Shooting from the Outside: How a Coach and Her Olympic Team Transformed Women's Basketball FROM THE PUBLISHER
In Shooting from the Outside, Tara VanDerveer tells a story of triumph on many levels. Woven through her chronicle of the team's undefeated year leading up to the Atlanta games is the story of her own inspiring rise as a coach. Having come of age before the Title IX ruling that prohibited sex discrimination in sports, the closest she could get to a basketball team in junior high was in a bear costume as the mascot. From her early days as an aspiring player to her first unpaid coaching job to her current position at the top of her field, her story encompasses the twenty-five-year saga of women in team sports. As the mastermind behind the Olympic win, VanDerveer also presents a riveting, behind-the-scenes look at the making of the team, including her unique view of players such as Sheryl Swoopes, Lisa Leslie, and Rebecca Lobo. "You have an opportunity and a responsibility to represent hope to the country," she told the team. "You can show that differences don't need to divide people, whether you're black or white, from the city or from a farm." This is the rich, emotionally textured story of how the team grew - women pushing the limit, making sacrifices in pursuit of excellence, succeeding together.
SYNOPSIS
The inspiring story of a pioneering coach, an undefeated women's team, and the ascent of women's basketball.
FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
Olympic officials declared 1996 the Year of the Woman, and no group realized that ideal better than the gold medal-winning U.S.A. women's basketball team, which, starting in 1995, won 60 straight games. No small contributor to that triumph was VanDerveer, who had been a head coach at Idaho State, Ohio State and Stanford when she was named coach of the American squad. Her techniques have already been analyzed by Sara Corbett in Venus to the Hoop (Forecasts, May 19), but she holds nothing back in this account of the way she molded 12 players into a team whose members came to view themselves not as disparate stars but as parts of a whole. Aided by Ryan (Little Girls in Pretty Boxes), VanDerveer single-mindedly keeps notes on every player in every game, studying videos of her team and their opponents, gathering tips from other coaches across the country and spending endless hours analyzing then formulating strategies for each contest until even her dreamsand nightmaresare about basketball. This resulting book is both exciting and inspiring. Author tour. (Sept.)
Kirkus Reviews
With the help of sportswriter Ryan (Little Girls in Pretty Boxes, 1995), the three-time National Coach of the Year and coach of the gold-medal-winning 1996 Olympic women's basketball team tells all.
Perhaps as well known for her sober behavior and dress as for her coaching success, VanDerveer displays a side here—warm, determined, unabashedly flawed, and unselfconsciously upbeat—that should surprise those who have not followed her career since the beginning. VanDerveer relives the inequities that defined her playing career in the days prior to and just following the inception of Title IX; the grudging acceptance of the letter, rather than the spirit, of that law; and the none-too-subtle gender discrimination that still taints most sports. (After arriving in Atlanta for the Olympics, members of VanDerveer's team were told that they would receive just half the meal money of their male counterparts). Rather than catalog these setbacks and inequities, VanDerveer instead explains how her own doggedness and will to succeed helped her rise. The coach repeatedly (if unintentionally) demonstrates how her seldom-heralded ability to adapt enabled her to continually challenge and inspire Team USA—which compiled a 60-0 record en route to the gold medal. Since the games, VanDerveer has returned to Stanford, turning aside lucrative offers to coach in one of the two competing pro women's leagues. (During the off- season, she does television commentary on the WNBA.)
However, judging from the impact she's had on her players' lives, VanDerveer has succeeded in making women stop listening to reasons why they can't or shouldn't play and start thinking about how they can be better players.
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