Basketball Will Take You Everywhere

At Stanford, the term student-athlete isn’t an oxymoron. What other basketball coach has Carolyn Bertozzi, a Nobel Prize-winning chemist in their locker room for a game? Where else would a star player (Chiney Ogwumike) have a former Secretary of State (Condoleezza Rice) as an advisor? How fortunate are we to have former Middle East Correspondent Janine Zacharia do a direct reading with a player so they could represent the USA in summer competition. Who else has world-renowned “Happiness Professor” Fred Luskin meet with their team weekly to develop mindfulness training? When our team and I needed help with leadership I turned to the #1 Business School in the country and former Dean of Admissions Kirsten Moss. She did customized leadership sessions with our team, coaches, and me. 

The “S” in Stanford is for SPECIAL. Thank you to all of our great faculty for your brilliance, dedication, and accessibility to our student-athletes. 

I am proud of the championships we have won and how we have built a great tradition. What brings me the most satisfaction however is to see the transformation of the young women on our team both on and off the court. How about Kiki this season! 

Off the court young, unsure women become steady, confident leaders. In the classroom, they have excelled and gone on to be doctors, lawyers, professors, businesswomen, and leaders. 

Just walking into Maples for practice and hearing the balls bouncing and the music playing has brought me great joy. Coaching has never felt like a J-O-B job. 

I have loved the game of basketball since the 3rd grade when we did 3-player weave in gym class. From the beginning, the strategy of basketball intrigued me but what really attracted me to the game was the importance of teamwork. It is thrilling to be part of a connected and successful team!

As a daughter of two educators, I have enjoyed teaching basketball fundamentals and skills. Basketball is so much more than dribbling, passing, and shooting. Great teams love playing with each other and for each other. 

Basketball is the ultimate team sport and I am part of a great team.

Thank you to my parents Rita and Dunbar for their love and support. My parents have always been my role models. My Mom would always say “You sure move faster on the basketball court than you do in the kitchen”. My Dad told me “Basketball would never take me anywhere”. I sent him postcards from all over the world!

As a young girl, I never played on a high school team or had camps or travel basketball. Our college schedule was only eight regular season games. Coaching wasn’t a profession for women. 

I got into coaching by accident. I had taken a year off after graduating from Indiana as a sociology major and I was planning to go to law school. My sister Marie was on the newly formed HS team (Title IX had just passed) and they had lost 99-11 the night before. My Dad basically made me help with her team! I learned two very important lessons in my first year. 

First, after games, my parents would ask “Why didn’t you play Marie more?” Parents see things through a different lens than coaches. 

Second, I loved my sister and through my years as a coach, as upset as I might get with a player I would always come back to: “She is someone’s sister.“

Thank you to Marie, and my siblings, Beth and Nick. I also want to give a big thank you to my sister Heidi the HC at UC San Diego. We talk daily and help each other. I love you Heidi and you are the #1 coach in the family! 

Coaching feels like it was my destiny. I watched hours of boys' practices from the 7th grade on. At Indiana, I took Coach Knight’s Coaching Class (I got an A) and watched his practices for 3 years. While at Ohio State, I got to know the legendary Fred Taylor. Don Monson was my colleague at Idaho and here at Stanford I had the incredible great fortune of becoming friends with Pete Newell. 

Thank you to Andy Geiger for hiring me in 1985 and Bernard Muir for keeping me! 

One of my greatest supporters isn’t here today in person but he is with us in spirit and we are in his building! Thank you, John Arrillaga. Once about 10 years ago I seriously considered retiring and went to dinner with John. He had heard I was thinking about it and told me that was a bad idea. I told him I was exhausted. He recommended I “take the summer off”. His support was critical for me to take the time I needed. 

No one has cared more about Stanford and Stanford Athletics than John. I am so thankful for the love and support from the entire Arrillaga family, thank you, Gioia, John Jr., and Laura. 

Thank you Helen and Peter Bing for supporting our team as scholarship donors and financing our team trip to Italy. Thank you Tony and Linda Meier for your annual bar-b-que and pool party and for attending all of our games. Thank you Jesse and Mindy Rogers for supporting the WSF Legacy Fund, scholarships, and Lifetime Cardinal. Thank you to the late Setsuko Ishiyama and her family Nelson, Terrie, Julia, Patricia, and Margaret for endowing my coaching position. Thank you to all of our exceptional donors for your contributions to endowed positions and scholarships. 

