Stanford’s Tara VanDerveer CDSWOY Virtual Speaker for Awards Gala
ALBANY, NY – Tara VanDerveer, the all-time winningest coach in women’s college basketball, will serve as the virtual guest speaker at the 2021 Capital District Sports Women of the Year Awards Gala. The event will take place on Monday, August 9, 2021 at the GE Theatre at Proctors in Schenectady, NY and will begin at 7:00 p.m.
The Capital District Sports Women of the Year program (CDSWOY) honors the best and brightest female student-athletes from high schools and colleges in the Capital District of New York State. The student-athletes will be recognized for their achievements in academics, athletics, and community service. Ticket information will be announced later in the month of June.
“We truly appreciate Coach VanDerveer’s time to speak at our Awards Gala,” said Eric McDowell, President of CDSWOY. “The numbers speak for themselves. She has impacted so many individuals throughout her remarkable career, and it is such a privilege for us that she will touch on her highlights as well as provide inspiration to not only our honorees, but to all of us. Her support of CDSWOY and its mission means the world to us.”
Coach VanDerveer has cemented herself as one of the top coaches in the history of the sport, both collegiately and internationally, and is a member of both the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame (2011) and the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame (2002). An ambassador for both Stanford and the sport of college basketball, VanDerveer has enjoyed an unprecedented level of success through an energetic and positive approach to the game. 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 and Ohio State, has accumulated an impressive 1,125-255 (.815) record in her 42 years as a collegiate head coach and an 973-204 (.827) record over 35 seasons at Stanford.
The 2020-21 season was a momentous one for VanDerveer, as she led the Cardinal back atop the collegiate mountaintop, all while maneuvering a global pandemic, and also broke the all-time wins record in women’s college basketball. On December 15, 2021, she became the sport’s winningest coach, breaking Tennessee’s Pat Summitt’s mark of 1,098. Stanford finished the year 31-2, winning both the Pac-12 regular season and tournament titles, earning the No. 1 overall seed in the NCAA Tournament and claiming the national championship for the first time since 1992.
VanDerveer became the second women’s coach to reach 1,000 career wins when Stanford beat USC on Feb. 3, 2017. VanDerveer has more career wins to her name than 344 of the country’s 351 Division I programs. She has led her Stanford teams to three NCAA Championships (1990, 1992, 2021), one of four coaches in the history of the sport to win three titles. She has advanced the Cardinal to 13 NCAA Final Fours, 23 Pac-12 regular-season titles, 14 Pac-12 Tournament crowns and 32 trips to the NCAA Tournament. She also guided Idaho to an AIAW Tournament and Ohio State to a pair of NCAA Tournaments while twice being named Big Ten Coach of the Year.
Her teams have won 20 or more games 36 times, including each of the last 20 seasons, and collected at least 30 victories 16 times. She has accounted for 973 of Stanford’s 1,149 total victories since its first varsity season in 1975 (85%). Overall, VanDerveer has guided her players to two Wade Trophy Player of the Year honors, two Naismith Player of the Year honors, 32 first-team All-America honors (WBCA and Associated Press), 18 Pac-12 Player of the Year awards, 80 first team All-Pac-12 selections and nearly 40 appointments to USA Basketball teams. Stanford has had 30 players play in a regular-season WNBA game since the league’s inception in 1997. The program boasts 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. In 1995-96 VanDerveer served as head coach of the USA Basketball National Team, leading the team to a 52-0 exhibition record and then to the Olympic gold medal with a perfect 8-0 run at the 1996 Atlanta Games.
VanDerveer is a 1975 graduate of Indiana University, where she was a dean’s list scholar for three years and a sociology major. While at Indiana, VanDerveer held one of the starting guard positions for three years on the women’s basketball team. For her efforts at Indiana and her accomplishments after leaving the Hoosiers, VanDerveer was inducted into the Indiana University Hall of Fame in 1995. An avid piano player in her spare time, VanDerveer is a Boston native who grew up in Schenectady. She is also a published author. Her book Shooting From The Outside, which chronicled her 1996 Olympic and National Team experience, was released in September 1997.
