Tara Podcastle raw editing
Sat, May 17, 2025 2:07PM • 35:13
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Stanford University, coaching philosophy, leadership, player development, team dynamics, coaching challenges, NIL (Name, Image, Likeness), team connectivity, emotional control, coaching evolution, player relationships, teaching, basketball, athletic department.
SPEAKERS
Tara Vanderveer, Paul Barnett
Paul Barnett 00:00
Tara van de Vee, well, it's good morning in Australia. It's good afternoon to you. And welcome to the great coaches podcast. Thank you, Tara. Something simple to get us going. Could you tell us where you are in the world, what you've been up to today, and perhaps even what you're drinking just there?
Tara Vanderveer 00:20
Well, I am in Menlo Park, California, which is about 30 miles south of San Francisco. I work at Stanford University. I retired as the Head Basketball Coach last April, and since then, I've worked as a coaches coach with the 36 varsity sports at Stanford, and I also work in development, which is helping raise funds for the athletic department. And in the meantime, I'm involved in a lot of interviews, speeches, working on a book, and then I had hip surgery, so I'm recovering from that and getting healthy, going, swimming, biking, walking my dog. But today is a very rainy day here, so I'm inside and it's cold, so I had a hot chocolate.
Paul Barnett 01:18
Well, Tara, it sounds like we've got a lot to cover. Particularly, I want to talk to you later on in the interview about coaching coaches and the fact that you got yourself an executive coach as well. So I want to, I want to drill into that. But I'd like to start by just sort of following the journey, if we can. And I want to actually start with the great coaches that you've worked with or seen up close. So in researching and reading about you, I know that you talk a lot about Bobby Knight, B Gordon and Steve Kerr. Well, actually, Steve Kerr talks a little bit about you, and I'm sure there's, there's many other examples. In fact, it was the great coach, Jeremy Gunn, that that introduced us. But right, Tara, what is it you think the great coaches do differently that sets them apart? Well,
Tara Vanderveer 02:05
I think they have a real clear vision of what they want to see on the court or, you know, on the field, and they're able to communicate that vision in a very positive way, so that their team plays the way they want them to play, and that players grow and develop and feel, I think, feel valued by their coaches and their teammates, and they're able to, you know, kind of stay with things when things aren't going Well, encourage players to play better and always, always improving.[PB1]
Paul Barnett 02:45
Tara, 38 years coaching. Stanford, 38 years is a long time in any profession, but your love of coaching started before that. Where did the passion for leading a group of people first come from. When did you discover it? Well,
Tara Vanderveer 03:03
I think the passion first came with, you know, as a young girl playing basketball. I loved the game of basketball, and I was, you know, just out there playing with the boys or, you know, get a chance to play in, like, gym class. And I just had fun. I loved the game of basketball. And then both my parents were teachers, and I just see coaching as teaching with, you know, 40 public exams, you're out there and you but you're teaching a sport that you love. So I never felt like it was a J, O, B job. I always felt like it was fun. And so I had, I just, you know, had the passion for the game, and then enjoyed the teaching part and enjoyed the players I worked with. So, you know, I was at, you know, at Stanford for 38 years, but I also had the Olympic team for a year, and I was at Ohio State for seven years, and I was at Idaho for two years. So I've been doing it a long time.
Paul Barnett 04:01
Yeah, I've been doing it a long time. I you, I've heard you talk about coaching is teaching, and I, I wanted to ask you, when does it, or does it ever evolve into leading?
Tara Vanderveer 04:17
Well, I think teachers are leaders. You know, they're, they're people that are lead, leading students, kind of down the path of being lifetime learners, being excited about learning. So I guess I see them both as, I see a coach as a teacher and a leader, and I see a teacher as a coach and a leader. So they're almost kind of the same thing for me. You know, it is different, though, when you do have the pressure on you to win as a coach, which maybe a teacher might not feel that exact pressure of you know, you're going to be reading about your failure or success in the newspaper the next day. You. You know, or watching it on television that night. So there, you know, there obviously are differences. But you know, the the idea that, like when you think of, you know, you had a great teacher, they were probably a great leader, too.