Coming to Stanford wasn’t an easy decision for me. I initially said no to Andy Geiger. He asked me why and I told him “I don’t know enough about Stanford”. So, he said come back. On my second recruiting trip to campus, I met the Track Coach Brooks Johnson. Andy had instructed Brooks to keep walking me around campus until I said “yes”. We walked and walked and not only did I say yes but Brooks became one of my best lifelong friends, he is my “soul mate”. Thank you, Brooks!

As I said I am part of a great team. From the beginning, I have understood the importance of outstanding assistant coaches. 

I have always had incredible assistants. Thank you to Amy Tucker who along with Julie Plank and the late June Daugherty came with me from Ohio State back in 1985. 

Amy, I am so grateful for your confidence in me. Thank you for the sacrifices you made to come to Stanford. Amy called me the first summer to tell me about a great guard. I asked, “Does she have grades?” Amy said “Yes, but there is one problem – she is from Tennessee.” I said, “Oh, that is a problem.” But Jennifer Azzi came to Stanford and became the first All-American. 

When I took a year off to coach the Olympic Team in 1996 Amy took over as the Head Coach. She coached the team to an undefeated Pac 10 Championship and Final Four. She has the best winning percentage at Stanford! 

Thank you to Associate Head Coach Kate Paye. I love working with you! Kate is a phenomenal coach. She is knowledgeable, an excellent communicator and totally invested in Stanford. 

Thank you to Katy Steding. I am so thankful for your loyalty and hard work. Katy was our first player to sign at Stanford. She was a key to our 1990 Championship along with being a member of the 1996 Olympic Team. 

Thank you to Tempie Brown for coming back this season. I appreciate your calm, mature demeanor and how you always would check to make sure I was wearing matching shoes!

Thank you, Bird, and Erica McCall for joining our staff this season after a wonderful pro career. I have enjoyed working with you as much as I enjoyed coaching you. You are the quintessential coach!

Thank you to my sport administrator Heather Owen and our basketball staff - Eileen Roche, Jeanette Pohlen, Casey Spinetti, Brian Shank, Katelin Knox, John Cantalupi, and Erin Poindexter McHan.

Working with our coaches and staff has been a highlight of my time at Stanford. I have thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to plan, strategize, argue (lots of my ideas got shot down!), and laugh with such great colleagues. Thank you all for making work so much fun!

I would be remiss if I didn’t recognize the women’s basketball coaches/sorority/ fraternity for their friendship and competition. Thank you to the giants of our game whom I have admired, Pat Summitt, Jody Conradt, Geno Auriemma, Ceal Barry, Andy Landers, Nancy Darsh, Kim Mulkey, Muffet McGraw, Lisa Bluder, and Dawn Staley. 

I also want to thank the other coaches at Stanford who I have learned from and cheered for. When I first came to Stanford it was intimidating to be in the company of people like Dick Gould (17 NCAA Championships), Bill Walsh, and Skip Kenney but in fact, they were all helpful and supportive. 

Once I was walking into the Athletic Dept following 5 Time NCAA Champion Dante Dettamanti. I thought to myself – “if he can do it, I can do it”. We did win and a couple of years later our men’s gymnastics team coached by Sadao Hamada won too. Walking in the same spot where I had seen Dante I congratulated Sadao and asked “What got into you winning it?” He said, “Tara I said if you can do it I can do it.”

Working and learning alongside great coaches and great people like Mike Montgomery, Trent Johnson, Johnny Dawkins, Tyrone Willingham, Jim “who has it better than us” Harbaugh, David Shaw, John Dunning, Mark Marquess, Greg Meehan, Anne Walker, John Tanner and Lele Forood just to name a few has been inspiring. Thank you all for your support and encouragement.

