Mark Twain on Mistakes --June Thoughts on Stanford's Women Basketball

 

Mark Twain on Mistakes - June Thoughts on Stanford’s Women’s Basketball

Warren Grimes

It’s been a turbulent Spring.   The team has lost seven players who transferred, four of them who were starters for most of the year (and a fifth who was in the regular rotation).  Public accounts suggest that at least some of the players felt mal treated.  Discontent at whatever level may have been exacerbated by the NCAA chaos generated by NIL and open transfer rules.  Congress is considering legislation to address some of these issues, but Stanford must focus on what it can control.

I have no inside information on the source of the discontent.  Coaches are people and, like everyone else I know, make mistakes.   As a life-long teacher, I made my share of them.   I was fortunate to learn and benefit from them.  As Mark Twain said: "Good decisions come from experience. Experience comes from making bad decisions."

So can the current head coach and her staff learn from past mistakes?  Coaching for a high profile team means operating in a fishbowl.  Teachers are judged by their students.  So too with a coach, but coaching is less tolerant and less forgiving of mistakes.  Yes, players will be acute observers of a coach’s performance, but those who pass judgment on a coach  include players’ families, athletic administrators, alumni, fans, future recruits, the press, and probably Emily Post (if she follows basketball).  Tolerance for a coach’s mistakes will be much lower than for most teachers.

The one plus that a coach has is that if she wins, tolerance for mistakes suddenly becomes much greater.  Mistakes will be ignored and the AD will instead offer a contract renewal with a salary hike.  I’m sure that Tara VanDerveer made her share of mistakes – and probably learned from many of them.  Meanwhile, she was winning games at a very high rate, along with league and tournament championships. 

In the one extended conversation I had with VanDerveer, she told me that she could never have coached at Stanford the way that Pat Summit coached at Tennessee.  At the time of the exchange, Summit had just locked her players out of a new locker room, intending this as an incentive for more intense practices.  That wouldn’t work at Stanford, VanDerveer said -- the players wouldn’t put up with it.  What Coach VanDerveer said a decade or more ago must be truer today, when players are free to transfer with no penalty.

So for Coach Paye, the key is building morale, chemistry, and a winning team.  She will have the benefit of a new Assistant Coach, said to be skilled at player development, and seven new players, three transfers and four freshmen.  The five returning veterans include one starter (Swain) and two regular rotation players (Eschmeyer and Ijiwoye).  All three of the transfers either started or were major rotation players for their former teams.  Jordyn Wheeler, a freshman guard, is performing very well for Team Canada this summer.

I hope that Coach Paye and her staff will favor carrots over sticks and can build the team chemistry and morale needed to be a tournament team next season.  No guarantees, but I’m with Mark Twain.