Close keeps a shovel and a broom in her office. The shovel reminds her to dig below the surface. The broom reminds her that leading is not about being above the players; it is about serving them. When Betts arrived in Westwood in 2023, she looked at Close like the coach might pick up the broom and ride it.
“I could tell in her eyes that when I would speak, I was a trigger,” Close says. “Honestly, it hurt my feelings a little bit, because I thought it was maybe a reflection of our relationship. But what I realized is: When I was talking, she was looking at me, but she was hearing me as Tara.”
Tara VanDerveer is one of the most successful basketball coaches of all time. She led Stanford to three national championships and the 1996 U.S. Olympic team to a gold medal. Playing for her was Betts’s dream until she did it. A month into her Stanford career, Betts flew to see her family at one of her sister Sienna’s basketball tournaments in Southern California, got off the plane, and bawled. From there, things got worse.
“She clearly seemed to think that people there didn’t believe in her at all,” Michelle says. “And not only that, she seemed to think they didn’t really care about her at all.”
There were exceptions. Just not enough of them. Betts says, “When your confidence is stripped away from you, it completely changes the way you play.” Freshmen usually need time to adjust to college, and Betts felt burdened by expectations before she got there, so blaming her unhappiness entirely on Stanford is reductive. But the way Stanford responded is mystifying.
Michelle says VanDerveer has not spoken to her since October 2021, when Betts was still in high school. Lauren’s father, Andy, says he spoke to VanDerveer once during Lauren’s lone Cardinal season, when he requested a meeting. Meanwhile, Stanford coaches kept recruiting Sienna: They sat in the front row at her tournaments, hoping to impress the kid, while Michelle watched them from across the gym and seethed. By December, Michelle was telling Lauren, “You’re gonna hold on tight, and you’re gonna get through the year and you’re gonna get the hell out of here.”
