THE FRONT ROW with MARK NELKE: VanDerveer’s impact on women’s basketball in our area goes way back

Back in the day, before anyone outside of Spokane had even heard of Gonzaga, Stanford was the desired destination for many rising girls basketball players in the West.

Tara VanDerveer, who started her storied women’s basketball coaching career at Idaho, came (back) West in 1985 after five years at Ohio State, and turned Stanford into a national power that would go on to win three NCAA championships.

VanDerVeer won a record 1,216 games in 45 seasons at the three stops before announcing her retirement earlier this week.

She lured the likes of Heather Owen (Moscow High) and Regan Freuen (Mead) in the 1990s, and the Hull twins, Lacie and Lexie, from Central Valley nearly three decades later.

Another North Idaho girl who caught the recruiting eye of VanDerveer back in the mid-1990s was Alli Nieman of Sandpoint High.

“I do remember her coming to watch our AAU games when I was a sophomore in high school and playing up with Heather Owen and Reagan Freuen because they were going there,” Nieman recalled. 

She said Stanford recruited her early, but the Cardinal’s interest lessened when Nieman told them she wanted to play two sports in college. The recruiting process never reached the point where Nieman talked to VanDerveer directly.

As it turned out, Nieman went to Idaho, where she played volleyball and basketball for one season, before giving up volleyball to focus on basketball.

Nieman left Idaho as the Vandals’ all-time leading scorer. She has been a counselor at Timberlake Middle School for 21 years, and is married with a fifth-grade son and a third-grade daughter. Naturally, she coaches his basketball team, and her basketball and volleyball teams.

But back then …

“I remember thinking, as a 15-year old, that it's pretty crazy that Tara VanDerveer was at a game I was playing in because she was such a legend — even way back then,” she said.

BEFORE BEING named head women’s basketball coach at Pepperdine on Friday, Katie (Baker) Faulkner coached against VanDerveer for eight seasons — the last three seasons as an assistant coach at the University of Washington, and for five seasons before that as an assistant at Oregon State.

“Tara, what a pillar for our sport, and for women in general,” Faulkner said. “Obviously coaching against her for the last eight years has made me a better coach. She’s made people better, not only on her own team but also when you sit across from her. What a testimony to what’s possible for our game. She will definitely be missed, but she definitely opened a lot of doors for women in this business. We are indebted to her in a lot of ways.”

Faulkner said she’s never spoken to VanDerveer. But … 

“I know that she’s helped numerous people along the way, and I’m sure if I called her up and had a question, she would take time to answer, so I really appreciate that about her,” Faulkner said.

EARLY ON during her lengthy stint as senior associate athletic director and senior women’s administrator at Idaho, Kathy Clark hired a grad assistant at Ohio State to be the Vandals’ women’s basketball coach.

Her name was Tara VanDerveer. 

“She’d gone to school at Indiana, and she was a student of the game,” Clark recalled back in 2022, in an interview with The Press. “So she’d sit in Bobby Knight’s practices, and sometimes even in his office, learning basketball from the ground up.”

She then became a grad assistant at Ohio State when the Idaho job came open in 1978. 

“She was young, but I knew she would eat, sleep and breathe basketball, and she did a number of things on campus in her two years on campus to gain all kinds of support … and won a lot of basketball games,” Clark said. “While we had good coaches before Tara, she really kind of kicked us off into the new age, if you will (1978-80), then Pat (Dobratz) came in, and did a great job as well (1980-87).”

After two seasons in Moscow, VanDerveer headed back to Columbus to become head coach at Ohio State. In 1985 she moved on to Stanford, where … well, you know the rest.

“You always hope somebody is going to stay there, but that is kind of the niche Idaho has … if you’re lucky enough to get somebody on the rise, and they’re successful here, they’re probably going to end up someplace else,” Clark said.

When Clark retired in 1999, VanDerveer sent her a photo of her 1996 Olympic gold medal-winning U.S. women’s basketball team as a gift.

“I knew she’d be good,” Clark said. “And she’s always been so kind to credit Idaho and me in particular … she loved her time at Idaho.”

“I loved my time at Idaho,” VanDerveer told the Daily Evergreen, Washington State’s student newspaper, in February. “I cried leaving. It was an awesome opportunity for me, and I’m very thankful I had it.” 

When she would return to the Palouse with her Stanford team to face Washington State, she said she would sometimes notice the Kibbie Dome from the air.

“I worked for Kathy Clark at Idaho,” VanDerveer told the Evergreen. “She was fabulous. She was the first person to hire me, so I’m always indebted to that, to have that chance.”

Mark Nelke is sports editor of The Press. He can be reached at 208-664-8176, Ext. 2019, or via email at mnelke@cdapress.com. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) @CdAPressSports.