Paul Barnett 05:15
I want to talk about the start of your playing career, if we can. I you started out at the University of Albany, but the environment there was, in your words, just not challenging enough. So you took yourself off to the championship, which I think was the precursor to the NCAA, and you were looking for a new team. You're up there in the stands looking for a new team. And I, I wondered this, this desire to be elevating your environment was with you at such a young age, and I wondered how it stayed with you and evolved as your career progressed.
Tara Vanderveer 05:49
Well, I I did experience that. I played at Albany, and this was just, you know, this was women's basketball. Was really at an infancy at the time, and they had the AIW, which was the Association for intercollegiate women's athletics, they staged a tournament where 16 teams went and so I did convince a friend who had a very big car to drive with me and a couple other friends, and we had a cooler of sandwiches and drinks to go to. I was in Illinois, so it was like a 15 hour drive, and we're and I was taking notes on all the different teams. And so I was, I knew I was looking for a team in a university that fit kind of what I was looking for. You know, I wanted to get, I wanted a great education, and I wanted to play on a fun basketball team that would challenge me. And so I found that, and when transferred to Indiana. But I, I think I always, I always had, like, five year plan, or 10 year plan, like, always looking ahead to, you know, thinking, I'm going to start here, and then I'm going to move up, kind of move up the ladder. And so even, you know, as a as a JV coach, I knew I wanted a head job, and at a head job at a small school I needed. I knew I wanted a big head job at a big school, and then, and then I refined it even more to to a big school, you know, an academic opportunity that was really unique at Stanford, just the opportunity to offer a young person and an education at a base, a world, kind of a world famous university, and also that then we could have a world, kind of a world famous basketball team. It's
Paul Barnett 07:39
interesting, I imagine at Stanford, because your athletes are also very intellectually bright. They are and and I imagine you're in an environment where debating with them could sometimes become quite consuming. I'm wondering how you had to change to deal with that
Tara Vanderveer 07:56
they do. You know they're different athletes that you know just because someone is really academic does not mean that they have good basketball sense. I've coached some very intelligent academic students who on the basketball court are a boxer rocks. I mean, they really take a long time explaining things. And I do notice that some of the Stanford you know, there's some other Stanford players that we've had do ask a lot of questions, but I'm okay with that, you know, I like the questions, and I don't mind explaining why we're doing things, or kind of the whole, you know, they want to know why we're doing it, not not just go out and do it so. And I'm okay with that. But it has been really, I think, really fun working with people that are very driven, and the students at Stanford are very driven.
Paul Barnett 08:51
Yeah, you drive, and energy is something that that flows through your story. But there's also a great quote around oatmeal that I've seen you deliver a couple of times in interviews. Actually, I'd like to read the quote to you, and then I'd like to ask you a question about it. You say basketball is like steel cut oatmeal. You've got to cook it. It's not instant oatmeal. Now, I can think of many other professions that you could use a similar analogy for, but could you share with us Tara a story that really illustrates this idea to you?
Tara Vanderveer 09:29
Well, I think that there are a lot of times in the world that our young people live in now, everything is instantaneous. So you've got in, I say it's you've got Amazon that delivers, you know, the next day, you've got Google that you can look up and have the answer right away. And and I think that that's the kind of world that a lot of our young people live in and expect, but that does not fit with basketball or. Any, probably any really, really high performance endeavor. I mean, you can't be a great pianist in 15 minutes, or you can't be, you know, a great artist. It takes a lot of time and a lot of work, and that's what I call the slow cooking. And so I think some of the young people that want instantaneous satisfaction. Are disappointed with with basketball because they can't get it right away. It takes a long time. But the people that really enjoy the journey, the process of improving, you know, are happy to play basketball or to do some other sport like that, or, or, you know, like a musician or, you know, but they have to really enjoy the process, not just the destination.[PB2]
Paul Barnett 10:51
Well, that's been a hallmark of your career as well a long, a long journey with some ups and some downs along the way.
Tara Vanderveer 10:59
That's true. But, you know, I think any coach would would be, you know, challenged that way. You know, if you're any sport that you coach, it's never going to be smooth sailing.
