Dick Gould has been around Stanford sports long enough as a tennis player and coach — a remarkable run of seven decades — that he clearly remembers some down years for the university’s sports programs.
He heard the excuses by coaches and student-athletes back in the day of “we just can’t win at Stanford, you can’t be smart and be an athlete.”
That’s what makes the current streak of success on the national stage extra special for the retired, longtime tennis coach — Stanford just captured an NCAA championship for a 50th consecutive year.
Stanford head coach Tara VanDerveer reacts during the first half of the team’s second-round college basketball game in the women’s NCAA Tournament against Iowa State in Stanford, Calif., March 24, 2024. AP “I think it’s important to not take it for granted. I think that you get used to it, sometimes comfortable about it and I don’t think we ever should do that,” Gould said. “I know when I was at Stanford we went 0-10 in football in 1960, my last year playing on the tennis team.
“There was a pervasive fuel among the coaches and the athletes and everybody. Men’s golf won a championship in 1953 and men’s swimming did in the winter of ‘67 the year I started (as tennis coach). They hadn’t done anything since the early 40s, I think we won a basketball championship in (’42) or something like that during the war, so our successes were really small and in between.”
During this current academic year, Stanford’s women’s cross country and soccer teams had already come up just short before the men’s gymnastics team won Saturday night in Champaign, Illinois, and extended the remarkable run to a half-century.
The reign of dominance by Cardinal athletics began with a 13-12 men’s water polo triumph over UCLA in 1976 and has featured 126 national titles.
And no other university currently even comes close: North Carolina is next with seven.
Southern California went 19 straight years with an NCAA championship, from the 1959-60 school year through 1977-78.
Stanford University in Stanford, California, US, on Thursday, Sept. 14, 2023. Bloomberg via Getty Images “Stanford has had incredible success. We have outstanding coaches and student-athletes,” said retired Hall of Fame women’s basketball coach Tara VanDerveer said, whose teams captured three titles. ”It is really inspiring to be around such accomplished people.”
Stanford has won 126 of its record 138 overall NCAA team titles in the current 50-year streak.
Women’s tennis at Stanford ranks No. 1 at the school with 20 NCAA team titles — six in a row from 1986-91 — while men’s tennis has earned 15, men’s water polo and women’s swimming and diving have 11 each, and women’s water polo and men’s gymnastics have 10 apiece.
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Gould coached the Cardinal, including players like John McEnroe and Roscoe Tanner, for 38 years from 1966-2004 and is the program’s winningest coach with a record of 776-148 (.840). His wife, Anne, coached the first women’s team to a national title in any sport at Stanford when she guided tennis to the 1978 championship.
“What we did in tennis coupled with football just kind of opened the floodgates,” Gould said.
Women’s basketball coach Kate Paye credited the leadership of Stanford President Jonathan Levin, new athletic director John Donahoe and others for leading the way with “a renewed commitment” to excellence in the classroom and athletic venues.
“We have a singular identity as the No. 1 academic and athletic institution in the country and in the world,” said Paye, born in Stanford Hospital and part of that 1992 NCAA championship team. “We call it one team, Stanford is one team. We’re 36 strong. Stanford is a really special place, incredible student-athletes. … Stanford athletics has so much momentum right now.”
