Institute Fellows

Home » Institute Cvs » Tara VanDerveer

Tara VanDerveer

Head Women’s Basketball Coach – Stanford University

Coach VanDerveer is the all-time winningest coach in women’s college basketball. She has been a member of both the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame (2011) and the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame (2002) and is considered one of the top coaches in the history of the sport. She is an icon not only in college but internationally as well as she has also coached the USA Basketball National team winning a gold medal in the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games with a remarkable run of 60 consecutive wins.

Coach VanDerveer’s numbers say it all! A five-time national coach of the year (1988, 1989, 1990, 2011, 2021) and 16-time Pac-12 Coach of the Year, VanDerveer, who prior to coming to Stanford served as head coach for a combined seven seasons at Idaho (1978-80) and Ohio State (1980-85), has accumulated an impressive 1,125-255 (.815) record in her 42 years as a collegiate head coach and a 973-204 (.827) record over 35 seasons at Stanford. She has led the Stanford teams to three NCAA Championships (1990, 1992, 2021), one of four coaches in the history of the sport to win three titles; with 13 NCAA Final Four appearances, 23 Pac-12 regular-season titles, 14 Pac-12 Tournament crowns, and 32 trips to the NCAA Tournament, coach VanDerveer has built Stanford into a national powerhouse.

On December 15, 2021, she became the sport’s winningest coach, breaking Tennessee’s Pat Summitt’s mark of 1,098 wins. Stanford finished the year 31-2, winning both the Pac-12 regular-season and tournament championships, earning the No. 1 overall seed in the NCAA Tournament, and claimed the national championship for the first time since 1992.

Overall, many of her players have earned collegiate awards, All American Honors, Player of the Year awards, and many of them have moved on successfully at the professional level. Stanford has had 30 players play in a regular-season WNBA game since the onset of the league, with 12 first-round draft picks out of its 27 all-time selections, including 2016 WNBA MVP Nneka Ogwumike, and has had seven players win a total of eight WNBA titles.

Shopping cart0
There are no products in the cart!
Continue shopping