Paul Barnett 11:15
Tara, I've got another great quote from you. This one really resonated with me as a as a CEO, actually, you say I asked them to go up on the high wire, and I'm their net. And as coaches, that's what I try to do, is to be there for them no matter what happens this high wire and net analogy was, was quite a powerful, powerful one for me, and it made me reflect on the times in my career where I've probably helped, tried to help people balance, rather than be their net. And I'm wondering what advice you might have for other people on distinguishing between those two roles that you can play as a leader.
Tara Vanderveer 11:57
Well, I think I thought about this in a way, like, when I started taking piano lessons, I have a really great teacher that I thought, you know, like I would be preparing for recital as an example. And, you know, you get nervous. And I always felt like, you know, she was right there to encourage me and to, you know, keep me on on on the music. And she was someone that, I think that through coaching and, you know, kind of my piano journey a little bit. I first I thought I could teach myself piano, and I realized that was stupid. That wasn't going to happen that way. But I realized, you know, having a teacher and being a coach that would help players get to a place they couldn't get by themselves. And that part of being up on the net was that you're going up there and and you know you can do this. And the confidence and the encouragement that as a coach, you know you want to give someone, and I felt that as a piano student.
Paul Barnett 12:59
So if someone was perhaps helping people balance too much, or perhaps being too much of a net. You talk about these, you know, these, these 30 plus people that you're coaching at the minute. Is this a topic you bring up with them, learning to sort of calibrate where they need to be in that moment. With the students, you mean, yeah, with the other coaches you're working with,
Tara Vanderveer 13:20
yeah, well, I think that the other thing too is just like, like, if you think of as example, have you ever been to Sea World where the whale jumps that high, you know, comes way out of the water and jumps that rope, you know? And if you think of, well, they didn't start there. They started with the rope on the bottom of the pool and put a fish on the other side. and goes and then up and up and up and up. And so like and anytime you're teaching anything, any skill, you don't start at the very top. You start with the easy and ladder to skill up so that, you know, you have a chance to do, you know, get the people to where they can be, but you don't, you don't have them experience a negative experience or failure, and then they don't want to do it. So kind of nothing succeeds like success. Start out easy and get it and add it up.[PB3]
Paul Barnett 14:23
Tara, in your final season at Stanford, you engaged to coach for yourself. Kirsten Moss, I did tell us about that experience and how it how it shaped you.
Tara Vanderveer 14:34
So my last year at Stanford, my second to last year, was very disappointing, and I just felt like I didn't want to go through another year feeling the way I did my second to last year, and I wanted to continue on, and I ended up retiring, but, you know, I wanted to move in a different direction, and I thought that it would be great to have someone help our team with. A leadership and I felt that the team that had been very disappointing had lacked leadership, and the person that I worked with was a leadership expert, and she'd be someone really great for you to interview, I think, but not a coach, but she is a coach, actually, you know,
she coaches, she coaches CEOs and young, you know, people to to up their game, and she and working with her, and talking to her, meeting with her, she did a customized leadership program for our team, and then she worked with me individually. And it was something that, you know, I really, I really valued and learned from and she would start with maybe a simple question of, why would people want to follow you? And so, you know, that's when you try it. In some ways, it's kind of a hard question to answer, you know, but, but there would be questions like that. And more than anything, I think she really emphasized the connectivity between you and the the young people that you're coaching, and that a lot of young people, I think they struggle with the relationships because they are so busy on their phone all the time, you know, they they have, like, what I'll call artificial relationships, you know, like a lot of people that like them on their phone, but that doesn't mean they like them in person, you know. So I think that she was really helpful with that to connect with the players, to have me really think through how I could maximize my communication with with players and staff, and I think it was really helpful. Going into the last year,[PB4]
Paul Barnett 16:52
Tara, from what I understand, she also worked on building connectivity within the team. So she wasn't just coaching you, but she was also working with the team, can you tell us a little bit about how she went about unlocking better connectivity?
Tara Vanderveer 17:10
Most of most of what she did, she actually worked with me, but we did some extra sizes to have people, like a triad, where three people would talk to each other and like, you know, each, each of the two people would listen to the one person and then repeat, kind of to the group. This is what we learned about Paul, you know, you know, he's a CEO in Australia, and as his family, he has two daughters. You know, maybe you have a dog. I mean, just like learning and getting to know people and understanding who, who in your life is important to you, what things are important to you. So getting to know people beyond the fact that they can dribble and shoot or play defense, but but in fact, that who they are as a person. So hey, you know, we did exercise like that. How
Paul Barnett 18:04
do you think that knowledge helps?
