Right here is a few sports activities trivia for you: Do you know that the legendary school 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 school basketball coach who began world domination for Workforce USA Basketball?
The reply is greater than possible, no.
The individuals I’m referring to are Mike Krzyzewski and Stanford’s Tara VanDerveer. The icon is only some wins away from dethroning the previous Duke legend, and it’s time extra individuals began speaking about it. As a result of if VanDerveer had been a person this is able to be a a lot greater story — that is how misogyny works.
In the identical method that Coach Ok’s unimaginable run with the Redeem Workforce 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 sensible that she’s about to go Coach Ok, they’ve rather a lot in frequent, all the way in which right down to succeeding at “nerd colleges.”
“We’re probably not targeted on that,” VanDerveer stated about approaching historical past. She will be able to go Coach Ok if Stanford beats Oregon and Oregon State this week, making her school basketball’s all-time wins chief as Krzyzewski stands on the 1,202 win mark. “Truthfully, we’re simply making an attempt to play nicely every sport.”
In line with a latest 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 gained her first nationwide championship after they knocked off Auburn, 88-80, on April 4, 1990. She gained 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 assume Tara’s ever been someone who makes it about herself, though she’s been the regular drumbeat, heartbeat of this program for many years,” stated former Stanford guard, and present sports activities broadcaster, Ros Gold-Onwude just lately. “You possibly can’t deny her, you may’t deny what she’s meant, not solely to the ladies’s sport, however the males’s sport. You possibly can’t deny her statistical significance, her historic significance, her significance over eras, her significance within the WNBA, the switch of expertise from school to the skilled stage.”
In a latest interview with the New York Instances, VanDerveer listed hiring appropriately, having a imaginative and prescient for her gamers, not being the focal point, 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 successful workforce. And in a yr during which a girl — Iowa’s Caitlin Clark — is the most important star in all of faculty basketball, as she’s approaching all-time scoring marks, it feels proper that VanDerveer is about to change into the sport’s winningest coach. Now, if solely the protection and a spotlight would rival, and surpass, what we see within the males’s sport when these accomplishments occur.