“To my best basketball player in the ninth grade, boy or girl.”

            That’s what a gym teacher and the basketball coach wrote in Tara VanDerveer’s ninth-grade yearbook. But the words didn’t made Tara proud — they were painful, because Tara hadn’t played on her school’s basketball team. Girls weren’t allowed.

            In the 1960s and ‘70s, girls sports were practically nonexistent. The girls at Tara’s school only had gym class and play dates, which were after-school meets with girls from area high schools. The girls were mixed up on temporary teams, so that competition was muted and results weren’t recorded.

            But everyone knew Tara loved to play. “I was always in the gym. If I couldn’t play, I was always watching,” she said.*

            In fact, two years earlier, when she was in seventh-grade, a star basketball player — a boy, of course — wrote, “You will go to the Olympics in basketball some day.”

            There was no Olympic basketball for women in those days! What did this boy know that Tara didn’t know?

Playing the system

            Tara was born in 1953 in Melrose, Massachusetts, but grew up outside of Albany, New York. She was the oldest of five girls. They would go to the Y on the weekends to swim, and play racquetball and other sports. But as she got older, the opportunities became fewer, and girls went looking elsewhere for how to spend their time.

            But Tara still wanted to play, especially basketball.

            “When I was a little kid, I’d be by myself, dribbling and shooting, and pretending I was playing in front of a big arena. It was like I could imagine it,” she recalled. “But I don’t even know why I could imagine it. There was nothing like that for women.”

            She tried to play with the boys, but they wouldn’t let her play — until she figured out how to make herself welcome.

            “I had the best basketball and if they wanted to use my ball, then I’d play,” she said.

Mentored by the best

            In her sophomore year, the family moved to Niagara Falls, and she played for a high school there. She wanted to play in college, but she couldn’t afford schools with the top basketball teams. She started at the University of Albany, but transferred in her sophomore year to Indiana University, where she finished her three years as a stand-out player.

            At Indiana, Tara soaked it all in. Bobby Knight was the men’s basketball coach at the time. Tara watched his practices in the stands every day and she took a coaching class that he offered.

            In her sophomore year, the women’s coach, Bea Gorton, took the team to the Final Four of the AIAW (the precursor to the NCAA) championship, losing only in the semi-finals. (Earlier this year, I wrote about another player on this team, Debbie Millbern Powers.)

                Even at that level, the women athletes were pretty much on their own.

            “My sophomore year, we didn’t have a uniform,” she said. “You bought your own shoes, paid for your own meals, [slept] four to a room.”

            Today, if people know the name of Tara VanDerveer, it’s because she’s earned the title of winningest coach in women’s college basketball. She has been head coach of women’s basketball at Stanford University since 1985, and in December 2021, she passed the University of Tennessee’s legendary Pat Summit for most wins.

            And, that seventh-grade basketball player was right — she went to the Olympics. In 1996, she coached Team USA at the Atlanta Games, winning all eight games and beating Brazil for gold. (If you don’t remember this, it might be because of the bombing at the Atlanta Games that grabbed all the headlines.)

Tara and Title IX

            Tara regrets that she never had the chance to play professional basketball. But she’s passionate about coaching. In fact, she believes coaching will take Title IX to the next level.

            “Since Title IX passed, it’s gone from over 90 percent of women’s teams coached by women, to less than 50 percent. We’ve got to fix that pipeline,” she said.** She’s doing her part, only hiring female coaches.

            Tara credits Title IX with everything about her life.

            “I would say honestly that my whole life, everything about my life, is because of Title IX,” she said.*** “Before that there really weren’t coaching jobs, so there was no such thing as a profession for women coaches. Having that job has allowed me to work at a great university, buy a house, travel, you know, do everything ― my life is totally determined by it.”         

                                                __________________

* Dave Kiefer, “Q&A with Tara VanDerveer,” The Mercury (CA) News (February 20, 2008). This quote and the next three are from this article.

** Lindsay Schnell, “Meet California Woman of the Year Honoree Tara VanDerveer,” The (Palm Springs, CA) Desert Sun (March 13, 2022), p. A7.

*** Charlotte Carroll and Rhiannon Walker, “How has Title IX changed your life? Women in sports answer,” The Athletic (June 24, 2022).