Tara Vanderveer 18:09
I think that sometimes, you know it would, it would just give you a little bit of a maybe a little bit of a key to maybe unlocking, sometimes, how someone's feeling or, or the fact that, you know, if you opened up to myself and another person that we're with, we could come back and say, Well, Paul, remember, you know, who's really important to you, you know. What would they think about this behavior, you know? Like, let's say, you know, maybe it's your you. Maybe you had a great coach sometime, you know. And we say, well, what would, what would this coach think about you being late to practice, or you, you know, not having a good attitude or and it gives you just a little, you know, just a little insight into what makes them tick and how to communicate with them.
Paul Barnett 18:56
I've also heard you speak, Tara, about this idea of being a great teammate, and you, I was intrigued, actually, because you also talked about the you termed him the happiness professor at Stanford, Professor Fred Luskin. I wasn't familiar with any of his work, but could you tell us about this happiness professor and the, perhaps the impact that he had? Well,
Tara Vanderveer 19:20
I think that one thing that, as a coach for me, as long as I've done this, I don't feel like I have all the answers, and so I'm always looking for ideas, whether it's books for our team to read or people for them to meet that will help them, you know, kind of take them to the next level. You know, be, be someone that takes helps them achieve their goals and kind of realize their potential while they're on our team. [PB5]
And so, you know, as you said, you know, the leadership coach was someone, and also Fred I met about eight years ago. He spoke to the athletic department, and I just thought he was fantastic. So I. I went up to him afterwards, and I said, you know, would you be interested in working with our team? And so he would come once a week for 10 minutes, and that's hard with Fred, because he, you know, he's, he's chat, he can talk, but for 10 minutes he would just talk to our team. And you know, I have pages and pages of notes from the exercises you would do, you know, some of it was deep breathing, some of the meditation, some of it was, you know, just really it was, it was very calming. And our team, I think at first some people thought, Oh, this is kind of silly, but our team really loved it. And when we were at the Final Four, you know, playing in a pressure situation. I said, Well, what will help you? And they said, let's get Fred on Zoom. So, you know, we got Fred on Zoom, and, you know, he was able to, I think, help people relax and talk to him about, you know, being able to go up on that high wire. He was just, you know, another layer of net. And he also would meet with people individually. And he was great for me. I really enjoy, you know, he's, he's still just a great friend.[PB6]
Paul Barnett 21:05
Talked in there about, you know, not having all the answers and making use of the resources around you. Was it always that way, or was it something that evolved as your tenure as a coach?
Tara Vanderveer 21:17
No, I think, I think I've always been really open to listening to other people, learning from the other people. I've always gone to other people's practices and watched their practices. We had our swim coach came and talked to our team before we won our national championship. You know, I've had Jeremy come and speak to our team, and I've spoken with his team
. You know, I've spoken to the football team, our men's basketball team, you know, just, I think, I think at Stanford, there's a lot of collaboration, and I like that. And it's just, I don't, I mean, I don't think you can have too many people helping in a good way, you know. But I've always, I've always learned a lot from other people. And I like that. I think
Paul Barnett 22:02
that collaboration spills over into the environment around Stanford. I know Jeremy talked a lot about going into Silicon Valley and talking to all right, the companies there is that also something that you've done over the years? Yes,
22:15
yeah,
Paul Barnett 22:17
Tara, there's this word that that comes up a lot when what? So what I basically do when I'm preparing for an interview is I download all the interesting articles into a big word file, and then I sort of start reading through it. The word understated was came up time and time again. It was one of the most interesting words in one of the most common words. And just interviewing, interviewing you today, I can see that that understated presence is really something that comes to the fore when, when people get to meet you. In fact, it was Steve Kerr the Golden State warrior coach, had said, I've always loved her sort of understated presence. But it made me wonder if this kind of approach to leadership. You know, this, this understated approach, not always needing to be heard, and at the forefront of everything, is somehow linked to your longevity as a leader. And I'm wondering what others can learn from it.
