The Mind Behind the 1996 Olympic Basketball Legacy: Tara VanDerveer

96 Olympics were in Atlanta, so USA Basketball decided to try a new plan, which would be to have a coach resign from their college team and coach a team all year and train all year for the Olympics, and that's what we did. And you were chosen. I was the coach, right, and I was chosen to win a gold medal. I was introduced that way, that it's not about bronze, it's not about silver, this is about gold. And Tara van der Veer, so go win the gold medal, and we picked a team. This team was really amazing. The women on the team were mature, they were focused, they had given up big salaries to play in Europe to take a $50,000 salary from the U.S. Basketball Association. So they were taking a pay cut, they were traveling all over the world, they were doing workouts that were really demanding and really tough. They thought I was crazy, but they wanted to win a gold medal and they did everything they could. And we did a practice medal ceremony nine months ahead of the real medal ceremony. And I said to the team, we had a big video and it showed what the Olympics were going to be like. I said in nine months, someone is going to win the gold medal, and if you want it to be us, then here's what we need to do. And we did a gold medal ceremony where I put the gold medals over their heads and they put their arms up in the air and they're really excited about it. We took a picture of the gold medal and put it on the front of our notebooks. And so we were very focused every day on winning that gold medal. And we wanted every behavior that we did. Being on time for the bus is winning the gold medal. Being a good teammate is winning the gold medal, being a champion. All those, every little thing that you do is always in the hunt for the gold medal. And so you're always doing championship behavior so that you're not going to win the gold medal by accident. It doesn't happen that way.