SAN DIEGO - On Thursday night at Lomas Santa Fe Country Club, UC San Diego Women’s and Men’s Basketball kicked off their seasons with A Night with Legends. The stage held one of the winningest coaches in college basketball history, Tara VanDerveer; her sister, head UC San Diego women’s coach Heidi VanDerveer; and other coaching icons P.J. Carlesimo and Paul Westhead. Also in the room? Judy Sweet, the pioneering UC San Diego athletic director who became the first woman to lead the NCAA as president.
Why they matter
Three women, three different kinds of firsts. Judy Sweet led a combined men’s and women’s athletic program at a time when critics told her the job belonged to a man, and in 1991 she became the first woman to serve as NCAA president. Tara VanDerveer turned Stanford into a national power, retired in 2024 as the then-winningest coach in college basketball history, and led the 1996 U.S. Olympic team to gold. Heidi VanDerveer guided UC San Diego through one of the toughest transitions in college sports, taking a program that was extraordinarily successful at Division II into a highly rated one at Division I. Her Tritons have made seven NCAA Tournaments, five at DII and two at DI. In 2024-25, in their first season of D-I postseason eligibility, they won the Big West Championship and earned the program’s first NCAA Division I Tournament berth. They won the Big West tournament and an NCAA berth again in 2025-26.
Judy Sweet: the one who opened the door
Judy Sweet became UC San Diego’s athletic director in 1975 and held the job for 24 years. She was first woman in the country to lead a combined men’s and women’s athletic program. In 1991 she became the first woman elected NCAA president, and the first from a Division III school.
Sweet told Her Sports that the title was never the point. “I always felt the most important thing wasn’t being the first, but not being the last.”
The reception she got was not always kind. Title IX was only a few years old, and she said plenty of people did not think women belonged in sports. She received “all kinds of hate mail” for taking what critics saw as a man’s job. Some letters were colorful, including one telling her to “Go back to the kitchen where you belong.” She noted, with a wry nod to the era, that she was lucky there was no internet.
Her first big changes were about access. When she took over, the women’s teams competed in a community college league and could not travel beyond San Diego. The men, in the NAIA, could go to Los Angeles. When the NCAA began sponsoring women’s sports, which she said it had initially resisted, she moved both the men’s and women’s programs into Division III right away. UC San Diego then won the first NCAA Division III volleyball championship, she said.
On her NCAA presidency, she was clear about what she hoped it would lead to: “I wanted to make sure that I wasn’t the last female in that position.” She explained that her role was a volunteer position elected by the membership, and that the position no longer exists in that form. The president’s job is now a paid one. No woman has held either version since. “So there’s still a lot of work to do,” she said, but “We’ve come so far.”
Her first big changes were about access. When she took over, the women’s teams competed in a community college league and could not travel beyond San Diego. The men, in the NAIA, could go to Los Angeles. When the NCAA began sponsoring women’s sports, which she said it had initially resisted, she moved both the men’s and women’s programs into Division III right away. UC San Diego then won the first NCAA Division III volleyball championship, she said.
On her NCAA presidency, she was clear about what she hoped it would lead to: “I wanted to make sure that I wasn’t the last female in that position.” She explained that her role was a volunteer position elected by the membership, and that the position no longer exists in that form. The president’s job is now a paid one. No woman has held either version since. “So there’s still a lot of work to do,” she said, but “We’ve come so far.”
She said one moment showed her how far things had come. At a UC San Diego women’s soccer game, she heard the men’s team sitting behind her react as a player broke toward goal. “She’s a great athlete,” they said. Women had rarely been talked about as athletes before, and Sweet took the comment as a sign of change. “We’re not there, but people are really noticing.”
She called her years at the school “the era of survival.” Budgets were cut sharply, some people argued the school did not need athletics at all, and she said faculty who came from the Big Ten did not want sports to dominate campus. Seeing the program move through Division II and now into Division I is a proud moment for her. “I think we’re going to do very well,” she said. She added that the school is working on a written history of the program, because people should know where it came from.