Tara Vanderveer 23:15
You know, I don't know. I mean, you can, I guess you just who you are, who you are, right? And I think I've always trusted myself to be authentic, and I learned from other people. I'm open to a lot of different ideas, but I feel like I have my own North Star in terms of wanting to be authentic, have integrity, be be, you know, honest. And I don't really need a lot of attention, you know. I don't need to be the center of attention. I don't have to go to the party and say, you know, look at me. Look at me. I just, you know, I really, I enjoy people. I like meeting people. I love the game of basketball. I'm, I love to be active and have fun, but, you know, I, I think, I think I've, I've just, I've led a magical life. I've traveled all over the world, you know, I've been to Sydney. Loved it. It's beautiful. You know, met presidents, gone to incredible events, and, you know, been around the very best of athletes, basketball players and Olympians and everything. And I don't feel like I have anything to prove to anyone, you know. So I just, I'm just, I'm happy. So I don't, I don't, I don't need to, you know, I don't have to get a lot of reinforcement from a lot of other people. When[PB7]
Paul Barnett 24:44
I interviewed a quite a successful Australian rules football coach a few weeks back and and he notoriously doesn't do any media, and I just managed to get a really nice introduction to him from someone and I asked him why, and he said, Look, as a coach, he's all. Is conscious of people not hearing his voice too much less. The impact wears out. And it really made me wonder if that's not something that we lose sight of. Sometimes in leadership, we're always so busy talking that we lose sight of the impact that the volume of that speech can have on people. I
Tara Vanderveer 25:20
think that's probably a good statement. I think there is something to be said of that, you know, and that so that when he does speak, you know, they haven't tuned him out,
Paul Barnett 25:33
as my kids do to me when I keep telling them to clean up the house. Now, Tara, I don't know if this research is correct, so I'm going to put it out there, and you can tell me whether I've got tell me whether I've got it right or not. 48 years of coaching, about three technical fouls. I've seen it referenced twice now it's like, oh, that doesn't seem right. Only three, because the average college coach in America is getting one to two per season. So you are well underneath now this suggests to me a couple of things. One is that your court side demeanor is more calm than most or two, that you're just good at bottling things up and not letting it display on the court side. But I'm wondering, all jokes aside, whether there is anything that you do to try and maintain your emotional state. You talked about meditation earlier, but it must have been something that's been with you for the length of your career.
Tara Vanderveer 26:24
Well, you know, those three technical files, really only, I only deserve two of them, because one of them was called when I was in Alaska, coaching the team, and they called over and back. And we did not have the over and back rule at the time. The official, like, maybe did high school basketball or whatever, and I'm like, I tried to explain to him, we don't even have that rule, so two of them were probably legitimate. And there might have been times where I should have gotten another one, but I didn't, you know, I
really feel like you should do like your coaching in practice and to act like a maniac on the sideline getting technical fouls, I would be afraid. I would not want to lose a game or lose a championship, because I couldn't control my emotions. So I think for that, you know, I can sit there and I might be swearing under my breath, or I could be saying some crazy things, but I don't I also feel like the officials are trying to do the best they can, so for me to cause a distraction, just takes their takes their focus away from the game, and they they need all their attention on the game. And[PB8]
Paul Barnett 27:34
yet, Bobby Knight was an influence on you, who was probably the other end of the spectrum. Well, I
Tara Vanderveer 27:42
don't know. Did he get a lot of technical fouls? I don't know. He probably got him when he wanted them. He and he did one crazy thing, throwing the chair out there. But that was really not how he coached. When I watched his practices, he was, he was a teacher. And so maybe, you know, maybe there were times where he would get a technical foul on a game. But you know, I didn't see that, and I didn't see that as his demeanor and practice.
Paul Barnett 28:13
Tara, you describe your coaching philosophy as his hard work. That seems to be the word that you come back to time and time again, but you also say that my intensity and passion sometimes I was probably harder on players than they could take at the time. Now, if I could take you back and introduce you to that coach who was using their intensity to be hard on on players. Knowing what you know now, what would you say to her?
