STANFORD, Calif. (AP) — At home over breakfast Thursday morning with sister Heidi, Tara VanDerveer formulated her plan to somehow help the suffering Ukrainian people who still mean so much to her years after she took the U.S. national team to play there.
The Hall of Fame Stanford coach
Veteran Georgia Tech coach Nell Fortner, whose team is playing its first-round NCAA game against Kansas at Stanford on Friday,
“I want to put a challenge out to other coaches, to our fans, to everyone in here, my sister's already accepted the challenge, I'd like to donate to the Ukraine humanitarian fund — and I'm not sure which fund it will be yet — $10 for every 3-point made in the NCAA women's tournament," VanDerveer said as defending champion Stanford prepared to take on Montana State.
VanDerveer’s 1996 Olympic champion U.S. national team played in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv leading up to the Atlanta Games, and faced the Ukrainian national team several times.
“I would call them our cousins because we saw them in so many tournaments and played against them,” VanDerveer recalled. ”So maybe I have an affinity for the country, and watching what’s happening has been really, really very hard. When our team was leaving Ukraine, women at 3:30 in the morning were begging outside of our bus. And our team emptied their suitcases, emptied their wallets, just were very generous.”
Fortner said, "That was a phenomenal trip over there, and it was an eye-opening trip in a lot of ways.”
VanDerveer has asked associate director of communications Wilder Treadway to track her total each day.
“I hope people can make a lot of 3s and that I can be very generous,” VanDerveer said, “and I hope other people will get on board with this challenge and I'd like people to match the challenge.”
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