Sometime in the next few weeks, when she wins her 1,203rd game, Tara VanDerveer at Stanford will pass Mike Krzyzewski at Duke as the college basketball coach — man or woman — with the most wins of all time.
It took Krzyzewski, who is known as Coach K, 47 seasons to reach that milestone. T Dawg, as VanDerveer is affectionately called on campus, will get there in 45, with 38 of them at Stanford. She will also do it with a higher winning percentage — about 82 percent of her games versus Krzyzewski’s 77 percent. She has won three N.C.A.A. championships, even though many of the nation’s best women’s basketball athletes can’t play for her because they don’t meet Stanford’s academic standards.
Most chief executives are lucky to have a decade of ascendancy at a job. How can a leader be so successful for almost half a century, with a winning record at Stanford for every season after her inaugural one in 1985?
Then there’s the fact that N.C.A.A. sports have changed fast in recent years. Now, collectives of big donors at competing schools are paying large sums to attract and keep athletes not just in football but also in other sports, including women’s basketball. (VanDerveer’s own players have declined substantial offers.) And soon, universities may have permission to pay athletes directly. But Stanford donors, affluent as they are, have so far not stepped up as much as those of other schools.
At 70, VanDerveer is a decade or two older than many of her most successful competitors. She’s old enough to be a grandmother to her players. But through generations of cultural change and a transformation of college athletics, she has found ways to adapt. There are lessons in her success, perhaps, for other Boomers who find themselves in a workplace full of younger colleagues.
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
When you took this coaching job four decades ago, your dad said you were crazy because you couldn’t win in basketball at Stanford. Were you crazy?
In 1985, I had a great job coaching at Ohio State (28-3 the previous season, while Stanford was 9-19). We had just beaten Stanford by 32 points. But one player we recruited, Emily Wagner, chose Stanford over Ohio State, because if she got hurt or things didn’t work out on the court, Stanford was where she’d be happy. Emily was probably the reason I got hired, because she told the athletic director she wanted to play for me.
I said no the first time, then came back and met with Stanford’s track coach, Brooks Johnson. Brooks, who is Black, said Stanford’s team was almost all white and he could help me recruit a great diverse team. He was brilliant.
As for my dad, I told him, ‘‘We just have to get three or four of the best players from around the country.’’ And we did.