Another joy of working at Stanford has been watching and getting to know the accomplished student-athletes in other sports. Once during a rainy winter week, a young man asked if he could putt on the side of the court – you guessed it, Tiger Woods! During the pandemic I got to swim in a lane between Olympians Simone Manuel and Katie Ledecky – talk about humbling! I have rebounded for Mark Madsen and led Andrew Luck and Christian McCaffrey and the football team onto the field as the “guest coach.”

Most importantly I want to thank ALL the women I have coached at Stanford. I admire and respect the dedication that our student-athletes have to excellence in the classroom and on the court. As their coach, I have aspired to help each player get to a place they couldn’t get on their own. I have wanted to be a coach that I would want to play for. Someone who works very hard to give our team the best chance of being successful along with a person who demonstrates empathy and compassion.

Through the game of basketball, I have been taught the importance of teamwork, hard work, discipline, determination, unselfishness, and resilience. I have had many former players tell me the demands of playing basketball have helped them be successful in their careers. Most importantly I wanted our team to have fun and be great teammates. 

Our players have been inspiring and motivating. When I asked the 1990 team members to write down on an index card what is your contribution to the team was, walk-on Angela Taylor who rarely got in the game wrote “Spread sunshine”. We won the NCAA Championship. When I asked Chris MacMurdo, an incoming freshman as we drove onto campus on Campus Dr. “what are you thinking about?” Instead of the expected answer she answered, “I want to make a difference in this world”. She is a doctor now. 

When our National Team was in Ukraine in January our bus was leaving for the airport at 3:30 AM. As we boarded the bus 12-15 women shivering in thin coats were begging. Everyone, including me, walked right by ignoring them. Not Jennifer, she reached into her pockets and gave them her money and then opened her suitcase and gave away her clothes. Everyone got off the bus and followed Jennifer. 

After losing arguably the toughest game ever to Old Dominion in 1997, the players were inconsolable. Jamila Wideman commanded the room – “pick your heads up – I would rather lose with you than win with anyone else”. Late, after a very tough loss to UConn in the national title game Jayne Appel emotionally told me she didn’t want to take her uniform off because she knew she would never put it on again. 

I have so many stories of how the people I have coached have motivated, influenced, and inspired me. I have learned so much from each player. I am eternally grateful for having them in my life. 

I am incredibly proud of the “Stanford Sisterhood”. We have had “real sisters “– Karlie could find Bonnie open anywhere on the court, Nneka was another coach for Chiney, and Lexie and Lacie competed daily. In tough games, the sisterhood is a key to victory. It was very exciting this season to win 3 OT games and see how hard everyone was playing for each other. 

Yes, the championship years are on the wall in Maples but what I see when I look up there is Kiki high-fiving Cam, Jennifer and Sonja leaving the court with arms around each other, Candice hugging me and Nneka embracing Ros. It is the friendships that we have that make it so special. 

It has been an honor and pleasure to be part of these women’s lives. My goal has been a teacher, mentor, confidante, and eventually a lifetime friend for them. I have grieved at the funerals of parents and former players. I have celebrated at weddings. When children are born I have been called within the hour or I have talked my way into the hospital to see mother and newborn. As John Pohlen said to me when recruiting Jeanette, “Tara, we are family." 

Thank you, fans, and the Stanford Fast Break Club. Our fans are FANTASTIC! It has been thrilling to see the attendance at our games go from me being able to count on my fingers and toes the number of people in the gym, to sold-out Maples! I will be sitting up with you next season cheering for our team! 

I am very sad about losing the great Pac-12 Conference. Thank you to the outstanding coaches that I have competed against for close to 40 years. Thank you to our conference administrators, conference game officials, and Pac 12 Network.

Thank you media for your coverage of our teams through the years. What a pleasure it has been to get to know Dwight Chapin, Elliot Almond, Darren Sabedra, Tom Fitzgerald, Ann Killion, Michelle Smith, Scott Osler, Joan Ryan, Marisa Ingemi, Janie McCauley, Jason Dumas, Erin Wilson, Kate Rooney, Anthony Flores, Michael Roberson, Cheryl Coward, Vern Glenn, Gary Radnich, Ashley Adamson and Mary Murphy. Thank you for telling the stories of our games and great players. There is a young girl out there who will watch or read about Stanford Women’s Basketball and her Dad will say to her:

 

“Basketball will take you everywhere.”