notebooks and recorders out to document every word retiring Stanford women’s basketball coach Tara VanDerveer had to say.
“This is crazy,” one Stanford player said to another as the auditorium filled up on Wednesday afternoon. “This is wild.”
The room went silent when VanDerveer, 70, wearing a white shirt with a small red Stanford logo, leaned up next to the microphone and began to read from a prepared statement. She thanked her parents, coaches, players and administrators as she walked away from the job she held since 1985.
“Just walking into Maples for practice and hearing the balls bouncing and the music playing has brought me great joy,” VanDerveer said. “Coaching has never felt like a j-o-b job.”
The legendary coach, the architect of the preeminent college basketball program on the West Coast, had announced her retirement in a press release on Tuesday night.
VanDerveeer had contemplated stepping down before, admitting that the late mega-donor John Arrillaga talked her out of such a decision a decade ago, and joked that she’d considered retiring about 20 times.
So why leave now?
“I just want to do other things. I have a lot of interests, and you just don’t know how much time you have,” said VanDerveer, who added that she wants to brush up on her bridge game so she can beat her 97-year-old mother, Rita.
VanDerveer was adamant that the Cardinal’s impending move to the Atlantic Coast Conference after the demise of the Pac-12 had nothing to do with her decision.
“That was a motivator to want to stay, to play that competition, because I think it’s going to be a great, great league,” VanDerveer said.
VanDerveer added that the new reality of Name, Image and Likeness endorsements for players and recruiting becoming a “24/7 job” was a factor in her decision to retire.
But even though Stanford has longtime assistant Kate Paye ready to take over, and an advisory position in the athletic department lined up for VanDerveer, the legendary coach still wrestled with her decision to step away from the only career she’d known.
“I just felt I am ready,” VanDerveer. “I never really thought I would be. I kind of just felt that I would keel over on the bench because I love it. I love it. I love it.”
The outpouring of support for VanDerveer at her farewell news conference is a far cry from what the coach experienced when she arrived on The Farm nearly 40 years ago.
“It is so thrilling to see the support for women’s basketball,” VanDerveer said. “There’s more people in this room than were at our first game.”
Fellow coaching icons such as South Carolina’s Dawn Staley, LSU’s Kim Mulkey and Iowa’s Lisa Bluder reached out with well-wishes and congratulations to VanDerveer after the retirement news became public.
Nobody won games like VanDerveer during her 45-year coaching career, the past 38 at Stanford. She also coached two seasons at Idaho and five at Ohio State. In addition to finishing with a 1,216-271 record, VanDerveer led the Cardinal to 14 Final Fours and captured three national championships.
Geno Auriemma is only three games behind her on the all-time wins list and will likely pass her early next season. VanDerveer said she’ll be among the first to congratulate the UConn coach when he does.
“I’ll be excited for him. I never went into it thinking about a record,” VanDerveer said. “He does a great job, and records are meant to be broken.”
Aside from a one-season hiatus in the 1990s to coach the U.S. women’s national team to a gold medal at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, VanDerveer was a fixture on the Stanford sideline. Her last 17 seasons were spent with Paye, a former team captain, as an assistant.
“It’s hard to imagine her not being on the bench with me, or not walking into the office with her,” Paye said. “My goal for the past 17 years was to be the absolute best assistant I could be for her.”
In her time at Stanford, VanDerveer coached dozens of All-Americans and numerous professional athletes.
Her current players were told about the decision in a team meeting Tuesday, privy to the knowledge before even VanDerveer’s mother.
“It was an emotional night last night, but it was filled with so much love,” said Stanford standout Kiki Iriafen, who was asked after the news conference whether she planned to return to the team next season.
Iriafen shrugged her shoulders without saying a word.
VanDerveer’s tenure as one of the pillars of the women’s game had its ups and downs, with the coach noting that at least 15 of her teams were good enough to win national titles.
But when she reflected upon her long career, the winningest coach in college basketball history didn’t have anything to complain about.
“Nothing short of magical,” VanDerveer said.
