Kurtenbach: Legendary Stanford coach Tara VanDerveer raised the game, leaves on top

It doesn’t matter what they say when you arrive.

It matters what they say when you leave.

When Tara VanDerveer took over the Stanford women’s basketball team in 1985, she had an influential naysayer: her father.

“Coaching at Stanford will never get you anywhere,” she said he told her.

He couldn’t have been more wrong.

VanDerveer, the winningest Division 1 college basketball coach of all time, announced her retirement on Tuesday, ending one of the greatest and most influential coaching careers in any sport.

Not only did she see the world in the last 38 years, winning a gold medal, 25 conference titles, reaching 14 Final Fours, and claiming the three national championships in the process, but VanDerveer helped make women’s basketball the game — no, the phenomenon — it is today.

The women’s game at the college and professional level has never been stronger.

This past month, the women’s NCAA Tournament was the top show in sports, with the women’s title game drawing four million more viewers — a massive delta in this day and age — over the men’s title game.

Countless NBA players are wearing the signature shoe of Walnut Creek native and WNBA star Sabrina Ionescu on the court.

Turn on the TV, and you’ll see an ad with Iowa’s Caitlin Clark or VanDerveer’s star forward, Cameron Brink.

Dunbar VanDerveer never saw that coming. But let’s be honest. No one did.

But this success — this moment of ubiquity — was built on a foundation his daughter helped set.

All we can say now as she exits is, “Thank you.”

It took two years for VanDerveer to establish the Stanford program once she arrived in the Bay, but from the 1987-88 season onwards, Stanford was a force.

By 1990, VanDerveer and the Cardinal were national champions. They won the title again two years later. She did leave Stanford for the 1995-1996 season, but she was on a worthy sabbatical, coaching the United States’ women’s Olympic team, a gold-medal squad that was instrumental in the WNBA, which launched a year later, still going strong to this day.

While VanDerveer didn’t need her third title to confirm that fact, winning a title 31 years after her first championship spoke volumes. VanDerveer never wavered from her principles but was always a pragmatist who could evolve with the times.

“Basketball is the greatest group project there is, and I am so incredibly thankful for every person who has supported me and our teams throughout my coaching career,” VanDerveer

For my entire life, Stanford women’s basketball has been the standard-bearer for excellence on the West Coast. It continued to raise the level of the game year after year.

To build that is incredible.

To maintain that standard for as long as VanDerveer did is otherworldly.

“I’ve been spoiled to coach the best and brightest at one of the world’s foremost institutions for nearly four decades,” VanDerveer said.

VanDerveer never received the national notoriety of UConn’s Geno Auriemma or Tennessee’s Pat Summit — deserved, in both cases, of course — VanDerveer was absolutely in their class.

She might not have been peerless, but when you are talking about the greatest college basketball coaches of the modern era—men’s or women’s teams—there’s no one in a higher tier.

And if a legacy is simply the lingering impact you have on others, then no one leaves behind a stronger legacy, either.

A tiny part of it exists on my deck today.

As our household watched the far-superior women’s tournament this March alongside our steady diet of Steph Curry and the Warriors, my daughter, 18 months old, took to the small basketball her uncle bought her. Anything to get dad’s attention.

But that light affinity has now turned into a pink-rimmed plastic hoop on the “hardwood” and a steady diet of slam dunks and overhead passes.

She might be tall like her dad. Luckily, she seems to have avoided her mother’s woeful hand-eye coordination. We’ll see. No pressure.

But it’s my job to tell her she can be anything she wants when she grows up and help her reach those goals.

And if she wants to be a basketball player, I know one thing for sure: thanks in no small part to VanDerveer, the game can take her places.