Spotlight on Patience Vanderbush CFS Girls’ Coach, 1998 - present

Where are you from? I grew up mostly in Buchanan, Michigan; that’s where I went to high school.

What did you want to be when you were a child? An Olympic athlete. I played all kinds of sports.

Where did you go to school? What did you study? I went to undergrad at Northwestern University, where I majored in English with an emphasis on African-American literature. I have two master’s degrees, one in journalism and one in public health, both from UNC-Chapel Hill.

Tell us a little about your own experience playing basketball. Any highlights? I attended Northwestern University on an athletic scholarship, playing basketball all four years. I’m proud that while I was there we won two Big 10 tournament championships. We were ranked in the top 25 teams in the nation. I played my final college game against ’s NC State team in Reynolds Coliseum in 1982 in the first year of the NCAA women’s tournament. We lost by two points. It was very exciting to be on such a successful team, and I made friends for life there. I’m also proud of having been named an Academic All-American at Northwestern. I worked very hard on my studies and on the basketball team, and got a lot out of both.

When and where did you start coaching? I was a counselor at girls’ basketball camps all through college, and a part-time low-level assistant coach with the Duke women’s basketball team in 1985. I came to CFS in 1997, when my son Reed came to Upper School. I watched him play and saw some of the girls’ games and felt I could be of service, so before his sophomore year I volunteered to help the girls’ basketball team. I was an assistant coach my first two years here, 1998-99 and 1999-2000, and then I became head coach for the 2000-01 season. So I’ve been coaching here for eleven years, nine as head coach.

What coaches do you admire? I greatly admire Coach Gail Goestenkors, who was the Duke women’s coach for many years and is now coach at Texas. I also admire Tara VanDerveer, the coach at Stanford, who has also coached the U.S. Olympic team to a gold medal. She was the coach at Ohio State when I was playing at Northwestern, so I played against her team. They’re great students of the game, and they treat their players with great respect.

What do you aspire to as you coach? One of my goals each year is to try to be a better coach this year than I was last year. In addition to learning from experience, I read all the books about basketball that I can. I watch coaching DVDs and take meticulous notes. At the end of each season, I think about what I can do better next year. I think team sports are really a wonderful learning opportunity for kids. The commitment players make to their teammates is crucial. If they don’t come to practice, they let their team down – not just themselves, as would be the case if they didn’t turn in math homework. When you do show up, you’re working with others toward a collective goal, which is a wonderful thing. One reason I do this is because I think it’s really important for women to coach girls, for women to learn to lead, for girls to see women leading in a competitive, traditionally male environment. My team has played 17 games so far this year, and only two of our opponents were coached by women. I think there’s something wrong with that. I love working with girls for four years. I get to see them grow up. There’s something really special about that. We spend a lot of time together. We start pre-season conditioning in mid-October, and the season goes through February. I also open the CFS gym for girls’/women’s pick-up basketball every Tuesday evening throughout the summer. One of my projects here is to expose these girls to women who are accomplished and interesting and who have a passion for sports, including my former CFS players. Some wonderful women have passed through the program, whether through summer pick-up games or helping as assistant coaches, and I think it’s great for the girls to be exposed to these women. A couple years ago we had a young woman who was doing a medical residency in pediatrics at UNC, and she still made time to come to as many practices and games as possible. She was a former college player who had a passion for the game, and the girls really responded to her enthusiasm. We live in an age-segregated culture, and bringing age groups together on the basketball court is a positive experience for all of us.

How is it different coaching here than it might be at some other schools? Without cheerleaders or a pep band, it’s a different experience coaching or playing here. It would be great if more people would come out to see our teams play. The players really appreciate and respond to having fans in the stands. I want to emphasize that the Upper School students who play basketball at CFS, boys and girls, make a huge commitment of time and energy. That’s always true in sports, but especially at small schools. Because we’re small and we have only one gymnasium, practice times are not ideal, which is a hardship for kids and parents. We have to travel pretty far for away games. I hope the rewards are commensurate with the effort they put forth. My son looks back really fondly at the experience he had playing basketball here. It taught him discipline, teamwork, commitment. The CFS basketball program has really evolved since I’ve been here. At first we didn’t have a gym. We practiced (when we could) in the Quaker dome, St. Mary’s School, and New Hope School and had no “home” games. We also didn’t have a middle school program and didn’t play in a conference. Those were disadvantages, but kids still played and got a lot out of it. I feel really lucky to work with Alex Gordon. I think we’re kindred spirits in terms of what we value in sports. He works really hard; I don’t think people begin to know how much he does, the time and energy it takes to plan and organize all the sports we have. He also cares a great deal about the individual kids who participate in sports here. He enjoys our successes but doesn’t put undue emphasis on winning or losing. He’s much more concerned that we do things the right way, in a positive spirit.

What do you do when you’re not coaching at CFS? Where do you work? I have my own medical writing business. I’m the president and sole employee. I write up the results of clinical research for pharmaceutical and biotech companies. It’s because I’m my own boss that I have the flexibility to coach. I can set hours and alter my schedule to make practices and games. I live in Durham with my partner of almost 23 years, Rosalie Dominik. Rosalie is a biostatistician at UNC-Chapel Hill.

Any hobbies you’d like to share? One of my life goals is to become fluent in Spanish. I’ve finished all the levels of study at CHICLE in Carrboro. When it’s not basketball season, I attend regular conversation sessions. I enjoy reading books in Spanish. In keeping with that, I have a interest in Latin American literatures and cultures. My son and I traveled to Cuba in 2002. This is an interest he shares; he majored in Spanish at UNC-CH and is now fluent in Spanish. One of his end-of-year trips at CFS was to Nicaragua, and that had a huge impact on his life. It inspired his interest in Spanish. I love reading literature. I have belonged to an amazing book group since the mid-90s; it’s really important to me.

Have you participated in other sports? Volleyball, softball, track. I was a very serious flatwater kayaker. When I was 13, I won the national 15- and-under girls’ flatwater kayaking championship. When I was 14, I was a member of the U.S. national flatwater kayaking team that competed in the world championships in Mexico City.

What do you hope your players leave your team with? A sense of the joy of team sports as well as the lessons learned from them. I played individual and team sports when I was young, but there was something special about the bond created among teammates and the joy of achieving something with a group of people you’ve worked hard with, made a commitment to. In team sports you really learn to put team goals before individual goals. It’s a valuable life lesson.

Anything you want to add? There are many reasons I’ve been coaching here so long. One is that I’m grateful for the role that CFS played in my son Reed’s life. He needed an emotionally safe place to grow up, and he found that here. I consider it a blessing to be able to work with this age group. Once your children become adults, unless you’re a teacher, there aren’t lots of opportunities to have significant interaction with young people. That’s a benefit of coaching. They give me a perspective on the world that friends my age don’t give me.