Tara Vanderveer 28:49
I'd probably just say, you know, relax. It's all going to work out. And you know, I think also the times are different. Now, what you know how you could coach 30 years ago is different than what you could do now. But I would say also that I did change and evolved. I think I became a better coach, you know, as I was in it longer and understood it more and kept working at it, but you know, you can't kind of you are who you are, and you can't change yourself. You know, I can't go back, but I did. I think I did learn from some situations, but I wasn't, I wasn't ever a crazy, maniac coach. I really focused on being a positive, encouraging teacher, and I I've, I started with that, and I've stuck with that. You know, there might be some players that, you know, again, the world has changed, and some of them, maybe I didn't connect. As well as you know, you want to with some of them, but I think for the most part, you know, I've had just great players and had great opportunities to coach them, and great relationships with them after they've graduated.[PB9]
Paul Barnett 30:14
You talk about being a positive teacher, and at the start of this interview, you said that you're a coach's coach. Could you tell us what your work with those coaches entails?
Tara Vanderveer 30:26
Well, this is a really difficult time in the college, American college athletic landscape, where n i L, if people are familiar with name, image and likeness, as a student athlete, you can be paid by maybe a shoe company or, you know, cosmetic company, or whatever, you know, to represent their products. So players have their own individual brands. They have agents. They're sometimes they're distracted by doing advertisements or photo shoots or tick tock videos instead of being in the gym or being in the library, and then, because you might have your own brand and my brand competes with you, then we're on the same team, and there's not always the teamwork and the camaraderie and the closeness that great teams have. So these are different challenges right now in the college athletic landscape, along with the portal, which is the ability to transfer very, you know, without sitting out a year. So you can leave one college and go to a different college. In the old days, you had to sit out a year. So it did get people's attention. You know, there was more maybe conscientious. I'm going to stick this out. I'm going to be more determined. I'm going to I'm going to work on my communication with my teammates or my coaches, so that that changes things. And so, you know, when you add in the money, the ability to change quickly, it makes it challenging for coaches and for young people right now.
Paul Barnett 32:02
Tara, you've been very generous with your time. I'd like to maybe, if I could just ask one final question, and it's um, I found a quote from a lady called Judy, gross or gross, I think you might pronounce it, I'm not sure, but she was on your first she was on the team where you had your first win as a coach back in 1979 when you were leading the University of Idaho, and she was reflecting on that day and and she said quote, and we kind of felt that sense where you're hard on them, but you also value them as individuals. We really felt that from her. Now for someone to recall that 45 years on is really quite amazing, but in your words, Tara, what do you hope is the legacy that you've left?
Tara Vanderveer 32:52
Well, you want, you want people to really enjoy the experience of playing on your team. And I think that I I would always challenge myself to be a coach that I would like to play for. Now, mind you, I didn't really get to play on very many teams, but you do. You did reference B Gordon one time, and I played for B Gordon at Indiana, and she was a great coach, you know, and she was someone that, you know, cared about her her team, she cared about the players. She was someone that, you know, like was strict and she didn't raise her voice. She never swore. But you know, you, you knew you better, you know, do the right thing, and she, she was very direct. And so I, you know, I learned from B, I learned from Coach Knight. I took a, I think, a class from Fred Taylor and, you know, and all that, all the X's and O's, all the, you know, experience, you just come back to, you know,
the very first coaching job I had was with my sister's team. And that to remember that everyone on your team is someone's sister. And two, in some respects, then I just had to be a good big sister. And in some ways, you know, when I was a head coach, I was 25 years old, and the players sometimes were 22 so it was still being, you know, having a sisterhood, being a good big sister. You know, I can't say that I'm perfect. There are definitely a lot of situations that I would go back and say, Well, you know, I would rethink that. And you know, maybe not be, as you know, rash in terms of making a decision, but you know, knowing what I know now, I would, you know, say, Oh, you could have done better, but I did the best I could during the time, and I'm very thankful for the opportunity to work with the young people I worked with, and they'll come back and say to me, do you remember when you said this to me? I'm like, No, I don't, but you know that they remembered it, and that's important.[PB10]
Paul Barnett 34:53
Tara, it's it's been great interviewing you today. You've been on my wish list for almost since the day I started. The podcast one of the most winningest coaches, so for a while, they're the winningest coach in college history. And I, I thank you very much for your time today.
35:09
All right, Paul, my pleasure. Thank you. You.