Tara VanDerveer: the record-setter
Tara VanDerveer retired in 2024 after 38 seasons at Stanford with 1,216 wins, then-most in college basketball history. She won national titles in 1990, 1992 and 2021. In 1996 she coached the U.S. women’s national team to Olympic gold, a team widely credited with helping launch the WNBA.
In her interview with Her Sports, she downplayed the records with a joke. “It’s really hard to be the winningest coach in basketball and be the second-best coach in your own family.” Asked about her legacy, she said she hoped it was “having basketball be fun for people that play basketball,” and playing “a style of basketball that people like to watch.”
At the event, she told the story of the 1996 Olympic team. The U.S. women had settled for bronze at the previous Games, and the message from USA Basketball’s leadership was clear: “This is not about bronze. This is not about silver. This is about gold.” Months before the Olympics, the team staged a mock medal ceremony in the Georgia Dome. Then they went to work.
She said she had to tell the players, “the bus is leaving” just to get them out of the gym. “There was such an incredible sisterhood,” she said, and the players did not care who started or who scored the most. “They wanted it for each other, and that’s why we won.” In her interview, she noted the 12 players gave up a year to train, played 60 games, and won gold. She said the team was inducted into a hall of fame this year, 30 years later.
Her advice to today’s players was simple. “Basketball is a game, and it might be your job, but basketball has got to be fun.” In practice, she said, “Let’s play hard, let’s practice hard, let’s get better every day.”
She also talked about the unglamorous side of winning. Great players, she said, are defined by what they do when no one is watching: the extra ball handling, the treatment, the fundamentals. Her warning to athletes was to avoid “running back and looking at your cell phone to see if your highlights are on some YouTube channel.” Her reasoning: “it’s a team game, and you’ve got to be unselfish.”
Her most personal story was about a loss. Stanford led Old Dominion by 17 at halftime of a Final Four game, then lost. Players lay on the locker room floor in tears, and the media was about to walk in. A team leader stood up and said, “I would rather lose with you than win with anyone else.” Tara said that moment captures what college sports can give players: a great education and a special team. She worries that today’s game has become “so transactional” that some young people miss out. Her message to the Tritons was “Don’t waste it, and really make the most of the time that you have it.”
Heidi VanDerveer: riding the wave
Heidi, the youngest of five, leads the Tritons’ women’s program. Tara described her as someone who emphasizes family, relationships and unselfish basketball, and called her “a great leader, and just a really great person.” Tara also said UC San Diego is early in becoming a fantastic program. “I think it’s a goldmine.”
Heidi spoke about where the game stands right now. She believes women’s basketball is at a tipping point and sees “the tsunami that is coming in women’s athletics.” Her point was about timing: “you can’t ride a wave from behind.” Programs have to get ahead of the moment, and that takes the whole department. “It takes everybody in order to sustain excellence.”
Her ask for fans was practical. Don’t just write checks, she said. Bring people to games. “They come once, they come twice, and they’ll come back.”
She talked about what the sport has given her, too: “my passion, my purpose.” Teams, she said, are about “a great joy in doing something really hard together,” and “it’s not about the destination; it’s about the journey.” Her advice to the athletes was to enjoy the process. “It is your time,” she said, and “win the day,” because “the days will stack.”
The wave they started
Sweet and the VanDerveer sisters came at women’s sports from different seats: an athletic director’s office, a national championship bench, and a Division I sideline. Each of them made room for the next generation. Sweet fought for women’s teams to compete beyond San Diego, joined the NCAA, and wanted to be “not being the last” woman to lead it. Tara filled gyms with a style of basketball people wanted to watch, and led an Olympic team that moved the sport forward. Heidi is now building on that foundation and telling fans the moment is here, because “you can’t ride a wave from behind.”
Sweet said the work is not finished, the VanDerveers’ message was the same: the next stretch belongs to the people now stepping onto the court.
